Learning to draw

"This book explores the social and cultural processes that enabled drawing to emerge as an amateur pastime, as well as the meanings that drawing had for people who were not artists. Ann Bermingham shows how the history of drawing in England - from the age of Elizabeth I to the era of early photography - mirrored changes in society, politics, the practical world, and notions of self." "This book examines how drawing intersected with a wide range of social phenomena, from political absolutism, writing, empirical science, and Enlightenment pedagogy to nationalism, industrialism, tourism, bourgeois gentility, and religious instruction."--BOOK JACKET.