If by majority of the population, you mean no women, no slaves, then yes, sure. And even from an American or NE perspective, you're still overestimating its popularity.
> According to data compiled by Our World in Data and the World Bank, the literacy rate of the world's population from secondary school age onward was only 12 percent in 1820 - around one person in ten. In 1900, it still barely exceeded 20 percent. From the 1950s on, world literacy began to take off, hitting 42 percent in 1960 and 70 percent in 1983.
As I said. If you look not at the entire world, but say Northern Europe, reading literacy (a different measure from the literacy discussed in many modern sources which includes writing literacy) was almost universal by the late 1800s.
For instance, in Sweden, to cherrypick a stat, in 1875 only 1% of military recruits were found unable to read [1].
We really must stop thinking that people of yestertimes where so much inferior to people today. Yes, there were differences between men and women, but this was also starting to change.
Literacy rates in the 1800s across different regions in Western Europe: https://brewminate.com/the-growth-of-literacy-in-western-eur...
> According to data compiled by Our World in Data and the World Bank, the literacy rate of the world's population from secondary school age onward was only 12 percent in 1820 - around one person in ten. In 1900, it still barely exceeded 20 percent. From the 1950s on, world literacy began to take off, hitting 42 percent in 1960 and 70 percent in 1983.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/education-and-skills/reading...