Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia

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Yale University Press, Oct 1, 2008 - Literary Criticism - 384 pages
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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

 

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Page xiii
For the same reason, in establishing a context I have tried to get back behind the standard secondary studies to their sources in the letters, diaries, memoirs, and journalism of the period, so that there too Romantic readers can have ...
Page 8
Church's letter-founding machine, which could cast up to 20,000 letters in a day as opposed to the maximum of 7,000 cast by hand, was not invented till 1822, and uniform cloth publishers' bindings were likewise a phenomenon of the 1820s ...
Page 16
During the vogue for the pretty gift-books known as ''annuals'' in the late 1820s, John Clare earned twenty guineas a sheet writing for the Forget-Me-Not (Letters, 121). But these new powers inevitably brought new burdens for authors as ...
Page 17
(Scott complained that even under this sensible compromise the publisher generally contrived ''to take the lion's share of the booty'' [Letters, 6:45]. And yet he invariably recommended shared profits as the best available arrangement.
Page 29
(''I detest a quarto,'' says Jane Austen in a letter.∑≤) As a rough-and-ready way of gauging the relative value of books in the period, it is instructive to look at newspaper advertisements for new books alongside advertisements for ...

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Romantic readers: the evidence of marginalia

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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
  
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