Book description
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 evidence-from
library catalogs, prefaces, title pages and dedications, marginalia,
commonplace books, and letters to ink, paper, and bindings-to 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 forms-from periodical literature to polemical
pamphlets-and 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.
"Showcasing an innovative, interdisciplinary group of essays,
Books and Readers in Early Modern England will interest
scholars of bibliography, collections studies, literature, and
history. This book should also prove useful in the classroom. . . . It
is only fitting that a book so productively devoted to the history of
textual consumption should itself appeal to a wide audience."-Albion.
Jennifer Andersen teaches English at California State University, San
Bernardino. Elizabeth Sauer is Professor of English at Brock University,
Canada.
