Crusoe's Books: Readers in the Empire of Print, 1800-1918 [Hardcover]

Surveys 'mobile readers' in the age of the British Empire to explore what books meant to shipboard readers, Scottish emigrants, convicts en route to Australia, polar explorers, and troops in the First World War.This is a book about readers on the move in the age of Victorian empire. It examines the libraries and reading habits of five reading constituencies from the long nineteenth century: shipboard emigrants, Australian convicts, Scottish settlers, polar explorers, and troops in the First World War. What was the role of reading in extreme circumstances? How were new meanings made under strange skies? How was reading connected with mobile communities in an age of expansion? Uncovering a vast range of sources from the period, from diaries, periodicals, and literary culture, Bill Bell reveals some remarkable and unanticipated insights into the way that reading operated within and upon the British Empire for over a century.Introduction: Hermeneutic Castaways1. Our Floating Commonwealth2. The Indiscipline of Reading3. A Kingdom of the Mind4. Bound for Antarctica5. The War for CivilizationEpilogueBill BellBill Bell is Professor of Bibliography at Cardiff University and Senior Research Fellow at The University of Goettingen. He has held visiting posts at the Universities of Canberra, Munich, Ottawa, and St John's College Oxford. He was the founder of the Edinburgh Centre for the History of the Book and is General Editor ofThe Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland(4 volumes). His publications also include the co-authoredExploration, Writing and Publishing with John Murray, 1773-1859(Chicago, 2015) and he served as editor of the OUP quarterly journal,The Library, the world's premier scholarly journal in bibliography. This is a splendid book. -- D. L. Patey,CHOICE

InCrusoe's Books, Bill Bell presents a unique and refreshing take on convict history combining exceptional scholarship with a gift for language and narrative lc$