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Introduces readers to the history of books in Britain—their significance, influence, and current and future status Presented as a comprehensive, up-to-date narrative, The Book in Britain: A Historical Introduction explores the impact of books, manuscripts, and other kinds of material texts on the cultures and societies of the British Isles. The text clearly explains the technicalities of printing and publishing and discusses the formal elements of books and manuscripts, which are necessary to facilitate an understanding of that impact. This collaboratively authored narrative history combines the knowledge and expertise of five scholars who seek to answer questions such as: How does the material form of a text affect its meaning? How do books shape political and religious movements? How have the economics of the book trade and copyright shaped the literary canon? Who has been included in and excluded from the world of books, and why? The Book in Britain: A Historical Introduction will appeal to all scholars, students, and historians interested in the written word and its continued production and presentation.

This book offers a radical new theory of the role of poetry in the rise of cultural nationalism. With equal attention to England, Scotland, and Wales, the book takes an Archipelagic approach to the study of poetics, print media, and medievalism in the rise of British Romanticism. It tells the story of how poets and antiquarian editors in the British nations rediscovered forgotten archaic poetic texts and repurposed them as the foundation of a new concept of the nation, now imagined as a primarily cultural formation. It also draws on legal and ecclesiastical history in drawing a sharp contrast between early modern and Romantic antiquarianisms. Equally a work of literary criticism and history, the book offers provocative new theorizations of nationalism and Romanticism and new readings of major British poets, including Allan Ramsay, Thomas Gray, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.