How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain
1st Edition
Published on 9. April 2012
360 pages
978-1-4008-4218-6 (ISBN)
Description
How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap?
Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading.
Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.
Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading.
Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.
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10/2013
Princeton University Press
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04/2012
Princeton University Press
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Person
Leah Price is professor of English at Harvard University. She is the author of The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel.
Content
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Reader's Block 19
Part I: Selfish Fictions
Chapter Two: Anthony Trollope and the Repellent Book 45
Chapter Three: David Copperfield and the Absorbent Book 72
Chapter Four: It-Narrative and the Book as Agent 107
Part II: Bookish Transactions
Chapter Five: The Book as Burden: Junk Mail and Religious Tracts 139
Chapter Six: The Book as Go-Between: Domestic Servants and Forced Reading 175
Chapter Seven: The Book as Waste: Henry Mayhew and the Fall of Paper Recycling 219
Conclusion 258
Notes 263
Works Cited 293
Index 327
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Reader's Block 19
Part I: Selfish Fictions
Chapter Two: Anthony Trollope and the Repellent Book 45
Chapter Three: David Copperfield and the Absorbent Book 72
Chapter Four: It-Narrative and the Book as Agent 107
Part II: Bookish Transactions
Chapter Five: The Book as Burden: Junk Mail and Religious Tracts 139
Chapter Six: The Book as Go-Between: Domestic Servants and Forced Reading 175
Chapter Seven: The Book as Waste: Henry Mayhew and the Fall of Paper Recycling 219
Conclusion 258
Notes 263
Works Cited 293
Index 327
