Reading in History:
New Methodologies from the Anglo-American Tradition
Editor: Bonnie Gunzenhauser
The History of the Book
978 1 85196 628 8: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 85196 686 8
This collection of essays draws together new research from leading scholars to offer a new methodological framework for the history of reading. A growing field, history of reading brings together practitioners from literature, history, sociology, education, philosophy, cultural studies and law. On the one hand, scholars have approached the subject empirically, focusing on a specific historical moment and gathering detailed 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. On the other, scholars have approached the subject theoretically, focusing on how meaning is created and conditioned by a theoretical – and often largely ahistorical – reader. This edition synthesizes divergent approaches to reconsider the history of reading, the ways we make claims about readers and what they do with texts.
Sample pages
Readership
History of the Book, History of Print Culture, Literature
Contents
Introduction – Bonnie Gunzenhauser
Section I: Artefactual Methodologies
1 On the Use of Anecdotal Evidence in Reception Study and the History of Reading – Daniel Allington
2 Examining the Evidence of Reading: Three Examples from the Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 – Rosalind Crone, Katie Halsey and Shafquat Towheed
3 Historical Dictionaries and the History of Reading – Michael Adams
Section II: Paratextual Methodologies
4 Reading and the Visual Dimensions of the Book: The Popular Cold War Fictions of Helen MacInnes – Nicole Matthew
5 The Work of Abridgements: Readers, Editors and Expectations – Jennifer Snead
Section III: Institutional Methodologies
6 Women Reading Shakespeare in the Outpost: Rural Reading Groups, Literary Culture and Civic Life in America – Katherine Schiel
7 Turning Libraries into Public Works: Funding Arguments on the Local Level in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, Pennsylvania – Catherine Turner
8 Explicating Explications: Researching Contemporary Reading – Anouk Lang
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