Author Archives: readersinhistory

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”

From time to time, we hope to include items by some of the leading scholars in the field. It gives us particular pleasure to launch the first of our guest blogs with this contribution by David H. Stam. David is best known as a distinguished scholar in the fields of bibliography and polar history. HisContinue reading “A Disabled Reader’s Tale”

World Book Night 2020 coincided with the beginning of Covid lockdown in the UK. At a moment when many public events were being put on ice, The Reading Agency, an organization dedicated to promoting wellbeing through reading, announced that the celebration would go ahead anyway. But April 23 would be a World Book Night withContinue reading “Anti-social Reading”

There are a lot of myths surrounding the history of reading. From time to time, we aim to correct historical misconceptions that have entered the realm of received wisdom. This one relates to the most celebrated trench newspaper to be printed on the Western Front during the First World War. The title of The WipersContinue reading “The Myth of the Wipers Times”

‘I have no books’ Robert Louis Stevenson complained to one of his correspondents shortly after he arrived in Samoa in 1890.  A full six months later he was able to report, not without a little ambivalence: Our books and furniture keep slowly draining up the road, in a sad state of scatterment and disrepair; IContinue reading “Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa”

Ever since the publication of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Janeites’ – a short story about a secret society of officers in the First World War with an overwhelming devotion to the works of Jane Austen – it has been rumored that Tommy Atkins was a big fan. It is an idea that appears to have beenContinue reading “Jane Austen in the Trenches?”

One of the most poignant meditations on the intimacy that can exist between the exile and his books was written by Walter Benjamin in the 1930s. After the breakup of his marriage he found himself alone in a new city and, having spent years drifting from place to place, he reflected on the way thatContinue reading “Unpacking my Library”