Re-Constructing the Book

Maureen Bell, Shirley Chew, Simon Eliot, Lynette Hunter

• Contents: Introduction: the material text, Maureen Bell; Why has Q4 Romeo and Juliet such an intelligent editor? Lynette Hunter; Marvell’s coy mistresses, Paul Hammond; Congreve and the integrity of the text, D.F. McKenzie; The economics of the 18th-century provincial book trade: the case of Ward and Chandler, C.Y. Ferdinand; Thomas Gray, David Hume and John Home’s Douglas, Roger Lonsdale; Texts in conversion: Coleridge’s Sonnets from Various Authors (1796), David Fairer; Reading the Brontës abroad: A study in transmission of Victorian novels in continental Europe, Inga-Stina Ewbank; Sir Walter, sex and the SoA, Simon Eliot; Making (pre-) history: Mycenae, Pausanias, Frazer, David Richards; Editing private papers: three examples from Dreiser, James L. W. West III; Coercive suggestion: rhetoric and community in revaluation, Martin Dodsworth; Re-reading Elizabeth Nowen, Hermione Lee; ’Drastic reductions’: partial disclosures and displaced authorities in Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat, Alistair Stead; ’Not undesirable’: J.M. Coetzee and the burdens of censorship, Peter D. McDonald; Prospero in Cyberspace, Martin Butler; Texts and worlds in Amitav Ghosh’s In An Antique Land, Shirley Chew; Congratulations, Christopher Ricks; Index.

’This state-of-the-art collection will interest all students of book history, material textuality and the sociology of the text. Ranging from Shakespeare to cyberspace, these essays by such leading scholars as James West, Hermione Lee, the late D. F. McKenzie and Christopher Ricks open fascinating perspectives on literary construction from the Renaissance to the present.’ George Bornstein, C.A. Patrides Professor of Literature, University of Michigan ’Experts in the field will welcome unreservedly this fine collection of essays by a distinguished group of scholars containing as it does studies of texts ranging from the seventeenth century to the present day and topics ranging from censorship to editorial practice ... the chronological and methodological span of the volume and the thoughtful provision of separate bibliographies for each essay, make this not only a superbly inspiring, but also an immensely convenient tool for the introduction of students to the burgeoning field of book history in its many guises.’ Elisabeth Leedham-Green, Cambridge University Library ’This collection of original, wide-ranging essays by eighteen leading scholars of the History of the Book journeys through nearly five hundred years of historic bookmaking, from the poetry of Shakespeare and Marvell to the fiction of Elizabeth Bowen and Amitav Ghosh. Under the contributors' lively scrutiny, a volume turns into an archaeological terrain, packed with silenced traces of its materialisation, of its coming-into-being; deciphering hints and clues, erasures and errors, the writers reveal how the vitality of texts, however familiar, can be refreshed by inspired thinking from a new perspective. Re-constructing the Book is an exciting display of learning and bibliophilia; in the very midst of the cyber-revolution, the contributors dazzlingly represent the continuing, satisfying and complex interconnectedness of a living, reading community today.’ Marina Warner, author of From the Be