The complexity of print culture in Britain between the seventeenth and nineteenth century is investigated in these wide-ranging articles. The essays collected here offer examinations of bibliographical matters, publishing practices, the illustration of texts in a variety of engraved media, little studied print culture genres, the critical and editorial fortunes of individual works, and the significance of the complex interrelationships that authors entertained with booksellers, publishers, and designers. They investigate how all these relationships affected the production of print commodities and how all the agents involved in the making of books contributed to the cultural literacy of readers and the formation of a canon of literary texts. Specific topics include a bibliographical study of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and its editions from its first publication to the present day; the illustrations of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and the ways in which the interpretive matrices of book illustration conditioned the afterlife and reception of Bunyan's work; the almanac and the subscription edition; publishing history, collecting, reading, and textual editing, especially of Robert Burns's poems and James Thomson's The Seasons; the "printing for the author" practice; the illustrated and material existence of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley novels, and the Victorian periodical, The Athenaeum. Sandro Jung is Research Professor of Early Modern British Literature and Director of the Centre for the Study of Text and Print Culture at Ghent University. Contributors: Gerard Carruthers, Nathalie Colle-Bak, Marysa Demoor, Alan Downie, Peter Garside, Sandro Jung, Brian Maidment, Laura L. Runge.
Reviews
An elegant, intense and ambitious snapshot of current research in the history of printing. * RARE BOOKS NEWSLETTER *
Shows how the established methodologies of the history of the book can combine fruitfully with tools derived from textual and illustration studies. * JOURNAL OF THE EDINBURGH BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY *



Book Information
ISBN 9781843843436
Author Sandro Jung
Format Hardback
Page Count 239
Imprint D.S. Brewer
Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Weight(grams) 564g