This morning, I read an email from a discussion group that mentioned Fitz-James O’Brien (1826-1862). You can sample his fiction at Project Gutenberg.

One member posted a link to a review of a new three-volume collection of his stories at The New York Review of Books. The review implied that O’Brien is little known, but several folks in the group quickly claimed they knew who he was. But that’s logical, our group is devoted to fiction in old magazines. I’ve even read some of O’Brien’s stories because they show up in science fiction anthologies, and I collect those. (See my post on 19th Century Science Fiction Short Stories.)

But this got me to thinking. How many people would know who Fitz-James O’Brien and read any of his stories? Then I asked myself, how many people read short stories? And of those, how many read old short stories? It’s one thing to read the short story in the latest issue of The New Yorker, and it’s another thing to read short stories originally published in the 19th century. Yes, some people still read Edgar Allan Poe, but how many outside of school?

I’ve always been a fan of science fiction magazines. When I was young, some of the top titles had over 100,000 subscribers. Over my lifetime, I’ve watched their subscriber base dwindle to well below 10,000.

It appears the three-volume Collective Speculative Works by Fitz-James O’Brien will be limited to 300 copies. Does that mean the publisher thinks fewer than 300 people in the world are interested in reading O’Brien’s stories? Or that some kind of marketable ploy? I don’t know. 300 is 0.0000036% of the world’s population. That’s one tiny subculture!

But all of this does make me curious about statistics on reading. I found “US Book Reading Statistics (National Survey 2025)“. It summarized its key findings:

• Almost half of the respondents haven’t read any books in over a year: 48.5%
• Print books were the most read books: 35.4%
• The 65+ age group recorded the highest population of print book readers: 45.1%
• The 45-54 age group contains the highest population of non-readers: 60.9%
• Males recorded a slightly higher population of non-readers compared to females: 51.4%

The article reported that the Pew Research Center found that 64% of Americans read at least one book in the previous year. That’s a lot more than I expected, and it disagrees with their own poll.

This suggests there are many kinds of readers, and that made me speculate about possible names to give different types of readers. I’m not very good at creating fun labels, but here’s my lame attempt.

• Non-readers (0 books per year)
• Casual readers (1-11 books per year)
• Steady readers (read a book a month)
• Bookworms (read a book a week)
• Super Bookworms (read two or more books a week)

This doesn’t say anything about the kinds of books they read. Someone who reads over a hundred books a year might never encounter the name Fitz-James O’Brien. In one of my older essays, I speculated that the average reader could not list more than one hundred titles from novels from the 19th century. And I listed the hundred I thought would be the most common. I doubt most people would come even close to recalling one hundred titles from the 19th century.

Outside of people I know in my discussion groups that specialize in old fiction, I doubt I have ever met anyone in my life who has read a story by Fitz-James O’Brien.

What possible name could we give to people who do? Bookworm is the tag that most people give to obsessive readers. But for every 1,000 bookworms, is there even one who reads old short stories from the 19th century? I know a fair number of people like me who love science fiction short stories from the 20th century, and I also know a smaller group who love short stories published in pulp magazines (mainly from 1900 to 1950). But how many people are we talking about? I asked CoPilot, and it estimates that the number is below 20,000 for people who read and collect old pulp fiction. That’s .0059% of the current U.S. population.

Would the word aficionado apply here? Here are some other words that CoPilot helped me find. Maybe we could use each for a different type of reader.

• Aficionado
• Enthusiast
• Devotee
• Connoisseur
• Curator
• Archivist
• Bibliophile
• Esotericist
• Antiquarian
• Obscurist
• Archaeologist

We could use all these words to describe someone who would buy Collective Speculative Works by Fitz-James O’Brien.

At one time, I would have ordered this set. However, I’ve now reached an age where I’m trying to get rid of books rather than collect. But that set does call to me. Actually, what I would really like is digital scans of the periodicals where his stories were first published. I’ve collected scans of most science fiction magazines from the 20th century, but have next to nothing from the 19th century on my hard drive.

How many people are like me who love reading old magazines?

I’m sure it’s less than .006% of the population. What nickname would you give to such people? My wife would probably say, “A nut.”

James Wallace Harris, 12/31/25