Privacy and print
Subtitle: reading and writing in seventeenth-century England
By: Cecile M. Jagodzinski.
Publisher: University Press of Virginia
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 218
Subjects: English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism.; Protestantism and literature -- History -- 17th century.; Authors and readers -- England -- History -- 17th century.; Books and reading -- England -- History -- 17th century.; Printing -- England -- History -- 17th century.; Literacy -- England -- History -- 17th century.; Privacy -- England -- History -- 17th century.; Authorship -- History -- 17th century.; Self in literature.; England -- Intellectual life -- 17th century.
Description: A midst the other religious, political, and technological changes in seventeenth-century England, the ready availability of printed books was the most significant sign of the disappearance of old ways of thinking. The ability to read granted new independence as the interactions among reader, text, and author moved from the public forums of church and court to the privacy and solitude of the home.

Privacy and Print proposes that the emergence of the concept of privacy as a personal right, as the very core of individuality, is connected in a complex fashion with the history of reading. Cecile M. Jagodzinski attempts to recover the experience of readers past by examining representations of reading and readers (especially women) in five genres of seventeenth-century literature: devotional books, conversion narratives, personal letters, drama, and the novel.

The discussion ranges from the published letters of Charles I and John Donne to Aphra Behn's Love-Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister and Margaret Cavendish's literary activities.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-214) and index.
Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1996.