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The Rise and Fall of the In Memoriam Inscription
GUEST BLOG: Dr Lauren Alex O’Hagan, Örebro University/The Open University AN 1870 COPY of The Keepsake Scripture Textbook has sat on my bookshelf for years. I picked it up in a second-hand bookshop in Bristol for far more than it was worth out of pure fascination for the inscriptions on its front endpapers. I was…
Friday’s Subversive Reading
‘Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.’ Frederick Douglass ONE OF THE FIRST skills that Friday learns under the tutelage of his ‘master’ Robinson Crusoe is the ability to read with the ultimate purpose of instructing him in the precepts of the Christian religion. Throughout the history of Christian missions, the role…
Clandestine Reading
In a previous blog, we looked at the ways in which readers display their intellectual credentials throught the use of conspicuous literacy. Here we examine some of the ways in which readers of the past have sought to disguise their uses of print. A COMMON FIGURE in dystopian fiction is the disaffected citizen whose resistance…
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