The twelve essays in this edited collection variously examine ways in which the material text helps to direct the reader and shape the experience of the audience. The essays consider texts from later medieval England through to the twenty-first century. Central to the theme of the book is the role of materiality: how the physical object – book, manuscript, libretto – affects the experience of the person reading it.
Essays discuss early readers of manuscripts, digital technology, materiality and meaning, and book and textual cultures. Specific case-studies focus on the authorship of Frankenstein, the impact of the 1969 Penguin edition of Ulysses, the creation of P B Shelley’s reading public and the physical incarnations of W B Yeats’ poetry.