Why Making Books Means Reading Differently

Do you prefer to read novels on Kindles or curl up with a paperback? Have you ever discarded a dustjacket to the waste-paper basket, or decided you preferred the original front cover to a new edition? In this talk Georgina Wilson, who teaches and researches English Literature, will think about books as objects, and how their physicality changes how we read their stories.

Here at Thin Ice Press, where we print books letter by letter using technologies that are 500 years old, modern texts can become hugely unfamiliar things. Tracing the stories of writers including Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf who physically shaped their books as well as writing them, this talk will show how making books means reading differently.

Georgina Wilson is the Postdoctoral Research Associate at Thin Ice Press and University of York. She teaches and researches literature in the Renaissance period and beyond, and her book Paper and the Making of Early Modern Literature is coming out with the University of Pennsylvania Press in summer 2025.

This talk is free though donations are appreciated to support the Centre. Please book by the link below.

Address: Peasholme Green, York Y01 7PW

what3words ///fever.power.giving

Our studio is in a former schoolhouse, nestled in the tranquil garden of St Anthony's Hall and overlooked by the city walls. York railway station is within a 20-minute walk and the Peasholme Green bus stops are located just outside the entrance to the garden. Q-Park Shambles is nearby.

Please arrive five minutes before the start of the talk.

Host or Publisher Thin Ice Press: the York Centre for Print