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 edited 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.
Readership
History of the Book, History of Print Culture, Literature
Contents
Provisional table of contents
Bonnie Gunzenhauser, Introduction
Part I: Verbal Methodologies
Michael Adams, ‘Historical Lexicography and the History of Reading’
Daniel Allington, ‘Anecdotal Evidence and the Meta-History of Reading’
Jonathan Rose, ‘Arriving at a History of Reading’
Jennifer Snead, 'The Work of Abridgments: Readers, Editors, and Expectations'
Shafquat Towheed, Rosalind Crone, and Katie Halsey, 'Examining the Evidence of Reading: Three Examples from the Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945'
Part II: Visual Methodologies
Carl Fisher, ‘Reading Readers Reading’
Nicole Matthew, ‘Reading and the Visual Dimensions of the Book’
Part III: Geographical Methodologies
Katherine Scheil, ‘Reading Shakespeare in the Outpost’
Catherine Turner, ‘Turning Libraries into Public Works: Funding Arguments on the Local Level in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, Pennsylvania’