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This book underlines the importance of writing for the subordinate
classes, and the variety of uses to which it was put. In eleven new
studies by thirteen leading historians of scribal culture, it
foregrounds the ‘common writer’ and contributes to a ‘New
History from Below’. The book presents pauper letters,
ego-documents, life-writing of various kinds, soldiers’ and
emigrants’ correspondence, handwritten newspapers and graffiti in
streets and prisons, analysing the major genres of ‘ordinary
writings’. The studies draw on different disciplines, including
cultural history, sociology and ethnography, folklore studies,
palaeography and socio-historical linguistics. They range from the
early modern Hispanic Empire to twentieth-century Australia,
including studies of modern Britain, Iceland, Finland, Italy,
Germany, South Africa and the USA. The book demonstrates the
importance of studying manuscript culture to give a voice, a
presence and dignity to the ordinary protagonists of history. -- .
This book captures the intensity of the relationship between
writers and their typewriters from the 1880s, when the machine was
first commercialized, to the 1980s, when word-processing superseded
it. Drawing on examples from the United States, Britain, Europe,
and Australia, The Typewriter Century focuses on "celebrity
writers," including Henry James, Jack Kerouac, Agatha Christie,
Georges Simenon, and Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote prolifically
and mechanically, developing routines in which typing, handwriting,
and dictation were each allotted important functions. The
typewriter de-personalized the text; the office typewriter
bureaucratized it. At the same time, some authors found a new and
disturbing distance between themselves and their compositions while
others believed the typewriter facilitated spontaneous and
automatic typing. The Typewriter Century provides a cultural
history of the typewriter, outlining the ways in which it can be
considered an agent of change as well as demonstrating how it
influenced all writers, canonical and otherwise.
This ambitious volume, newly available in paperback, explores the
rich history of the book, one of the most efficient, influential
and enduring technologies ever invented. For more than 2,500 years,
the book, in a wide range of forms, has been used to document, to
educate and to entertain. The eminent authority Martyn Lyons charts
its worldwide evolution through the centuries, from the cuneiform
tablets of ancient Sumer through the development of moveable type
and the emergence of the modern information revolution. Among the
carefully selected illustrations are Maya codices, Egyptian papyrus
scrolls, medieval illuminated manuscripts, masterpieces of early
printing from Gutenberg and Aldus Manutius, atlases from the great
age of travel and exploration, primers and children's books, dime
novels and Japanese manga, and works of fiction ranging from Don
Quixote to Level 26 , the world's first `digi-novel', and beyond.
Historians have often assumed that the lives of the poor and
illiterate can never be known because they have left little written
record of their existence. The voices of the uneducated are there,
however, and their written traces can be deciphered, if we take the
trouble to look for them. This book will establish some of the main
themes and frontiers of a new field of historical study: that of
'ordinary writings', (or ecritures ordinaries) - the improvised and
often ephemeral writings of the poor, the young and the hitherto
silent people of history. This collection of new studies from
France, Belgium, Finland, Spain, Iceland, Greece, Italy and Britain
has a coherent focus on the transition to writing literacy in 19th
and 20th century Europe. The overall theme is the access of
ordinary people to writing, examined in the concrete forms which
writing took and the specific functions which it performed. The
uses of writing, and the cultural practices in which they were
embedded, are explained in their context of social and political
relations, gender relations and relations between the literate and
the illiterate.
This book investigates the history of writing as a cultural
practice in a variety of contexts and periods. It analyses the
rituals and practices determining intimate or 'ordinary' writing as
well as bureaucratic and religious writing. From the inscribed
images of 'pre-literate' societies, to the democratization of
writing in the modern era, access to writing technology and its
public and private uses are examined. In ten studies, presented by
leading historians of scribal culture from seven countries, the
book investigates the uses of writing in non-alphabetical as well
as alphabetical script, in societies ranging from Native America
and ancient Korea to modern Europe. The authors emphasise the
material characteristics of writing, and in so doing they pose
questions about the definition of writing itself. Drawing on
expertise in various disciplines, they give an up-to-date account
of the current state of knowledge in a field at the forefront of
'Book History'.
This Palgrave Pivot examines the history of literacy with
illiterate and semi-literate people in mind, and questions the
clear division between literacy and illiteracy which has often been
assumed by social and economic historians. Instead, it turns the
spotlight on all those in-between, the millions who had some
literacy skills, but for whom reading and writing posed
difficulties. Its main focus is on those we have often labelled
'illiterates', rather than those who enjoyed full competence in
reading and writing in modern society. In offering a historical
perspective on the 'problem' of illiteracy in the modern world, it
also questions some enduring myths surrounding the phenomenon. This
book therefore has a revisionist objective: it intends to challenge
conventional wisdom about illiteracy.
Martyn Lyons surveys the changing relationships enjoyed by men and
women with the written word, from early times to the present day.
He provides a highly-readable account of the social history of
reading and writing, relating it to key historical moments such as
the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Offering a
fresh history centred on the reactions and experiences of ordinary
readers and writers, Lyons deals with key turning points that
occurred throughout the centuries, such as the invention of the
codex, the transition from scribal to print culture, the reading
revolution and the industrialisation of the book. Tracing the major
historical developments across Europe and North America which
revolutionised our relationship with texts, this book provides an
engaging and invaluable overview of the history of scribal and
print culture.
