My dissertation investigates the role of intellectual weekly periodicals such as the Nation and Athenaeum and the New Statesman as mediators between the book trade and the audience for so-called serious books. The weeklies offer a productive lens through which to examine the labels commonly applied to early twentieth-century intellectual culture. The rise of a mass reading public and the proliferation of print in this period necessitated cultural labels with a sorting function: books, periodicals, and people were designated as "highbrow," "middlebrow," "modernist," "Georgian," "Bloomsbury." Through an analysis of the intellectual weeklies, a periodical genre explicitly devoted to the appraisal of intellectual culture, I argue for a critical revaluation of cultural labels as they were used in the early twentieth century and as they have been adopted in later scholarship. Using quantitative methodologies influenced by book history, Chapter One argues that the weeklies' literary content was characterized by the periodicals' reciprocal relationship with the book trade: publishers were the weeklies' most significant advertisers, and the weeklies, in turn, communicated information about new books to their book-interested readers. Through an analysis of two series of articles published in the Nation and Athenaeum in the mid-1920s, Chapter Two considers the weeklies' negotiation of their dual roles as forums for public debate about intellectual culture and advertising partners with the book trade. Chapter Three analyzes the book review itself, which found its evaluative function called into question as the number of books and periodicals multiplied rapidly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapter Four examines the vituperative discourse directed at the intellectual weeklies by the Cambridge quarterly Scrutiny. These attacks reveal not only Scrutiny's disappointment with the specific weeklies of its day but also the paramount cultural responsibility it ascribed to the intellectual weeklies as a genre. By considering the intellectual weeklies' relationships with the book trade, the book-buying public, reviewing, and other intellectual periodicals, my dissertation emphasizes the importance of the intellectual weeklies within the cultural field of interwar Britain and argues for a reconsideration of their role in the production and labeling of intellectual culture during this period.

During the early part of the eighteenth century, the growth of the book trades depended upon a series of technological advances. With each innovation, new forms of printed material, such as newspapers, essays, novels, and biographies became available and in many cases, extremely popular. Cultural perceptions of popularity among the growing body of readers, however, immediately relegated most of these new forms to a subaltern status. As the new readers became new writers, subcultures developed around each new form, which then changed the perceived social status of both the members of the subculture and the textual form. Even though printed materials has often been seen as simple commodities, reading subcultures of the eighteenth century had the power to redefine the social meaning of a given textual form and they often did so because in changing the status of the text they could also alter their own status. The members of these various subcultures used their associated textual form as a means to redefine their own identity as well as the social status of the text itself. Each of the varieties of publications gained or lost social status based upon their association with particular subcultures. In this way, the formation of textual subcultures provided a conduit through which individuals could create, maintain, and renegotiate personal identity. By examining the creation of specific textual subcultures in conjunction with shifts in technology, my work offers a new, empirically supported model for understanding the precise relationship between reading and identity formation at the moment when modern, market-based culture came into existence. Challenging the interpretive tradition established by Ian Watt in the 1950s, I formulate a dynamic model of identity creation based upon the perception of technological membership. Because Watt's focus, as well as those of many succeeding critics, was upon a single genre rather than upon individuals' interaction with new print mediums, the current understanding of eighteenth-century identity is a progressively static model of reading which cannot be applied beyond that specific historical period. My work directly challenges current ideas of subculture formation and the inherent bonds between members by establishing how writers negotiated their own self-perceptions through authorial participation and, ultimately, defined their own social status. By determining how people created their own cultural identities through associations with forms of printed material and evolving technologies, my work reconsiders previous interpretations of literary history based upon economic class formation and prompts re-evaluations of basic critical literary terms, such as `literature,' `popular,' and `aesthetic worth.' With a new model for understanding identity formation in market culture, my research offers models extending beyond the eighteenth century and informing current debates about textual cultures. In recent years, the mass digitization of printed material has prompted announcements of both the death of the book and a decrease in mass literacy; yet, online communication, particularly social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, has grown dramatically. Computer technology, in this respect, is no more than another phase of printing innovations, which itself is fostering the creation of new reading subcultures.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine alternative forms of media developed in the USA between the 1940's and 1980's, which were proposed in order to come to terms with the faults associated with printed text and the paper medium. The examination is concentrated on relevant literature on the media and not the actual media themselves. The questions asked were:1. Why were alternative forms of media presented for replacing printed text and what were the aims of those wanting to replace it?2. What were these alternative forms of media and how did they compare with printed text with regard to storing and disseminating text? The study concentrates on two aspects of the different media: their ability to store and disseminate text. Due to the increasing amount of scientific research results in the form of printed text the research community experienced growing problems with text dissemination and recall. These problems caused delays in research procedures hampering scientific development. Due to the increasing importance of scientific research, not least its role in international conflicts, a solution to these problems was regarded as being of the utmost importance. The reasons behind wanting to replace printed text were to alleviate problems of distribution, recall and storage. Alternative media were developed with the hope of coming to terms with one or more of these problems. The study has found that media development has partly solved these problems but that new or different media are not completely problem free. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This thesis examines reading habits in Scotland between circa 1750 and 1820, a subject surprisingly little studied by historians before, given the backdrop of the Enlightenment, and traditional ideas about Scottish education and literacy. From a methodological viewpoint, reading as an activity at this time is often little recorded, frequently invisible in surviving historical records. Nevertheless, enough evidence exists for it to be studied analytically, using individual case studies alongside larger data sets, and varied records such as contemporary accounts and later memoirs, library catalogues and borrowing registers, and evidence for book ownership, such as after-death inventories and records of booksellers. To aid the analysis, a three-part subject classification system is introduced in this thesis to differentiate between different categories of reading - religious, entertainment and improvement - and to facilitate comparisons between individual examples of reading. Successive chapters explore how opportunities for reading evolved, how Scots fitted reading into their lives, what they chose to read, their reasons for reading and styles of reading, and book ownership and its relationship to reading. Each of these chapters explores a particular aspect of reading habits in more detail than has been done before. The final concluding chapter collates the evidence to explore the wider question of change over time. In particular, it argues for the growth of reading, a dramatic change in the subjects people chose to read - specifically the growth of improvement and self-education reading - and a marked permeation of reading throughout Scottish society by the end of the period, not being confined to the leisured classes. In addition, distinctive aspects of Scottish reading during this period are highlighted and discussed, and Scotland compared with England. Overall, the importance of reading to Scottish people during this period is clear, providing a valuable insight into Scottish minds and attitudes two centuries ago.

