Bringing together historians, literary scholars, theorists, librarians, and historians of the book, Reading and the Victorians examines the era when reading underwent a swifter and more radical transformation than at any other moment in history. The contributors stress the continuities and the conflicts between the Victorian period and our own, in essays that examine nineteenth-century reading in all its personal, historical, literary, and material contexts, and also ask questions about how we read the Victorians' reading in the present day.

Contents: Introduction, Matthew Bradley and Juliet John. Part I The Public Aspects of Private Reading: Reading by artificial light in the Victorian age, Simon Eliot; New innovations in audience control: the select library and sensation, Stephen Colclough; Reading Langham Place periodicals at number 19, Beth Palmer. Part II The Reading Relationship: Deep reading in the manuscripts: Dickens and the manuscript of David Copperfield, Philip Davis; 'Telling all': reading women's diaries in the 1890s, Catherine Delafield; Reading across the lines and off the page: Dickens's model of multiple literacies in Our Mutual Friend, Sheila Cordner. Part III Reading the Victorians Today: Victorian readers and their library records today, K. E. Attar; Query: Victorian reading, Rosalind Crone; Gladstone's unfinished synchrony: reading afterlives and the Gladstone database, Matthew Bradley; The sharing of stories, in company with Mr Dickens, Clare Ellis. Afterword, Jenny Hartley; Works cited; Index.

Matthew Bradley is Lecturer in the School of English at the University of Liverpool, UK, and Juliet John is Hildred Carlile Chair of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.