Geographies of the Book / Edition 1

by Charles W.J. Withers, Miles Ogborn

Overview

The geography of the book is as old as the history of the book, though far less thoroughly explored. Yet research has increasingly pointed to the spatial dimensions of book history, to the transformation of texts as they are made and moved from place to place, from authors to readers and within different communities and cultures of reception. Widespread recognition of the significance of place, of the effects of movement over space and of the importance of location to the making and reception of print culture has been a feature of recent book history work, and draws in many instances upon studies within the history of science as well as geography. 'Geographies of the Book' explores the complex relationships between the making of books in certain geographical contexts, the movement of books (epistemologically as well as geographically) and the ways in which they are received.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780754678502
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/28/2010
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Miles Ogborn, Queen Mary University of London, UK and Charles W.J. Withers, University of Edinburgh, UK

Table of Contents

Introduction: Book Geography, Book History; I: Geographies Of Production; 1: The Amusements of Posterity: Print Against Empire in Late Eighteenth-Century Bengal; 2: Steam and the Landscape of Knowledge: W. & R. Chambers in the 1830s-1850s; 3: Construing the Spaces of Print Culture: Book Historians' Visualization Preferences; II: Geographies Of Circulation; 4: ‘Per le Piaze & Sopra il Ponte': Reconstructing the Geography of Popular Print in Sixteenth-Century Venice; 5: The Counting-House Library: Creating Mercantile Knowledge in the Age of Sail; 6: Printing Posterity: Editing Varenius and the Construction of Geography's History; III: Geographies Of Reception; 7: Geography, Enlightenment and the Book: Authorship and Audience in Mungo Park's African Texts; 8: Books, Geography and Denmark's Colonial Undertaking in West Africa, 1790–1850; 9: Volney's Tableau, Medical Geography and Books on the Frontier; 10: Reading the Messy Reception of Influences of Geographic Environment (1911)

Editorial Reviews

'Impressively wide-ranging over time and space yet thematically focused, this rich collection of essays ably demonstrates the crucial importance of geography for understanding the production, circulation, and reception of books. It also shows how the study of geographical writings by authors such as Mungo Park, Varenius and Volney can benefit from the insights and methodologies of book history.' Richard B. Sher, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA 'Writing, editing, printing, distributing, selling, buying, reading, reviewing, debating ... All of these practices and more enter into the constitution of the book, into what it is, what it does and why it matters. And all of these practices have inescapable and influential geographies, from "the local" to "the far-flung", as this superb volume so convincingly demonstrates. Bringing together a range of scholars from different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, its collective force is to put "geographies of the book" decisively on to all future maps of cultural, political and intellectual history. It is a most substantial accomplishment, far beyond what most edited collections can achieve.' Chris Philo, University of Glasgow, UK 'Whatever debates take place on determining how important geographical factors are in the history of the book, they will owe much to this volume.' Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society

From the Publisher