The History of Reading: International Perspectives, C. 1500-1990

Bringing together research from avariety ofcountries and periods, this volume introduces readers to the diverse approaches used to recover the evidence of reading through history in different societies, and asks whether reading practices are always conditioned by specific local circumstances or whether broader patterns might emerge.

The International Polar Years (IPY) and the International Geophysical Year (IGY) represented a remarkable international collaborative scientific effort that was focused on, but not limited to, understanding the poles. These efforts demonstrated the consistency of scientific goals and methods across political boundaries. At the same time, they increased both knowledge and international tensions. This collection of essays explores the various scientific expeditions of the IPYs and the IGY, bringing together contributions from a variety of specialists. They offer overviews of the scientific progress achieved in each case, as well as the political, economic, and military factors that influenced these undertakings. Collectively, they provide new insights into the professionalization of scientific disciplines, national styles of scientific investigation and collaboration, scientific patronage, and the emergence of the global geosciences. .

SHAFQUAT TOWHEEDis Lecturer in English at the Open University, UK,and Co-Investigator on The Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 (RED) project. He is co-editor of The History of Reading: A Reader (Routledge, 2010) and The History of Reading, Vol.3: Methods, Strategies, Tactics (Palgrave, 2011), and editor of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four (Broadview, 2010).

W.R. OWENS is Professor of English Literature at The Open University, UK. He has published widely on John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe, and is Director of the Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 (RED) project. His most recent publication is an edition of the 1611 text of The Gospels for Oxford World's Classics (2011).

List of Figures

List of Tables

Foreword; S.Eliot

Acknowledgements

Notes on Contributors

Introduction; S.Towheed&W. R.Owens

PART I: READERS IN THE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN WORLD

Speaking of Reading and Reading the Evidence: Allusions to Literacy in the Oral Tradition of the Middle English Verse Romances; J.Ford

Modes of Bible Reading in Early Modern England; W.R.Owens

PART II: READERS IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND ROMANTIC WORLD

Weeping for Werther: Suicide, Sympathy and the Reading Revolution in Early America; R.Bell

Reconstructing Reading Vogues in the Old South: Borrowings from the Charleston Library Society, 1811-1817; I.Lehuu

PART III: READERS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY

Devouring Uncle Tom's Cabin: Antebellum 'Common' Readers; B.Hochman

Reading in Polish and National Identity in Nineteenth-century Silesia; I.Dobosiewicz &L.Piasecka

Reading Science: Evidence from the Career of Edwin Gilpin, Mining Engineer; L.J.Duggan & B.H.MacDonald

Reading in an Age of Censorship: The Case of Catholic Germany, 1800-1914; J.T. Zalar

PART IV: READERS IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY

Understanding Children as Readers: Librarians' Anecdotes and Surveys in the United States from 1890 to 1930; K.McDowell

Letters to a Daughter: An Archive of Middle-Class Reading in New Zealand, c.1872-1932'; S.Liebich

Books Behind Bars: Mahatma Gandhi's Community of Captive Readers; I.Desai

Remembering Reading: Memory, Books, and Reading in South Africa's Apartheid Prisons, 1956-60; A.L.Dick

Further Reading and Weblinks

Index