Richardson explores how a powerful culture of writing was created in late medieval London, even though initially few inhabitants could actually write themselves. Whilst previous studies have tended to focus on middle-class literary reading patterns, this study examines writing skills separately both from reading skills and from literature.

The twelve essays in this edited collection examine the experience of reading, from the late medieval period to the twentieth century. Central to the theme of the book is the role of materiality: how the physical object - book, manuscript, libretto - affects the experience of the person reading it.

This is the first critical study of Romantic-era annotation or marginalia - footnotes, endnotes, glossaries - which formed a vital site of literary interaction.

Wordsworth's process of revision, his organization of poetic volumes and his supplementary writings are often seen as distinct from his poetic composition. Bates asserts that an analysis of these supplementary writings and paratexts are necessary to a full understanding of Wordsworth's poetry.

The short story was a commercial phenomenon which took off in the late nineteenth century and lasted through to the rise of television and film. Baldwin uses a wide variety of sources to show how economic factors helped to dictate how and what a wide variety of authors wrote.

For socialists at the turn of the last century, reading was a radical act. This interdisciplinary study looks at how American socialists used literacy in the struggle against capitalism.

Through an examination of her complete works and public response to them, Robertson gauges the extent of Inchbald's reputation as the dignified Mrs Inchbald, as well as providing a clear sense of what it meant to be a female Romantic writer.

A collection of essays that offer a methodological framework for the history of reading. Focusing on a specific historical moment, it gathers statistics about such issues as literacy rates, library subscriptions, publication and sales figures, and print runs to answer questions about what was being read and by whom in a particular place and time.

The inherent 'metropolitanism' of writing for a Romantic-era periodical is here explored through the Elia articles that Charles Lamb wrote for the London Magazine.

In its time, the Quarterly Review was thought to closely reflect government policy, however, the essays in this volume reveal that it was inconsistent in its support of government positions and reflected disagreement over a broad range of religious, economic and political issues.