the nature and history of reading
On Thursday, 9/16, we'll discuss "First Steps Toward a History of Reading," by Robert Darnton, and "Procuring Books and Consuming Texts: The Reading Experience of a Sheffield Apprentice, 1798," by Stephen Colclough.
Histories of Writing, Reading, and Publishing
This is the course website for "Histories of Writing, Reading, and Publishing," a course taught by Dr. Williams in Fall 2004 at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Links
- Syllabus (PDF)
- Online Discussion Schedule
- Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing
- the nature and history of authorship
- the meaning of "ur"
- reconsidering darnton and others
- online discussion sign-up sheet
3 Comments:
Kurt Kennedy
#1) Consider the institution of the "reading club" introduced on page 169 of Darnton's essay, "First Steps Toward a History of Reading." What kinds of factors/trends caused institutions such as this to arise(amount of people taking part in literacy, socio-economics, etc.)? What implications does this institution have on the view of literacy practice at that time? What does this institution suggest, directly or inadvertantly, about the roles of 'reader' & 'writer'? Does this examination of the roles of reader & writer, in the context of the "reading club," have any bearing on the content of the texts at that time?
#2)"Procuring Books and Consuming Texts," by Stephen Colclough is a study of the diary transcriptions of Joseph Hunter. Hunter's diary is a record of his active history with literacy. How did his involvement with a reading community contribute to his overall literacy practice? What were other "literacy" communities he was a part of? How did they affect his literacy practice? In what ways did he practice literacy more privately? How did this affect his reading practices? In what ways did the interaction of his private & communal literacy practices add value to his continued involvement with literacy in general?
Emily L.
The ideas of both subscription libraries (sort of a pooling of financial resources so that many people could share the purchase of many volumes) and censorship by libraries are so totally foreign to us in the modern U.S., where the nature of (public) libraries as free and resolutely anti-censorship are central to to our understanding of public access to information. Joseph Hunter's reading experiences (and, I should point out here, that the fellow was fifteen when he wrote this journal. Does the relative priviledge of access to books at that time have something to do with how serious a reader he was at such a young age? If a person of that age came up to me at my library and asked me to purchase for the collection a series of travel monologues, histories, and political tracts I'd probably have an elation heart attack) were clearly shaped by his membership in the libraries, the literary habits of his family, and his guardian's influence.
"Through the process of nominating texts for inclusion, the subscription library encouraged the public discussion of texts and the use of the periodicals as a measure of quality, or indication of the contents, of a text. The system of nominations was democratic, but its purpose was to negotiate difference." (Colclough 33)
Although at first the removal of the "jacobinical" volume from the subscription library seems like censorship, it is at least self-imposed as the members of the library voted it out. That the members were so involved in the selection of materials for the library (of course, they were paying for it...) is interesting, and probably stimulated Hunter's wide range of reading in that the merits of certain materials were presented to him through periodicals advertising them, through discussion, and through the records of that which the library had voted to purchase.
Thomas’s answers to Kurt’s Questions:
The emergence and multiplication of reading clubs can be attributed to a number of factors. An increase in literacy certainly contributed to the development of reading clubs, but it is doubtful that expanded literacy would have developed had it not been for the advances in printing that allowed for mass production at cost-effective levels. But as Colclough points out, to even the middle-class person, books were still relatively expensive. Therefore, reading clubs provided an affordable means for middle-class readers to read a variety of texts. This, to me, seems to be the primary explanation of the proliferation reading clubs. The pure number of books to choose from also provided a reason for reading clubs. Readers could recommend or not recommend texts to one another to save each other precious money and time.
Additionally, book clubs provided the middle-class readers a great deal of freedom. The book club placed readers in an economically viable position that allowed readers to pick and choose what they wanted to read. Having invested minimally financially, book club members could even choose not to finish a book without feeling financially obligated.
With freedom also came restrictions as well. A literary behavior that would seem to be expected from book club members is that they would read quickly and for extended periods of time as they would have to return the books within a matter of days. Thus, checking out a book from the club could dissuade readers from participating in other leisure activities, such as spending time at the pub, playing games with friends and family, and other social activities.
Book clubs, however, did promote a new type of social activity. The social component to reading seems to be another important part of book clubs. The description of P.J. Bernard’s book club tells of two rooms specifically intended “for conversation” (Darnton 170). Within such rooms, one can envision large numbers groups of people congregating to discuss books in a way that had not been seen before.
As for the way that these clubs affected the “roles” of readers, I think that reading clubs were responsible for creating a more dynamic audience for authors and publishers to consider. Reading clubs and similar institutions mark the change in times in terms of authors and publishers having a large body of sponsorship rather than a single sponsor or small group of sponsors.
Joseph Hunter’s reading habits reflect many of the ideas discussed above. Hunter frequented a variety of reading clubs and exhibited personal control over what books he checked out and read completely. His diaries also show how his involvement in the book club to a certain extent controlled his leisure time. One of the points that I to be of great interest is that his book club involvement did not necessarily inhibit his reading/thinking politically. There seems to be evidence that the democratic practices used to determine which books a club would purchase were often motivated by shared belief and value systems, but as Colclough points out, Hunter dissented from the predominant position of the Surry Street Library (33-34).
In addition to Hunter’s participation in book clubs, Colclough points out that Hunter probably read much more than what his diary discloses. The reading of periodicals and religious texts likely took place on high levels of frequency, but because of the familiar nature of such reading, Hunter did not always include accounts of these in his diary. Although these “every day” readings were often solitary, they were also connected to Hunter’s “literacy” communities in addition to reading clubs: family, friends, co-workers, and church members. Hunter’s involvement in reading clubs no doubt facilitated his reading of broad range of texts—many of which were secular—more so than his other reading communities. Colclough also shows us how secular reading clubs influenced the practices of vestry or chapel book clubs. An important conclusion that Hunter’s diary leads us to is that reading, as Colclough puts it, was the “fabric of everyday life” (25) and that what Hunter read was just as diverse as the reading communicates he participated in.
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