David A. Brewer – författare

Introduces readers to the history of books in Britain—their significance, influence, and current and future status Presented as a comprehensive, up-to-date narrative, The Book in Britain: A Historical Introduction explores the impact of books, manuscripts, and other kinds of material texts on the cultures and societies of the British Isles. The text clearly explains the technicalities of printing and publishing and discusses the formal elements of books and manuscripts, which are necessary to facilitate an understanding of that impact. This collaboratively authored narrative history combines the knowledge and expertise of five scholars who seek to answer questions such as: How does the material form of a text affect its meaning? How do books shape political and religious movements? How have the economics of the book trade and copyright shaped the literary canon? Who has been included in and excluded from the world of books, and why?The Book in Britain: A Historical Introduction will appeal to all scholars, students, and historians interested in the written word and its continued production and presentation.

The Afterlife of Character, 1726-1825 reconstructs how eighteenth-century British readers invented further adventures for beloved characters, including Gulliver, Falstaff, Pamela, and Tristram Shandy. Far from being close-ended and self-contained, the novels and plays in which these characters first appeared were treated by many as merely a starting point, a collective reference perpetually inviting augmentation through an astonishing wealth of unauthorized sequels. Characters became an inexhaustible form of common property, despite their patent authorship. Readers endowed them with value, knowing all the while that others were doing the same and so were collectively forging a new mode of virtual community.By tracing these practices, David A. Brewer shows how the literary canon emerged as much "from below" as out of any of the institutions that have been credited with their invention. Indeed, he reveals the astonishing degree to which authors had to cajole readers into granting them authority over their own creations, authority that seems self-evident to a modern audience.In its innovative methodology and its unprecedented attention to the productive interplay between the audience, the book as a material artifact, and the text as an immaterial entity, The Afterlife of Character, 1726-1825 offers a compelling new approach to eighteenth-century studies, the history of the book, and the very idea of character itself.

A selection of the most exciting current work in eighteenth-century studies.Focusing on the fraught ways in which communities are defined, volume 51 of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture showcases groundbreaking research in all of the disciplines that constitute eighteenth-century studies. An article by Aaron Santesso and David Rosen intervenes in the current debates over "critique" by excavating a theory of ethical reading embedded in liberalism. In a similar mode, Jesslyn Whittell reads Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno as a "stuplime" forerunner to contemporary experimental poetry.Considering communities that emerge around artworks, Aaron Gabriel Montalvo examines Joseph Highmore's Pamela paintings for the ways in which they inculcated new forms of moral spectatorship, while Stacey Jocoy shows how Robert Burns's ballad collections manipulated both tunes and lyrics in order to fashion a new vision of Scottish culture.Renee Bryzik finds that asymmetrical friendships in eighteenth-century novels helped unravel ideological prejudices shaped by settler colonialism. Nathan D. Brown presents a history of sweetness that goes beyond Caribbean plantations by reassessing the hopes placed upon maple sugar. Meanwhile, Dario Galvão argues that Buffon distinguished humans from animals by virtue of the former's capacity for domination, and Noel Chevalier focuses on the ways in which pirates served as monstrous stand-ins for commercial corruption.This volume of SECC also includes contributions from Li Qi Peh, Maximillian E. Novak, and Judith Stuchiner that explore Daniel Defoe's thinking about individualism, community, and religious instruction. The volume concludes with a cluster of short essays responding to the methodological challenges posed by Daniel O'Quinn's Engaging the Ottoman Empire.Contributors: Nathan D. Brown, Renee Bryzik, Katherine Calvin, Noel Chevalier, Zirwat Chowdhury, Ashley L. Cohen, Angelina Del Balzo, Lynn Festa, Douglas Fordham, Dario Galvão, Stacey Jocoy, Aaron Gabriel Montalvo, Maximillian E. Novak, Daniel O'Quinn, Li Qi Peh, David Rosen, Aaron Santesso, Judith Stuchiner, Charlotte Sussman, Jesslyn Whittell