The development of a mass readership, a mass market for books and the prominent status of reading and readers is reflected in the central role of literacy, reading and books in the lives of protagonists in nineteenth-century American and French literature. In this book, Ana-Isabel Aliaga-Buchenau examines the destabilizing role of reading in the works of Frederick Douglass, Horatio Alger, Emile Zola, Louisa May Alcott and Gustave Flaubert. This book - the first to study nineteenth-century protagonists across lines of nationality, class and gender - demonstrates the empowering effects of reading for Douglass, Alger's Ragged Dick, Zola's Etienne, Alcott's Jo and Flaubert's Emma.