Books, Reading, and the World of Goods in Antebellum New England

Generations of Books: A Tasmanian Family Library, 1816–1994

“…156-57]. 8 The effect of Marjorie's arrangements was to fragment the internal coherence of the Harrop library, relegating the books to the less formal rooms where they became background to the "official" cultural face of the Archer dynasty at Woolmers. What occupies the foreground is what I earlier called the "outer library," a distinct cultural artifact assembled-mainly, I think, during the 1940s-on the basis of a relationship between Marjorie Archer and the books of her husband's great-great-grandfather.…”

“…Within this outer library-which is mainly coterminous with the dining room collection-it is fairly certain that many, perhaps all, of the unin- 8. See also the Woolmers Estate Web site at http://www.woolmers.com.au/.…”

“…Most published research on the subject has consisted of either bibliographic reconstructions of important family libraries or historical accounts of the sale and dispersal of aristocratic family libraries [3][4]; the known contents of family libraries have been used as evidence of class or gender "mentalities" existing at particular times and places [5][6]. 2 An exception is the work of Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, whose work on readership in antebellum New England includes an instance of virtual communication across two generations of readers within a family by way of the books in the family library [8].…”

Reading in the Borderland: An Ethnographic Study of Serious Readers in a Mega-Bookstore Café

“…In their quest to unearth actual readers (not implied, inferred, or imagined), Chartier (1994) and other social historians of the book have chipped away at the solitary reader model and discovered some of the powerful institutional and social forces that have shaped reading practices and constituted particular reading communities (Darnton, 1990;D. Hall, 1989;Nord, 2001Nord, , 2004Pawley, 2002;Zboray & Zboray, 1996).…”