Reading Material in Early Modern England Print, Gender, and Literacy Brayman

Reading Material in Early Modern EnglandPrint, Gender, and Literacy\nAuthor(s): Heidi Brayman Hackel\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521842518, 978-0521842518\nSynopsis\nReading Material in Early Modern England rediscovers the practices and representations of a wide range of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English readers. Heidi Brayman Hackel argues for a history of reading centred on the traces left by merchants and maidens, gentlewomen and servants, adolescents and matrons - precisely those readers whose entry into the print marketplace provoked debate and changed the definition of literacy. By telling their stories and insisting upon their variety, Brayman Hackel displaces both the singular 'ideal' reader of literacy theory and the elite male reader of literacy history. This interdisciplinary study draws upon portraiture, prefaces, marginalia, commonplace books, inventories, diaries, le.