We love books. We take them to bed with us. We display them on our bookshelves. We write our names in them. They weigh down our suitcases when we go on holiday. We take them for granted. But there's much more to them than meets the eye.; From how books feel and smell, to burned books, banned books and books that create nations, The Secret Life of Books is about everything beyond the words on a page. It's about how books - and readers - have evolved over time. And about how books still have the power to change our lives.; 'A real treasure trove for book lovers' ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH; 'Every sentence is utterly captivating ... probably the most compulsive text ever penned about what it means to handle and possess a book' CHRISTOPHER DE HAMEL, author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts; 'Wonderfully insightful' ALBERTO MANGUEL, author of A History of Reading

Contextualizes and annotates the influential, scandalous, and entertaining texts which appeared in the "Blackwood's Magazine" between 1817 and 1825. This title features a detailed general introduction, volume introductions and endnotes, providing the reader with an understanding of the origins and early history of "Blackwood's Magazine".

Contextualizes and annotates the influential, scandalous, and entertaining texts which appeared in the "Blackwood's Magazine" between 1817 and 1825. This title features a detailed general introduction, volume introductions and endnotes, providing the reader with an understanding of the origins and early history of "Blackwood's Magazine".

Contextualizes and annotates the influential, scandalous, and entertaining texts which appeared in the "Blackwood's Magazine" between 1817 and 1825. This title features a detailed general introduction, volume introductions and endnotes, providing the reader with an understanding of the origins and early history of "Blackwood's Magazine".

Contextualizes and annotates the influential, scandalous, and entertaining texts which appeared in the "Blackwood's Magazine" between 1817 and 1825. This title features a detailed general introduction, volume introductions and endnotes, providing the reader with an understanding of the origins and early history of "Blackwood's Magazine".

Contextualizes and annotates the influential, scandalous, and entertaining texts which appeared in the "Blackwood's Magazine" between 1817 and 1825. This title features a detailed general introduction, volume introductions and endnotes, providing the reader with an understanding of the origins and early history of "Blackwood's Magazine".

Contextualizes and annotates the influential, scandalous, and entertaining texts which appeared in the "Blackwood's Magazine" between 1817 and 1825. This title features a detailed general introduction, volume introductions and endnotes, providing the reader with an understanding of the origins and early history of "Blackwood's Magazine".

We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture, but until recently the history of celebrity has been little discussed. The contributors to this innovative collection locate the origins of a distinctively modern kind of celebrity in the Romantic period. Celebrity was from the beginning a multi-media phenomenon whose cultural pervasiveness - in literature and the theatre, music and visual culture, fashion and boxing - overflows modern disciplinary boundaries and requires attention from scholars with different kinds of expertise. Looking back to the 1720s and forward to the 1890s, this volume identifies the people and institutions that made the Romantic period a pivotal moment in the creation of celebrity. Tracing connections between celebrity and the period's discourses of heroism, genius, nationalism, patronage and gender, these essays map the contours of a cultural apparatus that many of the period's central figures became implicated in, even as they sought to distance themselves from it.

This insightful and elegantly written book examines how the popular media of the Victorian era sustained and transformed the reputations of Romantic writers. Tom Mole provides a new reception history of Lord Byron, Felicia Hemans, Sir Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth--one that moves beyond the punctual historicism of much recent criticism and the narrow horizons of previous reception histories. He attends instead to the material artifacts and cultural practices that remediated Romantic writers and their works amid shifting understandings of history, memory, and media. Mole scrutinizes Victorian efforts to canonize and commodify Romantic writers in a changed media ecology. He shows how illustrated books renovated Romantic writing, how preachers incorporated irreligious Romantics into their sermons, how new statues and memorials integrated Romantic writers into an emerging national pantheon, and how anthologies mediated their works to new generations. This ambitious study investigates a wide range of material objects Victorians made in response to Romantic writing--such as photographs, postcards, books, and collectibles--that in turn remade the public's understanding of Romantic writers. Shedding new light on how Romantic authors were posthumously recruited to address later cultural concerns, What the Victorians Made of Romanticism reveals new histories of appropriation, remediation, and renewal that resonate in our own moment of media change, when once again the cultural products of the past seem in danger of being forgotten if they are not reimagined for new audiences.

This book pioneers a branch of periodical studies that is distinctive to the concerns, contexts and media of Britain's Romantic age. Eleven chapters by leading scholars showcase the range of methodological, conceptual and literary-historical insights to be drawn from just one of the era's landmark literary periodicals, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Drawing in particular on the trove of newly digitised content, these chapters model how careful analyses of the incisive and often inflammatory commentary, criticism and original literature from Blackwood's first two decades (1817 37) might inform and expand many of the most vibrant contemporary discussions surrounding British Romanticism.

