‘Reading has a history. But how can we recover it?’ This volume brings together original research essays focusing on the history of reading in the British Isles, using evidence ranging from library records to Mass Observation surveys to highlight the social factors that influence a seemingly private, individual activity.
Tabela de Conteúdo
List of Figures List of Tables Foreword; S.Eliot Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; K.Halsey & W.R. Owens PART I: READING COMMUNITIES ‘The Talent Hid in a Napkin’: Castle Libraries in Eighteenth-Century Scotland; M.Towsey Caroline and Paul: Biblical Commentaries as Evidence of Reading in Victorian Britain; M.Ledger-Lomas Reading the ‘religion of socialism’: Olive Schreiner, the Labour Church and the Construction of Left-wing Reading Communities in the 1890s; C.Gill PART II: READING AND GRATIFICATION Learning to Read Trash: Late-Victorian Schools and the Penny Dreadful; A.Vaninskaya ‘Something light to take my mind off the war’: Reading on the Home Front during the Second World War; K.Halsey PART III: READING AND THE PRESS What Readers Want: Criminal Intelligence and the Fortunes of the Metropolitan Press during the Long Eighteenth Century; R.Crone The Reading World of a Provincial Town: Preston, Lancashire 1855–1900; A.Hobbs ‘Putting Literature Out of Reach’? Reading Popular Newspapers in Mid-twentieth Century Britain; A.Bingham PART IV: READERS AND AUTODIDACTICISM James Lackington (1746–1815): Reading and Personal Development; S.Bankes Henry Head (1861–1940) as a Reader of Literature; S.Jacyna In a Class of their Own: the Autodidact Impulse and Working-Class Readers in Twentieth-century Scotland; L.Fleming, D.Finkelstein & A.Mc Cleery Further Reading and Weblinks Index
Sobre o autor
SOPHIE BANKES Doctoral Student, The Open University, UK ADRIAN BINGHAM Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of Sheffield, UK ROSALIND CRONE Lecturer in History, The Open University, UK SIMON ELIOT Professor of the History of the Book, Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK DAVID FINKELSTEIN Research Professor of Media and Print Culture, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK LINDA FLEMING Postdoctoral Researcher for the Scottish Readers Remember Project, Edinburgh Napier University, UK CLARE GILL Doctoral Candidate in English, Queen’s University Belfast, UK ANDREW HOBBS Postdoctoral Research Assistant, University of Central Lancashire, UK STEPHEN JACYNA Reader in the History of Medicine, University College London, UK MICHAEL LEDGER-LOMAS Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge University, UK ALISTAIR MCCLEERY Professor and Director of the Scottish Centre for the Book, Edinburgh Napier University, UK MARK TOWSEY Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History, University of Liverpool, UK ANNA VANINSKAYA Lecturer in Victorian Literature, University of Edinburgh, UK