In so doing, Machor takes us ever closer to understanding the particular and varying reading strategies of historical audiences and how they impacted authors' conceptions of their own readership.

James L. Machor is a professor of English at Kansas State University, editor of Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response, also published by Johns Hopkins, and coeditor of Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies and New Directions in American Reception Study.