Readers in a Revolution
The mid-nineteenth century brought a revolution in popular and scholarly understandings of old and second-hand books. Manuals introduced new ideas and practices to increasing numbers of collectors, exhibitions offered opportunities previously unheard of, and scholars worked together to transform how the history of printing was understood. These dramatic changes would have profound consequences for bibliographical study and collecting, accompanied as they were by a proliferation in means of access. Many ideas arising during this time would even continue to exert their influence in the digitised arena of today. This book traces this revolution to its roots in commercial and personal ties between key players in England, France and beyond, illuminating how exhibitions, libraries, booksellers, scholars and popular writers all contributed to the modern world of book studies. For students and researchers, it offers an invaluable means of orientation in a field now once again undergoing deep and wide-ranging transformations.
The American Revolution Reader
The American Revolution Reader is a collection of leading essays on the American revolutionary era from the eve of the imperial crisis through George Washington's presidency. Articles have been chosen to represent classic themes, such as the British-colonial relationship during the eighteenth century, the political and ideological issues underlying colonial protests, the military conflict, the debates over the Constitution, and the rise of political parties. The volume also captures how the field has been reshaped in recent years, including essays that cover class strife and street politics, the international context of the Revolution, and the roles of women, African Americans and Native Americans, as well as the reshaping of the British Empire after the war. With essays by Gordon S. Wood, Mary Beth Norton, T.H. Breen, John M. Murrin, Gary B. Nash, Woody Holton, Rosemarie Zagarri, John Shy, Alan Taylor, Maya Jasanoff, and many other prominent historians, the collection is ideal for classroom use and any student of the American Revolution.
The Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution
Revolution
Reading Revolutions
This fascinating book - the first comprehensive study of reading and politics in early modern England - examines how texts of that period were produced and disseminated and how readers interpreted and were influenced by them. Based on the voluminous reading notes of one gentleman, Sir William Drake, the book shows how readers formed radical social values and political ideas as they experienced civil war, revolution, republic and restoration. By analysing the strategies of Drake's reading practices, as well as those of several key contemporaries (including Jonson, Milton, and Clarendon), Kevin Sharpe demonstrates how reading in the rhetorical culture of Renaissance England was a political act. He explains how Drake, for example, by reading and rereading classical and humanist works of Tacitus, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Bacon, became the advocate of dissimulation, intrigue, and realpolitik. Authority, Sharpe argues, was experienced, reviewed and criticized not only in the public forum but in the study, on the page and in the imagination of early modern readers.
