Books and Readers in Early Modern England
Material Studies
- 312 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Books and Readers in Early Modern England
Material Studies
About This Book
Books and Readers in Early Modern England examines readers, reading, and publication practices from the Renaissance to the Restoration. The essays draw on an array of documentary evidenceâfrom library catalogs, prefaces, title pages and dedications, marginalia, commonplace books, and letters to ink, paper, and bindingsâto explore individual reading habits and experiences in a period of religious dissent, political instability, and cultural transformation.Chapters in the volume cover oral, scribal, and print cultures, examining the emergence of the "public spheres" of reading practices. Contributors, who include Christopher Grose, Ann Hughes, David Scott Kastan, Kathleen Lynch, William Sherman, and Peter Stallybrass, investigate interactions among publishers, texts, authors, and audience. They discuss the continuity of the written word and habits of mind in the world of print, the formation and differentiation of readerships, and the increasing influence of public opinion. The work demonstrates that early modern publications appeared in a wide variety of formsâfrom periodical literature to polemical pamphletsâand reflected the radical transformations occurring at the time in the dissemination of knowledge through the written word. These forms were far more ephemeral, and far more widely available, than modern stereotypes of writing from this period suggest.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half title
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Current Trends in the History of Reading
- I. Social Contexts for Writing
- II. Traces of Reading: Margins, Libraries, Prefaces, and Bindings
- III. Print, Publishing, and Public Opinion
- Afterword: Records of Culture
- List of Contributors
- Index