Introduction: the order of reading; Part I Precursors; Chapter 1 Richards revisited; Chapter 2 New Criticism and the avoidance of reading; Part II Reader-response criticisms; Chapter 3 The inscribed reader: Jonathan Culler and structuralist poetics; Chapter 4 Literature in the reader: Stanley Fish and affective poetics; Chapter 5 The relation of the reader to daydreaming: Norman Holland and transactive criticism; Chapter 6 The peripatetic reader: Wolfgang Iser and the aesthetics of reception; In conclusion: reading reading;