Tudor Books And Readers

The consumption of books is closely intertwined with the material conditions of their production. The Tudor period saw both revolutionary progress in printing technology and the survival of traditional forms of communication from the manuscript era. Offering a comprehensive account of Tudor book culture, these new essays by experts in early book history consider the formative years of English printing; book format, marketing, and the reception of books; print, politics, and patronage; and connections between reading and religion. They challenge the conventional view of the 1557 foundation of the Stationers' Company as an event that marks a shift between older and newer modes of book production, sale, and reading. Both continuity and change led to the gradual development of late medieval book culture into the genuinely early modern book culture that emerged by the death of Queen Elizabeth.

Readers in the sixteenth century read (that is, interpreted) texts quite differently from the way contemporary readers do; they were trained to notice different aspects of a text and to process them differently. Using educational works of Erasmus, Ascham, and others, commentaries on literary works, various kinds of religious guides and homilies, and self-improvement books, Kintgen has found specific evidence of these differences and makes imaginative use of it to draw fascinating and convincing conclusions about the art and practice of reading. Kintgen ends by situating the book within literary theory, cognitive science, and literary studies. Among the writers covered are Gabriel Harvey, E. K. (the commentator on The Shepheardes Calendar), Sir John Harrington, George Gascoigne, George Puttenham, Thomas Blundeville, and Angel Day.

Reading Drama in Tudor England is about the print invention of drama as a category of text designed for readerly consumption. Arguing that plays were made legible by the printed paratexts that accompanied them, it shows that by the middle of the sixteenth century it was possible to market a play for leisure-time reading. Offering a detailed analysis of such features as title-pages, character lists, and other paratextual front matter, it suggests that even before the establishment of successful permanent playhouses, playbooks adopted recognisable conventions that not only announced their categorical status and genre but also suggested appropriate forms of use. As well as a survey of implied reading practices, this study is also about the historical owners and readers of plays. Examining the marks of use that survive in copies of early printed plays, it explores the habits of compilation and annotation that reflect the striking and often unpredictable uses to which early owners subjected their playbooks.

In this exploration of the social context of reading and writing in pre-industrial England, David Cressy tackles important questions about the limits of participation in the mainstream of early modern society. To what extent could people at different social levels share in political, religious, literary and cultural life; how vital was the ability to read and write; and how widely distributed were these skills? Using a combination of humanist and social-scientific methods, Dr Cressy provides a detailed reconstruction of the profile of literacy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, looking forward to the eighteenth century and also making comparisons with other European societies.

This is the first encyclopedia to be devoted entirely to Tudor England. 700 entries by top scholars in every major field combine new modes of archival research with a detailed Tudor chronology and appendix of biographical essays. Entries include: * Edward Alleyn [actor/theatre manager] * Roger Ascham * Bible translation * cloth trade * Devereux family * Espionage * Family of Love * food and diet * James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell * inns * Ket's Rebellion * John Lyly * mapmaking * Frances Meres * miniature painting * Pavan * Pilgrimage of Grace * Revels Office * Ridolfi plot * Lady Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke * treason * and much more. Also includes an 8-page color insert.

"Two ideas lie at the heart of this study and its claim that we need a new history of reading: that voices in books can affect us deeply ; that printed books can be brought to life with the voice. Voices and Books offers a new history of reading focussed on the oral and voice-aware silent reader, rather than the historical reader we have privileged in the last few decades, who is invariably male, silent, and alone. It recovers the vocality of education for boys and girls in Renaissance England, and the importance of training in pronuntiatio (delivery) for oral-aural literary culture. It offers the first attempt to recover the voice-and tone-from textual sources. It explores what happens when we bring voice to text, how vocal tone realizes or changes textual meaning, and how the literary writers of the past tried to represent their own and others' voices, as well as manage and exploit the voices of their readers. It offers fresh readings of the key Tudor authors who anticipated oral readers: John Bale, Anne Askew, William Baldwin, Thomas Nashe. And it aims to rethink what a printed book can be, searching the printed page for vocal cues, and exploring the neglected role of the voice in the printing process"-- Provided by publisher.

The aim of this reader - one of a set of four volumes on urban history covering the late 12th to early 20th centuries - is to gather together in an accessible form a number of key contributions to the study of the Tudor and Stuart town.