Dreaming in Books – The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age - Hardcover

Piper, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226669726 ISBN 13: 9780226669724

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2009

Synopsis

At the opening of the nineteenth century, publishing houses in London, New York, Paris, Stuttgart, and Berlin produced books in ever greater numbers. But it was not just the advent of mass printing that created the era's 'bookish' culture. According to Andrew Piper, romantic writers played a crucial role in adjusting readers to this increasingly international and overflowing literary environment. Learning how to use and want books occurred through more than the technological, commercial, or legal conditions that made the growing proliferation of books possible; the making of such bibliographic fantasies was importantly a product of the symbolic operations contained within books as well. Examining novels, critical editions, gift books, translations, and illustrated books, as well as the communities who made them, "Dreaming in Books" tells a wide-ranging story of the book's identity at the turn of the nineteenth century. In so doing, it shows how many of the most pressing modern communicative concerns are not unique to the digital age but emerged with a particular sense of urgency during the bookish upheavals of the romantic era. In revisiting the book's rise through the prism of romantic literature, Piper aims to revise our assumptions about romanticism, the medium of the printed book, and, ultimately, the future of the book in our so-called digital age.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Piper is assistant professor of German studies and associate member of the departments of art history and communications studies at McGill University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226669726
• ISBN 13: 9780226669724
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320