Re-Constructing the Book

Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2001. Literary critics, textual editors and bibliographers, and historians of publishing have hitherto tended to publish their research as if in separate fields of enquiry. The purpose of this volume is to bring together contributions from these fields in a dialogue rooted in the transmission of texts. Arranged chronologically, so as to allow the use of individual sections relevant to period literature courses, the book offers students and teachers a set of essays designed to reflect these approaches and to signal their potential for fruitful integration. Some of the essays answer the demand "Show me what literary critics (or textual editor; or book historians) do and how they do it", and stand as examples of the different concerns, methodologies and strategies employed. Others draw attention to the potential of the approaches in combination.