At the turn 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 writing
and romantic writers played a crucial role in adjusting readers to this
increasingly international and overflowing literary environment.
Learning how to use and to 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.
