In the last two decades, digital technologies have made it possible for anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to rapidly and inexpensively self-publish a book. Once a stigmatized niche activity, self-publishing has grown explosively. Hobbyists and professionals alike have produced millions of books, circulating them through e-readers and the web. What does this new flood of books mean for publishing, authors, and readers? Some lament the rise of self-publishing because it tramples the gates and gatekeepers who once reserved publication for those who met professional standards....
In the last two decades, digital technologies have made it possible for anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to rapidly and inexpensively...
In the nineteenth century, new image-making methods like steel engraving and lithography caused a surge in the publication of illustrated books in the United States. Yet even before the widespread use of these technologies, Americans had already established the illustrated book format as central to the nation's literary culture. In The Portrait and the Book, Megan Walsh argues that colonial-era author portraits, such as Benjamin Franklin's and Phillis Wheatley's frontispieces; political portraits that circulated during the debates over the Constitution, such as those of the Founders by...
In the nineteenth century, new image-making methods like steel engraving and lithography caused a surge in the publication of illustrated books in the...
Alphabetic letters are ubiquitous, multivalent, and largely ignored. Playful Letters reveals their important cultural contributions through Alphabetics--a new interpretive model for understanding artistic production that attends to the signifying interplay of the graphemic, phonemic, lexical, and material capacities of letters. A key period for examining this interplay is the century and a half after the invention of printing, with its unique media ecology of print, manuscript, sound, and image. Drawing on Shakespeare, anthropomorphic typography, figured letters, and Cyrillic...
Alphabetic letters are ubiquitous, multivalent, and largely ignored. Playful Letters reveals their important cultural contributions through Alp...
Examines the role that language played at the turn of the nineteenth century as a marker of one's identity. Focusing on six eccentric characters of the time, Tim Cassedy shows how each put language at the centre of their identities and lived out the possibilities of their era's linguistic ideas.
Examines the role that language played at the turn of the nineteenth century as a marker of one's identity. Focusing on six eccentric characters of th...