The Reading Nation in the Romantic PeriodDuring the centuries when printed paper was the only means by which texts could be carried across time and distance, everyone engaged in politics, education, and literature believed that reading helped to shape the minds, attitudes, and actions of readers. William St Clair investigates how the national culture can be understood through a study of the books that were actually read. Centered on the romantic period in the English-speaking world, but ranging across the whole print era, St Clair's study reaches startling conclusions about the forces that determined how ideas were passed into wider society by way of print. From quantified information he provides on book prices, print runs, intellectual property, and readerships gathered from over fifty publishing and printing archives, St Clair offers a picture of the past very different from those presented by traditional approaches. |
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abridgements Advertisement anthologies Appendix 9 cont Arber Austen authors ballad versions Bible book clubs book industry booksellers Britain British canon Catalogue chapbook chapter cheap Childe Harold's Pilgrimage circulating libraries collection commercial copies costs cultural Don Juan economic Edinburgh eighteenth century England English example folio Frankenstein Galignani high monopoly period History Ibid intellectual property John Johnson later ledger Letters literary literature London Longman archives Lord Byron manufacturing manuscript Mary Shelley modern numbers offshore old-canon Oxford paper Percy Bysshe Shelley pirate plates plays poems Poetical poetry Poets print runs printed texts printer printer/publishers produced prose publication published Queen Mab Quoted readers readerships reading nation records regime reprinted retail romantic period Scotland Scott Scottish Second edition sell Shakespeare Shelley Shelley's shillings Society sold Southey stereotyped Strahan archives textual Third edition Thomas Three volumes Timperley titles trade tranches verse Victorian W. W. Greg Waverley novels William Wordsworth writing