How to do things with books in Victorian Britain
By: Leah Price
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 350
ISBN-13: 9780691114170
Subjects: Books in literature; Books and reading in literature; Book industries and trade; History and criticism; Books and reading; Books; English fiction; History
Description: "How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap? Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading. Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Reader's block; title: Anthony Trollope and the repellent book; title: David Copperfield and the absorbent book; title: It-narrative and the book as agent; title: The book as burden : junk mail and religious tracts; title: The book as go-between : domestic servants and forced reading; title: The book as waste : Henry Mayhew and the fall of paper recycling.