The purpose of my thesis project, A View of Affect has been two fold: to engage closely with an early modern book, and to experiment with the idea that self-examination as a legitimate way to gain knowledge about the body. Working with Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, (1621) has opened to view the extensive constellation of ideas that were part of the philosophical universe of the time. I engaged with the Anatomy of Melancholy by immersing myself in the prose, responding to Burton's writing with my own writing. I also studied and made drawings from early modern anatomical illustrations, and I drew shapes found in nature that seemed analogous to shapes in the body. All the while, I relied firmly on my own observations. The shapes found in nature, and the line quality in the early modern prints influenced my drawings, but I only drew what I saw. A View of Affect is not a historical model, but I did fully embrace Burton's belief in the importance of direct observation. The purpose of my treatise on the how emotions exist and function in the body is not to specify what is there for others, but to encourage readers to look carefully at their own internal life.

This thesis examines the sustainability of fifteenth-century manuscripts. It analyses the durability of manuscripts, and the ways in which people recycled and reused their books. During the long fifteenth-century (here, 1375-1530), book production in England flourished, driven by increased demand for books. Yet while the fast-developing commercial book trade produced new books in great quantity, significantly, older books were also sustained, recycled and reused. Although there is awareness within medieval scholarship of recycled manuscript components, such as flyleaves, no sustained study has yet been undertaken into recycled and reused materials in fifteenth-century manuscripts, or into book production's practices and processes of reuse. In addition, previous book history studies of recycling have focused on the book material reuse that followed the Dissolution. By contrast, this study offers a broader exploration of sustainable practices in fifteenth-century manuscript culture, as well as in-depth analysis of manuscript examples, to argue that book producers made and reused books in sustainable ways. The introduction outlines key concepts and relevant scholarship, such as studies that follow the material turn, and ecocriticism. The four chapters that follow address sustainability from different angles, focusing primarily on the evidence both in and written on books themselves. Chapter 1 explores the craftsmanship of parchment- making through contemporary recipes and physical evidence in manuscripts. Chapter 2 presents case studies of parchment reused sustainably in books, as off-cuts, quire guards, flyleaves, pastedowns, limp covers, and palimpsests. Chapter 3 surveys spaces reclaimed in books for opportunistic mark-making, in the form of doodles, jottings, and short verses. Chapter 4 presents three surveys of second-hand books and the inscriptions written onto their leaves. A conclusion draws together the findings. This thesis augments and nuances current scholarship by arguing that fifteenth-century reuse and recycling of book materials were customary aspects of book production and symptomatic of more widespread sustainability in manuscript culture.

