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READING, SOCIETY AND POLITICS IN
EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England ranges over pri-
vate and public reading, and over a variety of religious, social and
munities to locate acts of reading in specific historical
moments from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. It also charts
the changes in reading habits that reflect broader social and political
shifts during the period. A team of expert contributors cover topics in-
cluding the processes of book production and distribution, audiences
and markets, the material text, the relation of print to performance,
and the politics of acts of reception. In addition, the volume em-
phasizes the independence of early modern readers and their role in
making meaning in an age in which increased literacy equalled so-
cial enfranchisement and interpretation was power. Meaning was not
simply an authorial act but the work of many hands and processes,
from editing, printing and proofing, to reproducing, distributing and
finally reading.
kevin sharpe is Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University
of Warwick and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the
English Association. He has authored or edited eleven books, includ-
ing Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-
Century Politics (2000), Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in
EarlyModern England (2000) and Criticism pliment (1987).
steven n. zwicker is Elkin Professor of Humanities at
Washington University in St Louis. He has written widely on
seventeenth-century literature and politics, and together with Kevin
Sharpe has edited Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from
the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution (1998) and Politics of
Discourse: The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England
(1987). His own monographs include Politics and Language in Dryden’s
Poetry: The Arts of Disguise (1984) and Lines of Au