Reading: A Very Short Introduction

Description

Reading can inform, inspire, emancipate, and motivate us. Down the centuries, it has brought huge educational and social benefits. It can also unleash subversion, and its spread has been accompanied by censorship and control. Belinda Jack explores the global development and impact of reading - from ancient texts to digital texts today.

• Explores the fascinating history of reading, from the ancient world to today
• Discusses subversive reading and censorship, from Enlightenment book burnings to today's digital firewalls
• Considers the power of reading to move, inspire, arouse, and inform us
• Shows how innovations in printing and paper-making, and increasing levels of education have seen a boom in worldwide literacy since the eighteenth century
• Considers the role of reading in an increasingly digital age
• Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over nine million copies sold worldwide

About the Author(s)

Belinda Jack, Fellow and Tutor, Christ Church, Oxford

Belinda Jack is Fellow and Tutor at Christ Church, University of Oxford. She features regularly in the press and media thanks to the popularity and insight of her published works, including titles such as The Woman Reader (Yale University Press, 2012) and George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large (Chatto & Windus, 1999). As well as her five books, Professor Jack is widely published through her many articles, essays, chapters, and reviews. Her recent work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Literary Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and BBC History Magazine, amongst other publications. For a four year period, she also gave public lectures at The Museum of London under the general title, The Mysteries of Reading and Writing. In 2013, Professor Jack was appointed the Gresham Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, London.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
1:What is reading?
2:Ancient worlds
3:Reading manuscripts, reading print
4:Modern reading
5:Forbidden reading
6:Reading and/as interpretation
7:Pluralities
Further reading
Index

Reviews

"An altogether riveting read." - Paradigm Explorer