No description available.

This is a study of the Parisian Latin book industry in the first four decades of the sixteenth century. It challenges the assumption that the Reformation brought about a profound change in the European print world. Luther's engagement with a mass audience is believed to have led to an increase in the number of vernacular publications produced by printers throughout Europe. This was not the case in Paris. Parisian booksellers traded on their established expertise with certain genres, such as theological texts, educational books, and works by classical authors, to maximise their readership both in Paris and farther afield. Working in close proximity inspired the Parisian bookmen to unity and collaboration rather than enmity and direct competition. When printers, booksellers and publishers collaborated they were able to undertake bigger and riskier projects. Such projects might have involved testing new markets or technologies (such as Greek or music printing), or simply producing a book which required a high capital investment. The familial unity extended to the widows of printers, some of whom were able to capitalise on this and build substantial businesses of their own. This high level of collaboration and the continued focus on the established Latin market give the Parisian book world its very specific character. It also helped Paris build an international reputation for high-quality books.

Afhandlingen handler om bøger og litteratur. Nærmere bestemt handler den om begrebet det litterære værk, som inden for litteraturvidenskaben er en problematisk størrelse. Formålet er at udfordre og i sidste instans omdefinere litteraturanalysens genstand og selve litteraturens centrum. Når vi læser et værk, sker det altid via et medie - oftest en bog trykt på papir - og denne fysiske genstand udgør også en del af vores læseoplevelse. Afhandlingen forsøger at syntetisere disciplinerne boghistorie og litteraturteori og opstille en metode for inddragelse af bogens materialitet i litteraturanalysen. På denne måde opnås en bedre forståelse af, hvad der gør litteratur til litteratur.

In the mid-nineteenth century, when organizations such as the Early English Text Society began making an increasing variety of medieval texts accessible to Victorian readers, the "everyday life" of the past became an important subject of historiography. For many of William Morris's contemporaries, this project of social history and textual recovery provided welcome evidence to support either narratives of nostalgia for an ordered past or a comforting liberal sense of progress; for Morris himself, however, the everyday life of the medieval past offered an array of radical possibilities for creative adaptation. Morris's broad reading in newly recovered medieval texts, his library of manuscripts and woodcut books, and his personal experience of medieval domestic architecture were more instrumental in developing his sense of the past than were such artefacts of high culture as the great cathedrals and lavishly illustrated manuscripts, since it was through the surviving items of everyday use that Morris could best approach the creative lives of ordinary medieval men and women. For William Morris, the everyday medieval "art of the people" was collaborative, de-centralizing, and devoted to process rather than to the attainment of perfection. Morris consistently works to strip ancient texts of their veneer of authority, resisting the notion of the rare book as an object of cultural mystery and as a commodity. His response to the art of the past is a radical process, in which reading is not mere "poaching" on the hegemonic territory of capital and cultural authority, but an immersive activity in which any reader can be intimately and actively engaged with the artefact from the earliest moment of its production. Such active reception, however, as diverse and fallible as the individuals who practice it, requires in turn an ongoing creativity in the form of adaptations of, and even collaboration with, the past. Morris's theory of creative adaptation was consequently itself not static, and this dissertation traces its evolution over Morris's career. In his early poetry, Morris reveals his sense of the limitations of the historical record as his characters grasp simultaneously at fantasies and physical objects to make sense of the crises in which they find themselves, suggesting the incomplete and unstable circumstances of textual reception itself. In the socialist lectures and fiction of the 1880s, Morris makes use of surviving and imagined fragments of medieval material culture and domestic architecture to describe an aesthetic that can embrace creative diversity, co-operation, and even imperfection across historical periods. In the works produced by his Kelmscott Press, the material book itself becomes a collaborative site for artists, illustrators, and editors to work out the active reception and dissemination of the popular reading of the past. Finally, in the romances of the 1890s, Morris describes a diversity of possible social geographies, ultimately articulating a vision of the romance genre itself as a popular art, equally capable of transformation over time as are the artefacts of everyday life that Morris creatively employs in his fictions throughout his career.