Before the advent of television, reading was among the most popular of leisure activities. `Light' fiction - romances, thrillers, westerns - was the sustenance of millions in wartime and in peace. This lively and scholarly study examines the size and complexion of the reading public and the development of an increasingly commercialized publishing industry in the early twentieth century.Joseph McAleer uses a wide variety of sources, including the Mass Observation Archive and previously confidential publishers' records, to explore the nature of popular fiction and its readers. He analyses the editorial policies which created the success of Mills & Boon and D. C. Thomson, and also charts the rise and fall of the Religious Tract Society as a popular publisher.