History of Reading

Shafquat Towheed is Lecturer in English at The Open University, where he is also Project Supervisor for The Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 (RED). He is the editor of The Correspondence of Edith Wharton and Macmillan, 1901-1930 (2007), of New Readings in the Literature of British India, c.1780-1947 (2007).Rosalind Crone is Lecturer in History at the Open University, where she is Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project, The Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 (RED). She has published widely on popular culture, crime and literacy in the nineteenth-century, and is co-editor of New Perspectives in British Cultural History (2007).Katie Halsey is lecturer at the University of Stirling. She has published several articles on nineteenth-century literary culture, is currently co-editing a collection of essays on the subject of conversation in the long eighteenth century, and writing a monograph about Jane Austen’s readers.

• Section 1: Defining the Field: What is the History of Reading? Section 2: Theorising the Reader Section 3: Researching and Using Literacy Section 4: Reading the Masses Section 5: Reading Communities Section 6: Individual Readers Section 7: New Directions and Methods in the History of Reading

'an extremely intelligent guide to the history of reading...The editors accurately map the new terrain of reading history, setting a variety of global case studies within the theoretical approaches so far developed. Their lively prose and judicious selections will attract students and scholars alike to the field.'- Shef Rogers, Editor of 'Script and Print''This collection will appeal to students and scholars of history, literature, and cultural studies and is essential for specialists in the history of reading.' - Bill Bell, Director of the Centre for the History of the Book, The University of Edinburgh'...perfectly designed for university teachers and their students.' - Library & Information History