Overview

Reveals the experience of reading in many cultures and across the ages Shows the experiences of ordinary readers in Scotland, Australasia, Russia, and ChinaExplores how digital media has transformed literary criticismPortrays everyday reading in artIncludes reading across national and cultural lines Common Readers casts a fascinating light on the literary experiences of ordinary people: miners in Scotland, churchgoers in Victorian London, workers in Czarist Russia, schoolgirls in rural Australia, farmers in Republican China, and forward to today's online book discussion groups. Chapters in this volume explore what they read, and how books changed their lives.

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9781474461887

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This excellent collection of essays adds substantially to our understanding of the reading practices of ordinary people in the past. Dealing with readers as diverse as C18th Scottish lead-miners, C20th Chinese peasants and C21st online fan communities, it is exceptionally wide-ranging. I highly recommend it.--Katie Halsey, University of Stirling Taken together, the four volumes of The Edinburgh History of Reading constitute a fascinating compendium of research on readers and reading. [...] The volumes successfully demonstrate the diversity of their subjects' encounters with texts of all kinds, and highlight the importance of reading as both shared cultural practice and intensely individual experience.--Katie Halsey, University of Stirling

Author Information

Jonathan Rose is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History at Drew University, USA. He is the author of Readers' Liberation (Oxford University Press, 2018), The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor (Yale University Press, 2014), which won the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Book Prize, and The Edwardian Temperament 1895-1919 (Ohio University Press, 1986). He is also the editor of The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation (University of Massachusetts Press, 2001) and co-editor of A Companion to the History of the Book (Blackwell, 2007) and British Literary Publishing Houses, 1820-1965 (Gale, 1991).

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