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Reveals the experience of reading in many cultures and across the ages
Bringing together the latest scholarship from all over the world on topics ranging from reading practices in ancient China to the workings of the twenty-first-century reading brain, the 4 volumes of the Edinburgh History of Reading demonstrate that reading is a deeply imbricated, socio-political practice, at once personal and public, defiant and obedient. It is often materially ephemeral, but it can also be emotionally and intellectually enduring.
Common Readers casts a fascinating light on the literary experiences of ordinary people: miners in Scotland, churchgoers in Victorian London, workers in Czarist Russia, schoolgirls in rural Australia, farmers in Republican China, and forward to today's online book discussion groups. Chapters in this volume explore what they read, and how books changed their lives.
Jonathan Rose is William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University.
Mary Hammond is Professor of English and Book History at the University of Southampton.
List of contents
Introduction,
Jonathan Rose
Chapter 1. British Commonplace Readers, 1706 - 1879,
Jillian M. Hess
Chapter 2. Reading in God's Treasure-House: The Societies for Purchasing Books in Leadhills and Wanlockhead, 1741-1820,
Margaret Joachim
Chapter 3. The School Library and Childhood Reading in Lowland Scotland, 1750-1850,
Maxine Branagh-Miscampbell
Chapter 4. 'Although ambitious we did not aspire to such dizzy heights': Manuscript Magazines and Communal Reading Practices of London Literary Societies in the Long Nineteenth Century,
Lauren Weiss
Chapter 5. Space and Place in Nineteenth-Century Images of Women Readers,
Amelia Yeates
Chapter 6. Asian Classic Literature and the English General Reader, 1845-1915,
Alexander Bubb
Chapter 7. Readers and Reading During Russia's Literacy Transition 1850-1950: How Readers Shaped a Great Literature,
Jeffrey Brooks
Chapter 8. F. F. Pavlenkov's Literacy Project: Popular Serials and Reading Rooms for the Russian Masses,
Carol Ueland and Ludmilla A. Trigos
Chapter 9. Formal and Informal Networks of Book Provision for Rural Children in Australia and New Zealand, 1900-1960,
Bronwyn Lowe
Chapter 10. Putting Your Best Books Forward: A Historical and Psychological Look at the Presentation of Book Collections,
Nicole Gonzalez and Nick Weir-Williams
Chapter 11. In Search of the Chinese Common Reader: Vernacular Knowledge in an Age of New Media,
Joan Judge
Chapter 12. From 'Bookworms' to 'Scholar-Farmers': Tao Xingzhi and Changing Understandings of Literacy in the Chinese Rural Reconstruction Movement 1923-1934,
Zach Smith
Chapter 13. The Voice of the Reader: The Landscape of Online Book Discussion in the Netherlands, 1997-2016,
Peter Boot
Chapter 14. Novel Ideas: The Promotion of North American Book Club Books and the Creation of Their Readers,
DeNel Rehberg Sedo and Samantha Rideout
Chapter 15. Sprawling Reader Response and the Diffusion of Social Media Space: Conceptualizing a Community of Readers via Vlogbrothers,
Jennifer Burek Pierce
List of Contributors
About the author
Jonathan Rose is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History at Drew University, USA. He is the author of
Readers' Liberation (Oxford University Press, 2018),
The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor (Yale University Press, 2014), which won the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Book Prize, and
The Edwardian Temperament 1895-1919 (Ohio University Press, 1986). He is also the editor of
The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation (University of Massachusetts Press, 2001) and co-editor of
A Companion to the History of the Book (Blackwell, 2007) and
British Literary Publishing Houses, 1820-1965 (Gale, 1991).
Summary
Common Readers casts a fascinating light on the literary experiences of ordinary people.
