| How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain Contributor(s): Price, Leah (Author) |
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ISBN: 069111417X ISBN-13: 9780691114170 Publisher: Princeton University Press OUR PRICE: $36.63 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: April 2012 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Books & Reading - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh - History | Modern - 19th Century |
| Dewey: 028.909 |
| LCCN: 2011037436 |
| Physical Information: 1.2" H x 6.5" W x 9.3" (1.40 lbs) 360 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles - Chronological Period - 19th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap? Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontės, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading. Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond. |