Who Served Victorian Books? with Leah Price

The Kim-Park Program for the Study of the Book is pleased to present Who Served Victorian Books? with Leah Price, author and Associate Chair of the English Department, Rutgers University.

Almost every Victorian who owned a bookshelf employed a servant. Who Served Victorian Books asks how that fact warped textual theory and practice. How do books function in a society that equates being a reader with being a master? What varieties of labor made print usable? Who found those labors good to think with? How did servants’ encounters with their masters’ books as proxy shape their interaction with fugitive print as principal? How did poor women picture rich men using books, and vice versa? Why did either party care? From its origins, the field of bibliography has emphasized the range of social groups involved in making books. I shift the scene from printshop to household, to ask instead what division of labor went into their consumption.

This event is open to all with registration and will be held in Regenstein Library, Room 122A-B.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Kim-Park Program for the Study of the Book