---

This reader is the most comprehensive selection of key texts on twentieth and twenty-first century print culture yet compiled. Illuminating the networks and processes that have shaped reading, writing and publishing, the selected extracts also examine the effect of printed and digital texts on society. Featuring a general introduction to contemporary print culture and publishing studies, the volume includes 42 influential and innovative pieces of writing, arranged around themes such as authorship, women and print culture, colonial and postcolonial publishing and globalisation.

Offering a concise survey of critical work, this volume is an essential companion for students of Literature or Publishing with an interest in the history of the book.

---

PART ONE: Publishing Theory and Practice .- Introduction.- Stanley Unwin, The Truth About a Publisher.- Pierre Bourdieu, The Market of Symbolic Goods.- Gérard Genette, Introduction to Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation.- Lynne Spender, Intruders on the Rights of Men: Women´s Unpublished Heritage.- John Thompson, Introduction to Merchants of Culture.- Michael Bhaskar, The Digital Context and Challenge.- PART TWO: Authorship .- Introduction.- Mary Ann Gillies, Agents and the Field of Print Culture.- Joe Moran, Disembodied Images: Authors, Authorship and Celebrity.- Juliet Gardiner, ´What is an Author´: Contemporary Publishing Discourse and the Author Figure.- Laura Dietz, Who Are You Calling an Author? Changing Definitions of Career Legitimacy for Novelists in the Digital Era.- George Landow, Reconfiguring the Author.- PART THREE: Readers and the Literary Marketplace .- Introduction.- Q. D. Leavis, The Book Market.- Geoffrey Faber, A Publisher Looks at Booksellers.- Janice Radway, The Scandal of the Middlebrow.- Clive Bloom, How the British Read.- PART FOUR: Censorship and Print Culture .- Introduction.- Sue Curry Jansen, The Censor´s New Clothes.- Lewis A. Coser, Publishers as Gatekeepers of Ideas.- Alistair McCleery.- The Trials and Travels of Lady Chatterley´s Lover .- Archie L. Dick, Combating Censorship and Making Space for Books.- PART FIVE: Books, Propaganda and War .- Introduction.- Peter Buitenhuis, Setting up the Propaganda Machine.- Jane Potter, For Country, Conscience and Commerce.- Valerie Holman, Publishing and the State.- Joe Pearson, Books for the Forces.- John B. Hench, The American Publisher´s Series Goes to War, 1942-1946.- PART SIX: Colonial and Postcolonial Print Culture .- Introduction.- Pascale Casanova, World Literary Space.- Robert Fraser, School Readers in the Empire and the Creation of Postcolonial Taste.- Henry Chakaya, Kenyan Publishing: Independence and Dependence.- Graham Huggan, African Literature/Postcolonial Exotic.- James Currey, Africa Writes Back.- PART SEVEN: Women and Print Culture .- Introduction.- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One´s Own.- Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon, Making a Difference: Feminist Publishing in the South.- Simone Murray, Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics.- Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar and Rumsha Shahzad, She Needs a Website of Her Own: The ´Indie´ Woman Writer and Contemporary Publishing.- PART EIGHT: Literary Prize Culture .- Introduction.- Richard Todd, Literary Prizes and the Media.- Tom Maschler, How It All Began: The Man Booker Prize.- Claire Squires, Genre in the Marketplace.- James English, Scandalous Currency.- PART NINE: Globalisation and the Book .- Introduction.- André Schiffrin, The Future of Publishing.- Walter Bgoya, The Effects of Globalisation in Africa.- Angus Phillips, The Global Book.- Suman Gupta, Globalisation and Literature.- Sarah Brouillette.- The Global Literary Field and Market Postcolonialism.

---

Caroline Davis is senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, in the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, where she teaches print culture, book history and publishing studies. She is the author of Creating Postcolonial Literature: African Writers and British Publishers (Palgrave, 2013) and the co-editor of The Book in Africa: Critical Debates (Palgrave, 2015). Her recent articles have appeared in the Journal of Southern African Studies, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, The Journal of Postcolonial Writing and Book History. She previously worked at Oxford University Press and Oxford University Centre for Humanities Computing.

---