Material Texts (1550-1830): A Preliminary Reading List, Michaelmas Term 2007
Weekly two-hour classes during Michaelmas Term will provide a survey of the material
conditions under which texts were produced from the beginnings of print culture in the west
(around 1475) to the end of the hand-press period (around 1830). Topics introduced will
include: the constituents of the material text (paper, type, printing); how literary manuscripts
become books and what we might read from their material forms; descriptive bibliography;
textual criticism. Listed below are some general studies which you may find useful in
preparing for this course. Those marked by an asterisk are highly recommended as
preliminary reading (*) or as essential handbooks throughout the course (**). Further
reading lists will accompany each weekly seminar.
1. Text Production: Physical and Technical Details of Book-Making (Bibliography)
Davison, Peter, ed., The Book Encompassed: Studies in Twentieth-Century Bibliography (Cambridge
University Press, 1992)
Gaskell, Philip, A New Introduction to Bibliography (1972; reprinted by St Paul’s Bibliographies,
1995) **
Glaister, G. A., Encyclopedia of the Book (1960; 2nd edn., Oak Knoll Press and British Library,
1996)
McKerrow, R. B., An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1928; reprinted by St
Paul’s Bibliographies, 1994) **
2. Textual Criticism and Issues in Editing
Greetham, D. C., Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (Garland, 1992)
_______, Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research (MLA, 1995)
Jed, Stephanie H., Chaste Thinking: the Rape of Lucretia and the Birth of Humanism (Indiana Univ.
Press, 1989)
Johnson, Samuel, 'Preface' to The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765), in Johnson on Shakespeare,
Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 7 (Yale Univ. Press, 1968) *
McGann, Jerome J., A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983) *
Shillingsburg, Peter L., Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice (3rd edn, Univ.
of Michigan Press, 1996) *
Sutherland, Kathryn, ed., Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory (Clarendon Press,
1997)
Timpanaro, Sebastian, The Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticism, trans. Kate Soper
(Verso, 1985)
3. Sociology of Texts: How Texts Combine with other Social Forms
Barnard, J., McKenzie, D. F., and Bell, M., The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol.4,
1557-1695 (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Berry, H., Society and Print Culture in late Stuart England (Ashgate, 2003)
Bourdieu, Pierre, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Editions du Seuils,
1992; Polity Press, 1996)
Dane, Joseph, The Myth of Print Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2003) *
Goody, Jack, The Interface of the Written and the Oral (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
________, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
Graff, Harvey J., ed., Literacy and Social Development in the West (Cambridge University Press,
1981)
Levenston, E. A., The Stuff of Literature (State University of New York Press, 1992)
McKenzie, D. F., Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (1986; Cambridge University Press,
1999)*
Ong, W. J., Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen, 1982)
Roberts, C. H., and Skeat, T. C., The Birth of the Codex (Oxford University Press, 1985)
4. Histoire du livre / History of the Book
Chartier, Roger, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations (Polity Press, 1988)
_______, The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe (Polity Press,
1989)
Darnton, Robert, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the ‘Encyclopedie’, 17751800 (Belknap Press, 1979)
_______, The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History (Allen Lane, 1984)
Eisenstein, Elizabeth, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (2 vols, Cambridge University
Press, 1979) *
Febvre, Lucien, and Martin, Henri-Jean, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 14501800 (Verso Editions, 1976; latest edition, 1997) *
Finkelstein, David, and McCleery, Alistair, eds, The Book History Reader (Routledge, 2002) *
(contains a useful Bibliography).
Foxon, David, Pope and the Early Eighteenth-Century Book Trade (Clarendon Press, 1991)
Johns, Adrian, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (University of Chicago
Press, 1998
Martin, Henri-Jean, and Chartier, Roger, Histoire de l’edition francaise (4 vols, Paris: Promodis,
1982-6)
5. The Old Socio-History of Author-Publisher Relations and the Reading Public
Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 18001900 (Chicago University Press, 1957) *
Collins, A.C., The Profession of Letters: A Study of the Relation of Author to Patron, Publisher, and
Public, 1780-1832 (Collins, 1928)
Leavis, Q. D., Fiction and the Reading Public (1932; Penguin Books, 1979)
Williams, Raymond, Culture and Society 1780-1950 (Penguin Books, 1958)
6. The New Cultural History of Authors, Readers, and Texts
Benedict, Barbara, Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in early Modern Literary
Anthologies (Princeton University Press, 1996)
Couturier, Maurice, Textual Communication: A Print-Based Theory of the Novel (Routledge, 1991)
De Grazia, Margreta, Shakespeare Verbatim: The Reproduction of Authenticity and the 1790
Apparatus (Clarendon Press, 1991)
Genette, Gerard, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Editions du Seuils, 1987; Cambridge
University Press, 1997) *
Graff, Harvey J., The Legacies of Literacy (Indiana University Press, 1987)
Klancher, Jon P., The Making of English Reading Audiences: 1790-1832 (Wisconsin University
Press, 1987)
Loewenstein, J., Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Maguire, Laurie, Shakespearean Suspect Texts (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
O'Brien O'Keefe, K., and Ezell, M., ed., Artifacts and the Production of Meaning: The Page, the
Image, and the Body (University of Michigan Press, 1994) *
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Raven, James, ed., The Practice and Representation of Reading in England (Cambridge University
Press, 1996)
Rivers, Isabel, ed., Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays (Continuum
Press, 2001)
Rose, Mark, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Harvard University Press, 1993)
St Clair, William, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Stewart, Susan, Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation (Duke University
Press, 1994)
Wall, Wendy, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (Cornell
University Press, 1993)
Woodmansee, Martha, The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics
(Columbia University Press, 1994)
Also of use: the major journals in the field
The Library; Publishing History; Studies in Bibliography; TEXT; Word and Image
History of the Book at Oxford (HoBO) website (via Faculty website) for resources,
national and international links, some online journals, regularly updated listings of lectures
and conferences, etc.
Kathryn Sutherland, June 2007
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