Romantic readers : the evidence of marginalia / H.J. Jackson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jackson, H. J.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Books and reading--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Books and reading.

Great Britain.

History.

Marginalia.

Publishers and publishing--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Publishers and publishing.

Romanticism--Great Britain.

Romanticism.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--19th century.

Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

xvii, 366 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2005]

Summary:

When readers jot down notes in their books, they reveal something of themselves--"what they believe, what amuses or annoys them, what they have read before. But a close examination of marginalia also discloses diverse and fascinating details about the time in which they are written. This book explores reading practices in the Romantic Age through an analysis of some 2,000 books annotated by British readers between 1790 and 1830. This period experienced a great increase in readership and a boom in publishing. H. J. Jackson shows how readers used their books for work, for socializing, and for leaving messages to posterity. She draws on the annotations of Blake, Coleridge, Keats, and other celebrates as well as those of little known and unknown writers to discover how people were reading and what this can tell us about literature, social history, and the history of the book.

Contents:

Mundane marginalia

Socializing with books

Custodians to posterity

The reading mind.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-352) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0300107854

OCLC:

56922500