A history of reading and writing : in the western world / Martyn Lyons.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lyons, Martyn.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Books and reading--History.

Books and reading.

History.

Books and reading--Social aspects--History.

Books--History.

Books.

Writing--History.

Writing.

Printing--History.

Printing.

Written communication--History.

Written communication.

Books and reading--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

viii, 267 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Summary:

Martyn Lyons surveys the changing relationships enjoyed by men and women with the written word, from early times to the present day. He provides a highly-readable account of the social history of reading and writing, relating it to key historical moments such as the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

Offering a fresh history centred on the reactions and experiences of ordinary readers and writers, Lyons deals with key turning points that occurred throughout the centuries, such as the invention of the codex, the transition from scribal to print culture, the reading revolution and the industrialisation of the book.

Tracing the major historical developments across Europe and North America which revolutionised our relationship with texts, this book provides an engaging and invaluable overview of the history of scribal and print culture.

Contents:

1 What is the history of reading and writing? 1

2 Reading and writing in the ancient and medieval world 12

3 Was there a printing revolution? 26

4 Print and the Protestant Reformation 43

5 renaissance books and humanist readers 58

6 Print and popular culture 73

7 The rise of literacy in the early modern West, c. 1600-c. 1800 88

8 Censorship and the reading public in pre-revolutionary France 105

9 The reading fever, 1750-1830 119

10 The age of the mass reading public 137

11 New readers and reading cultures 153

12 The democratisation of writing, 1800 to the present 171

13 Readers and writers in the digital age 185.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

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

ISBN:

9780230001626

0230001629

9780230001619

0230001610

OCLC:

463239816