A History of ReadingA book for book lovers by a true lover of books! At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning, and at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist and editor Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the six-thousand-year-old conversation between words and that hero without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel brilliantly covers reading as seduction, as rebellion, and as obsession and goes on to trace the quirky and fascinating history of the reader’s progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to digital. |
Contents
Beginnings 177 | 27 |
The Silent Readers | 41 |
The Book of Memory | 55 |
Learning to Read | 67 |
The Missing First Page | 85 |
The Shape of the Book | 125 |
Private Reading | 149 |
Metaphors of Reading | 163 |
Ordainers of the Universe | 187 |
The Translator as Reader | 261 |
ENDPAPER PAGES | 307 |
Notes | 321 |
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Common terms and phrases
according act of reading al-Haytham ancient Anthony Comstock Aristotle Beatus Rhenanus became become Bible Biblia Pauperum Bibliothèque Book of Hours Borges Buenos Aires Callimachus Cambridge catalogue centuries later Christ Christian Church classics codex Constantine copy depicted early eyes fifteenth French German glasses Greek hand History of Reading Ibid images imagined invention Jorge Luis Borges Kafka King Labé Labé's language Latin letters Libri listener literature lived London Louise Labé manuscript Martini's Mary meaning medieval memory Museum never novels Paris Petrarch Pillow Book Pliny Pliny the Younger poems poet printed public readings Quoted read out loud reader Rilke Roman Rome Saint Augustine scholar scribe scroll Sei Shonagon Sélestat sense shelves silent reading sometimes stories tablets teacher teaching things tion trans translation verses Virgil voice volumes Walter Benjamin Whitman women words writing written wrote York