Yes, I've read Lahire and he's not the first to make these observations. However, there are generalisable trends in cultural consumption and to pretend that it doesn't relate to changes in education and indeed in social class formation is to miss an opportunity to examine more closely both how education and social class formation are changing and also, in reverse, some effects of known changes, particularly to the education system.

It's also worth noting that just because something was popular in the past (Opera, Dumas, Hugo) does not mean that it falls automatically within popular literacy of the present day.

i.e. As you note below, many of the conventions surrounding "high art" were late Victorian vanity inventions. However, they were invented and they did change patterns of consumption.

To run this back to the music thread for a moment, this matters because the story of changes in music consumption is more than just the technology, in fact, given certain effects of the technology the social markers are a more powerful explanation of certain trends.

Finally, to add to the bit about politics that nanne pointed up, the growth of literature festivals is not an innovation, but it is a growth and it does imply a change in the social role of the literature involved, maybe not compared to 150 years ago, but compared to 50 years ago. And that too, is potentially important.