For over five hundred years in the West, a particular form of the book-the printed codex-has been woven into the fabric of our lives. It has been the default medium for publicly circulating information and entertainment, and has structured the work, leisure and religious devotion of countless people. Now, as the cultural centrality of the printed book is challenged, we are prompted to reassess its value and its place in the history of media change. Readable but rooted in current scholarship, this introductory guide to book history tries not to privilege any one disciplinary perspective or historical period. Rather, the guide and its accompanying anthology aim to help the reader to find his or her bearings within the field, and to provide a map with which to navigate book history more widely.

`Probably the most compulsive text ever penned about what it means to handle and possess a book' - Christopher de Hamel, author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts; `A real treasure trove for book lovers' - Alexander McCall Smith; We love books. We take them to bed with us. They weigh down our suitcases when we go on holiday. We display them on our bookshelves or store them in our attics. We give them as gifts. We write our names in them. We take them for granted. And all the time, our books are leading a double life.; The Secret Life of Books is about everything that isn't just the words. It's about how books transform us as individuals. It's about how books - and readers - have evolved over time. And it's about why, even with the arrival of other media, books still have the power to change our lives.; In this illuminating account, Tom Mole looks at everything from binding innovations to binding errors, to books defaced by lovers, to those imprisoning professors in their offices, to books in art, to burned books, to the books that create nations, to those we'll leave behind.; It will change how you think about books.

This insightful and elegantly written book examines how the popular media of the Victorian era sustained and transformed the reputations of Romantic writers. Tom Mole provides a new reception history of Lord Byron, Felicia Hemans, Sir Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth—one that moves beyond the punctual historicism of much recent criticism and the narrow horizons of previous reception histories. He attends instead to the material artifacts and cultural practices that remediated Romantic writers and their works amid shifting understandings of history, memory, and media. Mole scrutinizes Victorian efforts to canonize and commodify Romantic writers in a changed media ecology. He shows how illustrated books renovated Romantic writing, how preachers incorporated irreligious Romantics into their sermons, how new statues and memorials integrated Romantic writers into an emerging national pantheon, and how anthologies mediated their works to new generations. This ambitious study investigates a wide range of material objects Victorians made in response to Romantic writing—such as photographs, postcards, books, and collectibles—that in turn remade the public’s understanding of Romantic writers. Shedding new light on how Romantic authors were posthumously recruited to address later cultural concerns, What the Victorians Made of Romanticism reveals new histories of appropriation, remediation, and renewal that resonate in our own moment of media change, when once again the cultural products of the past seem in danger of being forgotten if they are not reimagined for new audiences.

Maps a coherent subfield of Romantic periodical studies through studying the trailblazing Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine An introduction by two established scholars that articulates a case for the more sustained, systematic study of Romantic periodicals and justifies the volume's focus by retracing Blackwood's emergence as the era's most innovative, influential and controversial literary magazine. Features eleven essays modelling how the wide-ranging commentary, reviews and original fiction and verse published in Blackwood's during its first two decades (1817-37) might meaningfully inform many of the most vibrant contemporary discussions surrounding British Romanticism. Contributes to field-wide bicentenary celebrations and reappraisals both of Blackwood's and the authors and works - including Shelley's Frankenstein, Byron's Don Juan and Keats's Poems - whose reputations the magazine helped shape. This book pioneers a subfield of Romantic periodical studies, distinct from its neighbours in adjacent historical periods. Eleven chapters by leading scholars in the field model the range of methodological, conceptual and literary-historical insights to be drawn from careful engagements with one of the age's landmark literary periodicals, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Engaging with the research potential unlocked by new digital resources for studying Romantic periodicals, they argue that the wide-ranging commentary, reviews and original fiction and verse published in Blackwood's during its first two decades (1817-37) should inform many of the most vibrant contemporary discussions surrounding British Romanticism.

We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture, but until recently the history of celebrity has been little discussed. The contributors to this innovative 2009 collection locate the origins of a distinctively modern kind of celebrity in the Romantic period. Celebrity was from the beginning a multi-media phenomenon whose cultural pervasiveness - in literature and the theatre, music and visual culture, fashion and boxing - overflows modern disciplinary boundaries and requires attention from scholars with different kinds of expertise. Looking back to the 1720s and forward to the 1890s, this volume identifies the people and institutions that made the Romantic period a pivotal moment in the creation of celebrity. Tracing connections between celebrity and the period's discourses of heroism, genius, nationalism, patronage and gender, these essays map the contours of a cultural apparatus that many of the period's central figures became implicated in, even as they sought to distance themselves from it.