Author Archives: readersinhistory

TODAY the ability to store hundreds of books on a tablet or an e-reader has removed many impediments to far-flung reading. These days, anyone who has access to a mobile phone connection can download an infinite number of titles far from home. But in the past, the itinerating library, aimed mostly at the well-heeled traveller,Continue reading “Some Early Travelling Libraries”

THROUGHOUT the transportation period, a number of gentleman convicts (referred to as ‘Specials’) made their way to Australia providing evidence of the vast range of literacies and competencies among the prison population. One class of prisoner, set apart from the ordinary criminal, was those serving out sentences during the periods of Fenian unrest in Ireland.Continue reading “Reading and Resistance: John Mitchel, Fenian Convict”

ALTHOUGH Robinson Crusoe tells us that he managed to rescue several books from the sinking wreck apart from his beloved bible, it is remarkable that, for the next two decades, these scarce commodities go without mention or even apparent use. Books of course have uses other than reading, uses that would have been immediately apparentContinue reading “On Not Reading”

IT is difficult to believe that world leaders once had time for leisurely reading. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was surely one of the more bookish. Meditating on the intimacy that can exist between readers and their books, Roosevelt once asserted that ‘If a man or a woman is fond of books he or she willContinue reading “Roosevelt’s Pigskin Library”

Available here from Oxford University Press ***Winner of the British Association for Victorian Studies Rosemary Mitchell Prize 2022*** ***Winner of the Australian Historical Association Kay Daniels Prize 2022 *** Crusoe’s Books: Readers in the Empire of Print, 1800-1918 Bill Bell with a foreword by Alberto Manguel THIS is a book about readers on the moveContinue reading “Now published . . . . . .”

SHORTLY after he is marooned on the island that will serve as his home for the better part of the next three decades, Robinson Crusoe fortuitously rescues three bibles before the ship goes down. Although it takes him a full year to begin to read the scriptures, this miraculous provision will prove to be theContinue reading “Bibliocracy”

IN A PREVIOUS blog we looked at the phenomenon of Anti-Social Reading, the way in which individuals use reading to fend off the unwanted attention of others. Here we consider the way that reading can be used as a form of self-invention through the deployment of performative literacy. Certain regimes of culture and class, observedContinue reading “Performative Reading”

Guest blog by James Yeku We are delighted to reproduce this version of an online article in which Dr Yeku offers a poignant reminder of the loss of books as one of the many effects of the mobility of African scholars, not least when they travel permanently for education in the West. WHAT does itContinue reading “Diaspora and My Unpackable Library”

FOR over three centuries, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe has engaged some of the most influential literary and philosophical minds. At the same time, few other fictional texts have provoked so many idiosyncratic readings. J.M. Coetzee, who attempted himself to rewrite the classic, thought about the many ways that Defoe’s bookContinue reading “The Strange Afterlives of Robinson Crusoe”

Guest blog: Innes M. Keighren THE DECISIONS we take about the books we pack when we travel are often informed by three factors: 1) practicality (“Will this book help me to travel safely, agreeably, and productively?”) 2) pleasure (“Will this book provide entertainment or diversion when required?”) and 3) portability (“Can I accommodate the spaceContinue reading “Two Nineteenth-Century Expeditionary Libraries”