Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia
H. J. Jackson
Abstract
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. The book shows how readers used their books for work, for socializing, and for leaving m ... More
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. The book shows how readers used their books for work, for socializing, and for leaving messages to posterity. It 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.
Keywords:
marginalia,
Romantic Age,
Britain,
readership,
publishing,
Blake,
Coleridge,
Keats,
social history,
literature
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2005 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780300107852 |
Published to Yale Scholarship Online: October 2013 |
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300107852.001.0001 |