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.

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Page 17
In 1796, for instance, he was taken with a scheme of Count Rumford's (probably his ideas about poor relief in Bavaria) and o√ered his publisher Joseph Cottle a pamphlet adapting that scheme as an urban project for Bristol.
Page 19
He probably carried newspapers and periodicals. He may have had a sideline in tobacco.≥∏ And he was the author of a pamphlet about circulating libraries, a poem for children called The Battle of the Boys and the Flies, ...
Page 44
... the stereotype is demonstrably unfair—Kauf- man for instance proves that a very small part of the stock of most of these places consisted of escapist fiction—and probably tells us more about middle-class anxiety than anything else, ...
Page 63
Besides such routine use, I note a few special cases in the collections of the British Library, special because they were tailored to individuals and happen to have survived, but probably common enough in their kind at the time.
Page 64
My final example in this section is another instance of shared use, probably again within a family. The owner having acquired James Lee's Introduction to Botany (1806) as a student at Oxford later adapted it for ''Betsy,'' composing ...

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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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