The Edinburgh history of reading : Volumes 1-4
- Submitting institution
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University of Southampton
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 46238392
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Edinburgh University Press
- ISBN
- 9781474478717
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This multi-volume project represents the most comprehensive coverage of the history of reading ever attempted, in terms of global, temporal and methodological reach. Across four volumes there are 60 x 8000-word original chapters (some illustrated) covering the Americas, Australasia, and Africa, many parts of Europe, Eurasia, Southeast Asia, and the UK. It begins with 7th-century BCE Ancient China, and ends with C21st European neuroscience and global digital fan cultures. The volumes do more than any comparable publication has done before to place very disparate types of evidence and methodological approaches into close dialogue, thus offering new approaches to the topic, which break down subject and period boundaries. The volumes present all-new scholarship instead of re-anthologising the familiar, and contributors include not only established scholars, but also undergraduates, postgraduates, librarians, research assistants, and others.
Professor Hammond led this project throughout: she was offered the commission in 2015, and the original concept was solely hers: invited contributors working on as wide a range of historical and geographical contexts as possible were asked to write c.8000-words of original, previously unpublished scholarship which showcased different methodologies for the study of historical readers. In 2016, at the suggestion of EUP, she invited North American co-Editor Rose on board to help sell the books in the US. Thereafter the communications and editorial labour were divided equally: co-editors took two volumes apiece; and collaborated fully on the structure and titles of the 4 volumes, and wrote 2 x c. 3000-word introductions apiece. Hammond's introduction to the series (in Vol 1) is longer at c.4000 words. Hammond also contributed an 8000-word original chapter to Vol. 2 which opens up the question of how to ‘read’ Victorian images of readers, using testimony drawn from the Reading Experience Database, a project with which Hammond has been closely involved since 2005.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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