1. Production of handwritten manuscripts could not meet the ever increasing demand for books.
2. Copying was an expensive, laborious and time consuming business.
3. The manuscripts were fragile, awkward to handle and could not be carried around or read easily.
4. By the early 15th century, woodblocks started being widely used in Europe to print textiles, playing cards and religious pictures with simple, brief texts.

1. In the end of 19th century a new visual culture had started.
 2. With the increasing number of printing presses visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies.
3. Painters like ‘Raja Ravi Verma’ produced images for mass circulation.
4. Cheap prints and calendars were brought even by the poor to decorate the walls of their houses.

1. Collectively the writings of thinkers provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism.
2. Scholars and thinkers argued for the rule of reason rather than custom and demanded that everything to be judged through the application of reason and rationality.
3. They attacked the sacred authority of the church and the despotic power of the state thus eroding
 the legitimacy of a social order based on tradition.
4. The writing of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely and those who read these books saw the world through new eyes, eyes that were questioning critical and rational.

As literacy and schools spread in European countries there was a virtual reading mania.
1. A new forms of popular literature appeared to target new readers
2. There were ritual calendars along with ballads and folk tales.
3. In England penny chapbooks were carried by petty peddlers known as chapmen and sold for
a penny, So that even poor could buy them.
4. In France these law priced books were called Bibliotheque Bleue as they were bound in cheap blue covers.
5. There were romances, histories, books of various sixes, serving developed to combine information on current affairs with entertainment.
6. Periodical pressed developed to combine information on current affairs with entertainment.
7. The idea of scientists and scholars had now become more accessible to the common people.

Oral culture entered print into the following ways –
 1. Printers published popular ballads and folktales.
 2. Books were profusely illustrated with pictures. Printed material was transmitted orally in the following ways.
 I. These were sung at gathering in villages, taverns and in towns.
 II. They were recited in public gathering.

1. Writers started writing about the lives and features of women and this increased the number of women readers.
2. Women writers write their own autobiography. They highlighted the condition of women,
their ignorance and how they forced to do hard domestic labour.
3. A large section of Hindu writing was devoted to the education of women.
4. In the early 20th century the journals written by women become very popular in which women’s education, widowhood, widow remarriage were discussed.
5. Many writers published how to teach women to be obedient wives.

1. Visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies.
2. Printers produced images for mass circulation cheap prints and calendars could be brought even by the poor.
 3. By the 1870’s caricatures and cartoons were being published in journals and news papers.
4. Mass production of cost and visual images reduced the cost of production. So cheap prints and calendars were available in the market even for the poor to decorate the walls of their homes.

1. The print popularized the ideas of the enlightened thinkers who attacked the authority of the church and the despotic power of the state.
2. The print created a new culture of dialogue and debate and the public become aware of reasoning. They recognized the need to question the existing ideas and beliefs.
3. The literature of 1780’s mocked the royalty and criticized their morality and the existing social order. This literature led to the growth of hostile sentiments against.