Crusoe's Books: Readers in the Empire of Print, 1800-1918

This is a book about readers on the move in the age of Victorian empire. It examines the libraries and reading habits of five reading constituencies from the long nineteenth century: shipboard emigrants, Australian convicts, Scottish settlers, polar explorers, and troops in the First World War. What was the role of reading in extreme circumstances? How were new meanings made under strange skies? How was reading connected with mobile communities in an age of expansion? Uncovering a vast range of sources from the period, from diaries, periodicals, and literary culture, Bill Bell reveals some remarkable and unanticipated insights into the way that reading operated within and upon the British Empire for over a century.

Author: Bill Bell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 01/21/2022
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 8.80h x 6.00w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9780192894694
ISBN10: 0192894692
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Modern | 19th Century
- Literary Collections | General

About the Author

Bill Bell

Bill Bell is Professor of Bibliography at Cardiff University and Senior Research Fellow at The University of Goettingen. He has held visiting posts at the Universities of Canberra, Munich, Ottawa, and St John's College Oxford. He was the founder of the Edinburgh Centre for the History of the Book and is General Editor of The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland (4 volumes). His publications also include the co-authored Exploration, Writing and Publishing with John Murray, 1773-1859 (Chicago, 2015) and he served as editor of the OUP quarterly journal, The Library, the world's premier scholarly journal in bibliography.