Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia

Front Cover
Yale University Press, Oct 1, 2008 - Literary Criticism - 384 pages
0 Reviews
Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified

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 celebrities 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.

From inside the book

 

Results 1-5 of 46

Page xvii
Though I could have enriched this book, particularly in the Introduction, with scores of references to it, I was pleased to find that the two studies, relying on di√erent kinds of documentary evidence, were broadly compatible and ...
Page 5
Historians find support for the idea of a new mass market in population statistics and literacy rates. Between 1780 and 1830 the population of Great Britain had doubled, from approximately 7 to 14 millions, with the greatest national ...
Page 27
... and cheap books diminished the profits and prestige of the respectable au- thor: ''whilst cheap books find a Consumption there will ever be poor ignorant authors to write them and low mercenary booksellers to publish them.
Page 32
But publishers had no exclusive legal claim to the texts themselves and had to find other ways of making their reprint editions more desirable than anyone else's. So when a consortium of London publishers commissioned lives of the best ...
Page 40
''Literary'' magazines, obliged to find new matter every month, were perhaps the most desperate and least scrupulous of all. (Readers' notes incidentally achieved some exposure this way, as when the European Magazine of May 1790 ...

Where's the rest of this book?

What people are saying - Write a review

Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified

Romantic readers: the evidence of marginalia

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

In this follow-up to her magisterial Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books , Jackson (English, Univ. of Toronto) focuses on annotations that were made in books during the Romantic Age--that exciting ... Read full review

Selected pages

Contents

The Reading Environment
1
1 Mundane Marginalia
60
2 Socializing with Books
121
3 Custodians to Posterity
198
4 The Reading Mind
249
Conclusion
299
Notes
307
Bibliography of Books with Manuscript Notes
325
Bibliography of Secondary Sources
340
Index
353
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia
H. J. Jackson
Limited preview - 2008
Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia
H. J. Jackson
No preview available - 2005

Common terms and phrases

added annotated appear attention Bibliomania Blake British Library called catalogue chapter circulating Coleridge Coleridge’s collection common contains copy critical described di√erent edition English especially evidence example experience express extracts fact find first friends give hand Hargrave idea illustration included instance interest John Keats kind Lady later least less Letters Library lines literary lives London manuscript marginalia margins marks matter means method mind natural notes novels observes once opinions original owner particular passages perhaps period poems political position practice present printed probably published readers reading reason record reference remarks response Romantic says seems shillings social Society Thelwall thing thought tion took usually volumes Walpole whole writing written wrote

About the author (2008)

H. J. Jackson is a professor, Department of English, University of Toronto. She has published extensively on Romantic literature, and her book Marginalia was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award in literarty criticism.

Bibliographic information

QR code for Romantic Readers
TitleRomantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia
AuthorH. J. Jackson
Editionillustrated, annotated
PublisherYale University Press, 2008
ISBN0300129491, 9780300129496
Length384 pages
Subjects › 

Literary Criticism / General
  
Export CitationBiBTeX EndNote RefMan