A collection of essays that offer a methodological framework for the history of reading. Focusing on a specific historical moment, it gathers statistics about such issues as literacy rates, library subscriptions, publication and sales figures, and print runs to answer questions about what was being read and by whom in a particular place and time.

Product Description: The twelve essays in this edited collection examine the experience of reading, from the late medieval period to the twentieth century. Central to the theme of the book is the role of materiality: how the physical object – book, manuscript, libretto – affects the experience of the person reading it...read more

This book deals with changing conditions and conceptions of authorship in the long eighteenth century, a period often said to have witnessed the birth of the modern author. It focuses not on authorial self-presentation or self-revelation but on an author’s interactions with booksellers, collaborators, rivals, correspondents, patrons, and audiences. Challenging older accounts of the development of authorship in the period as well as newer claims about the “public sphere” and the “professional writer,” it engages with recent work on print culture and the history of the book. Methodologically eclectic, it moves from close readings to strategic contextualization. The book is organized both chronologically and topically. Early chapters deal with writers – notably Milton and Dryden – at the beginning of the long eighteenth century, and later chapters focus more on writers -- among them Johnson, Gray, and Gibbon -- toward its end. Looking beyond the traditional canon, it considers a number of little-known or little-studied writers, including Richard Bentley, Thomas Birch, William Oldys, James Ralph, and Thomas Ruddiman. Some of the essays are organized around a single writer, but most deal with a broad topic – literary collaboration, literary careers, the republic of letters, the alleged rise of the “professional writer,” and the rather different figure of the “author by profession.”

Product Description: This Festschrift honours the dedicated book historian and medievalist Gabriele Müller-Oberhäuser. Her wide-ranging scholarly expertise has encouraged and influenced many adepts of the book. The essays in this volume reflect the variety of her interests: The contributions range from Chaucer’s Fürstenspiegel to the value of books in comedy, from the material book to the magical book in religious and literary cultures, from collaborative efforts in manuscript production to the relations of distributors of books across national and ideological boundaries, from the relations between the makers of books to the relation of readers to their books...read more

Presents the stories of book thieves, book burners, censors, anarchists, women of eleventh century Japan who had to invent their own reading material, and African American slaves who were forbidden to read under penalty of death

Product Description: A study of books through history is a study of human history. In The History of the Book in 100 Books, the author explores 100 books that have played a critical role in the creation and expansion of books and all that they bring -- literacy, numeracy, expansion of knowledge, religion, political theory, oppression, liberation, and much more...read more

This lavishly illustrated volume explores one of the most versatile, useful and enduring technologies ever invented: the book. "Books: A Living History" charts the evolution and influence of books around the world, from the cuneiform tablets of ancient Sumer through the development of movable type and the emergence of the modern information revolution. A feast for traditional book-lovers, as well as an inspiration for those excited by new electronic technologies, this beautifully produced volume celebrates the enduring power and magic of books.

Product Description: Martyn Lyons surveys the changing relationships enjoyed by men and women with the written word, from early times to the present day. He provides a highly-readable account of the social history of reading and writing, relating it to key historical moments such as the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment...read more

Product Description: This volume focuses on the publisher's series as a cultural formation - a material artifact and component of cultural hierarchies. Contributors engage with archival research, cultural theory, literary and bibliometric analysis (amongst a range of other approaches) to contextualize the publisher's series in terms of its cultural and economic work...read more

Product Description: Where does the book belong? Does it enshrine the soul of a nation, or is it a means by which nations talk to one another, sharing ideas, technologies and texts? This two-volume set responds to these questions, using archive-based case studies of print culture from around the world...read more

Product Description: In Crossover Fiction, Sandra L. Beckett explores the global trend of crossover literature and explains how it is transforming literary canons, concepts of readership, the status of authors, the publishing industry, and bookselling practices...read more

Product Description: Where does the book belong? Does it enshrine the soul of a nation, or is it a means by which nations talk to one another, sharing ideas, technologies, texts? This book, the first in a two-volume set of original essays, responds to these questions with archive-based case studies of print culture in a number of countries around the world...read more

Product Description: Readers and Leaders is a collection of ten reproducible short biographies, extension activities, and further reading and Web resource listings that explores the role that books and reading played in the lives of ten historical figures: Andrew Carnegie, Melvil Dewey, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Edison, Anne Frank, Benjamin Franklin, Helen Keller, Norman Rockwell, and Harry Truman...read more

'This book attempts to demonstrate the role that reading has played throughout the course of history. The subjects are presented in chronological order according to birth. Respective chapters contain brief biographies of the subjects and discuss the waysin which each used books as a principal aid in the development of his or her exceptional talents'--Provided by publisher.

Product Description: From Pierre de Fermat to Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Graham Greene, readers have related to books through the notes they write in the margins. In this pioneering book―the first to examine the phenomenon of marginalia―H.J. Jackson surveys an extraordinary range of annotated books to explore the history of marginalia, the forms they take, the psychology that underlies them, and the reactions they provoke...read more

Describes the life of Saint Columba, a sixth-century prince, monk, and scribe.

Product Description: Based on lectures given at the William Andrews Clark Library in 1986-87, these essays discuss the many aspects of the history of the book, with a range of topics related to manuscripts as well as books. This is the second title in "The British Library Studies in the History of the Book" series...read more

The author explores the history and continuing relavance of books, introducing readers to librarians, readers, writers, scholars, bookbinders and booksellers around the world. 40,000 first printing.