UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Edited by Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier
Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane

A Lingua Franca Breakthrough Book

A pioneering survey of the changing practices of reading
in Western culture, from antiquity to the present

"This collection of authoritative essays on reading since the ancient Greeks marks the culmination of more than twenty years of work. [The editors] have assembled the leading scholars in the history of reading to provide a well balanced, nearly comprehensive survey of developments in the West. . . . Mandatory reading for all scholars and their students in the history of the book and its many uses."

Libraries and Culture

"It is no exaggeration to say that these historians, mining sources ranging from the financial records of trade fairs to the annals of the Inquisitions, have transformed and revitalized the field of book history. . . . A landmark achievement."

San Francisco Chronicle

"Its usefulness to scholars of the history of the book, reading, writing, and print cultures is immense. . . . Although a different author wrote each of its thirteen chapters, the volume enjoys a wonderful coherence, in large part attributable to the collection's excellent introduction. . . . Deserves a place in the library of any serious scholar of books, readers, or writers."

SHARP News

"The viewpoints offered by the authors are rich and varied, so that the ensemble of texts forms a veritable history of reading in the West, rather than thirteen individual and specialized chapters. . . . Men and women have not always read in the same manner, even if societies from ancient Greece to the present have been societies of the written word, of the written text. A study of their reading practices, and of the textual objects they read, can, the editors of this volume believe, inform the larger transformations western society has undergone."

History of Reading News

"There is no way to encapsulate here the richness of these explorations."

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Guglielmo Cavallo is professor of Greek palaeography at the University of Rome La Sapienza.

Roger Chartier is directeur d'études at l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Literary History / Cultural Studies
488 pp., LC 99-22447
$45.00s cloth, ISBN 978-1-55849-213-4
$27.50s paper, ISBN 978-1-55849-411-4
1999 cloth, August 2003 paper

To order the paperback edition online, click on "ADD TO CART"
To order the cloth edition online, click here
To order either edition by mail or fax, click here for an order form

A volume in the series Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book

For sale in the United States and Canada only

about placing orders on our secure server
ADD TO CART | VIEW CART | CHECKOUT