A study of the production and circulation of literary manuscripts in
Romantic-era Britain
- Offers a detailed examination of the practices of literary manuscript
culture, particularly the production, circulation and preservation of
manuscripts, based on extensive archival research
- Demonstrates how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print
culture, in a nuanced study of the interactions between the two media
- Examines the changing cultural attitudes towards literary manuscripts,
and how these changes affected practices and values
- Surveys the impact of digital media on our access to and understanding
of historical manuscripts
This book examines how manuscript practices interacted with an expanding
print marketplace to nurture and transform the period's literary
culture. It unearths the alternative histories manuscripts tell us about
British Romantic literary culture, describing the practices by which
handwritten documents were written, shared, altered and preserved, and
explores the functions they served as instruments of expression and
sociability. By demonstrating how literary manuscript culture co-evolved
with print culture, this study illuminates the complex entanglements
between the media of script and print.