Egyptian critics blamed mass-market illustrated books and cafés for family decline

Evidence

Schooling among the poor was still insufficient, and if anyone should learn to read, the books available to them contained more illustrations than text, full of unwholesome stories such as ‘The Fellah and the Three Women’. One such book had recently gone through six reprints in less than a month. Family life was neglected. Men had taken to spending their days or their entire evenings in the more disreputable cafés, where women entertained and men told the stories of Don Juan. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 377

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels contemporary moral panics about media ‘corrupting’ the family — connects to the immodesty article’s theme of moral panic as class/political signaling.