$1,000 Reading Retreats Turn Books Into A Luxury Experience

For James Lackington, an 18th century British shoemaker turned bookseller, one good reason to marry was to secure a reading partner. “I was in raptures with the bare thoughts of having a woman to read with, and also to read to me,” he wrote in his memoir. In Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1866 novel, Wives and Daughters, the Hollingford Book Society was “the centre of news and gossip, the club, as it were, of the little town.”

Only recently has reading come to be seen as a niche activity — just 16% of respondents read for pleasure every day, according to ...