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
Our own assumptions about (not to say prejudices against) the practice of writing in books have tended to blind us to the value that marginalia once had and to unfit us for interpreting documents of this order. A study of such documents ...
Page 5
But the fact that many people believe and say a thing does not make it so; contemporary witnesses could be echoing one another, indulging in wishful thinking, or just reiterating the gossip and alarms of the day.
Page 10
The title pages of books published in the period often say simply, ''Sold by all booksellers.'' Advertisers conventionally but accurately used the formula ''printed for X and sold by all other booksellers, stationers, and news-carriers, ...
Page 14
John Sutherland also demonstrates that the statistics do not bear out the publishers' sense of apocalypse: ''the British book trade as a whole,'' he says, ''seems to have weathered the 1826 storm quite serenely'' (161).
Page 15
... and it opened the door— some would say, the floodgates—to other publishers, especially for works now o≈cially out of copyright. Under the new dispensation, authors gained important powers. They could, and in many cases still did, ...

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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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