The Edinburgh History of Reading

'This is the kind of survey that scholars have been needing since reading emerged as the subject of a new kind of history in the 1980s. Stretching from ancient China to modern Britain, these essays successfully convey the variety and vitality of our encounters with texts; written, printed and spoken.' Bill Sherman, Director of the Warburg Institute Reveals the experience of reading in many cultures and across the ages Bringing together the latest scholarship from all over the world on topics ranging from reading practices in ancient China to the workings of the twenty-first-century reading brain, the 4 volumes of the Edinburgh History of Reading demonstrate that reading is a deeply imbricated, socio-political practice, at once personal and public, defiant and obedient. It is often materially ephemeral, but it can also be emotionally and intellectually enduring. Early Readers presents a number of innovative ways through which we might capture or infer traces of readers in cultures where most evidence has been lost. It begins by investigating what a close analysis of extant texts from 6th-century BCE China can tell us about contemporary reading practices, explores the reading of medieval European women and their male medical practitioner counterparts, traces readers across New Spain, Peru, the Ottoman Empire and the Iberian world between 1500 and 1800, and ends with an analysis of the surprisingly enduring practice of reading aloud. Mary Hammond is Professor of English and Book History at the University of Southampton.