The Practice and Representation of Reading in England

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'The most striking feature of The Practice and Representation of Reading in England is the diversity of academic traditions and theoretical frameworks which are brought to bear on the subject. They range from post-modern textual criticism to the history of science, informed by a diversity of approaches from medieval palaegraphy to feminism. Individually, the papers are of great interest and distinction.' SHARP News

• List of illustrations; List of tables; List of contributors; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: the practice and representation of reading in England James Raven, Helen Small and Naomi Tadmor; 2. 'Let him read the Satires of Horace': reading, literacy and grammar in the twelfth century Suzanne Reynolds; 3. Into his secret chamber: reading and privacy in late medieval England Andrew Taylor; 4. The place of reading in the English Renaissance: John Dee revisited William H. Sherman; 5. Reading and the technology of textual affect: Erasmus's familiar letters and Shakespeare's King Lear Lisa Jardine; 6. The editor as reader: constructing Renaissance texts John Kerrigan; 7. Popular verses and their readership in the early seventeenth century Adam Fox; 8. The physiology of reading in Restoration England Adrian Johns; 9. 'In the even my wife read to me': women, reading and household life in the eighteenth century Naomi Tadmor; 10. From promotion to proscription: arrangements for reading in eighteenth-century libraries James Raven; 11. Provincial servants' reading in the late eighteenth century Jan Fergus; 12. Reconstructing the reader: prescriptions, texts and strategies in Anna Larpent's reading John Brewer; 13. Women, men and the reading of Vanity Fair Kate Flint; 14. A pulse of 124: Charles Dickens and a pathology of the mid-Victorian reading public Helen Small; Bibliography; Index.