This original study examines different incarnations of the
Pyrenees, beginning with the assumptions of 18th-century
geologists, who treated the mountains like a laboratory, and
romantic 19th-century tourists and habitues of the spa resorts, who
went in search of the picturesque and the sublime. The book
analyses the individual visions of the heroic Pyrenees which in
turn fascinated 19th-century mountaineers and the racing cyclists
of the early Tour de France. Martyn Lyons also investigates the
role of the Pyrenees during the Second World War as an escape route
from Nazi-occupied France, when for thousands of refugees these
dangerous borderlands became 'the mountains of liberty', and
considers the place of the Pyrenees in recent times right up to the
present day. Drawing on travel writing, press reports and
scientific texts in several languages, The Pyrenees in the Modern
Era explores both the French and Spanish sides of the Pyrenees to
provide a nuanced historical understanding of the cultural
construction of one of Europe's most prominent border regions. This
book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Europe's
cultural history in a transnational context.
This original study examines different incarnations of the
Pyrenees, beginning with the assumptions of 18th-century
geologists, who treated the mountains like a laboratory, and
romantic 19th-century tourists and habitues of the spa resorts, who
went in search of the picturesque and the sublime. The book
analyses the individual visions of the heroic Pyrenees which in
turn fascinated 19th-century mountaineers and the racing cyclists
of the early Tour de France. Martyn Lyons also investigates the
role of the Pyrenees during the Second World War as an escape route
from Nazi-occupied France, when for thousands of refugees these
dangerous borderlands became 'the mountains of liberty', and
considers the place of the Pyrenees in recent times right up to the
present day. Drawing on travel writing, press reports and
scientific texts in several languages, The Pyrenees in the Modern
Era explores both the French and Spanish sides of the Pyrenees to
provide a nuanced historical understanding of the cultural
construction of one of Europe's most prominent border regions. This
book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Europe's
cultural history in a transnational context.
As war and mass emigration across oceans increased the distances
between ordinary people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, many of them, previously barely literate and
unaccustomed to writing, began to communicate on paper. This
fascinating account explores this surge of ordinary writing, how
people met the new challenges of literacy and the importance of
scribal culture to the history of individual experience in modern
Europe. Focusing on correspondence and other writing genres
produced by French and Italian soldiers in the trenches in the
First World War, as well as Spanish emigrants to the Americas, the
book reveals how these writings were influenced by dialect and oral
speech and were oblivious to the rules of grammar, spelling and
punctuation. Through their sometimes moving stories, we gain an
insight into the importance to ordinary peasants of family, village
and nation at a time of rapid social and cultural change.
On 9 thermidor Year 2, Robespierre fell; on18 brumaire Year 8, a
coup d'etat brought Bonaparte to power. This book demonstrates that
the interval between these two momentous events was also of crucial
importance. Using the findings of recent research, it presents a
balanced appraisal of the thermidorean and directorial regimes to
the English student. For Jacobin sympathizers thermidor and the
Directory represented the betrayal of the revolutionary idea; for
Bonapartist propagandists it represented chaos and corruption, and
the darker the Directory could be painted, the more Bonaparte's
reputation would be flattered. Dr Lyons attempts to dispose of
these myths. He stresses the Directory's successes as well as its
failures, and emphasizes elements of continuity which link it both
with the Jacobin regime and with the Consulate. The regime
inherited a heavy burden of war, inflation and food shortages, yet
it remained revolutionary in its Republicanism, its
anticlericalism, and its desire to carry the fruits of the
Revolution to the rest of Europe. At the same time it laid the
foundations of financial stability and administrative efficiency on
which Bonaparte was to build.
As war and mass emigration across oceans increased the distances
between ordinary people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, many of them, previously barely literate and
unaccustomed to writing, began to communicate on paper. This
fascinating account explores this surge of ordinary writing, how
people met the new challenges of literacy and the importance of
scribal culture to the history of individual experience in modern
Europe. Focusing on correspondence and other writing genres
produced by French and Italian soldiers in the trenches in the
First World War, as well as Spanish emigrants to the Americas, the
book reveals how these writings were influenced by dialect and oral
speech and were oblivious to the rules of grammar, spelling and
punctuation. Through their sometimes moving stories, we gain an
insight into the importance to ordinary peasants of family, village
and nation at a time of rapid social and cultural change.
Martyn Lyons offers a fresh interpretation of European history in
the half-century following the fall of Napoleon. Instead of seeing
the period in traditional terms of Restoration and Reaction, this
new account emphasizes the problems of remembering and forgetting
the recent revolutionary and Napoleonic past, and of either
incorporating or rejecting its legacy. Post-Revolutionary Europe: -
makes interesting comparisons and contrasts between the fall of the
French Empire in 1815 and the collapse of the Soviet Empire in
1989-91 - examines the new forms of popular participation in
political life which developed between the 1830 and 1848
Revolutions, as a broad public sphere of action was created -
offers a series of thematic chapters which discuss key topics such
as peasants and artisans, the bourgeois family, nationalism, the
growth of cities, and European Jewry - covers a wide geographical
context, from Britain to the Balkans and from Portugal to Russia.
Illustrated throughout, this clear and engaging text is essential
reading for all those with an interest in this important period of
European history.
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