The Book Unbound: Material Cultures of Reading and Collecting, 1750-1850 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

How does our understanding of Romantic literature change when we shift the focus from bound books to unbound forms? Assumptions about the book as a bound object have isolated literature from overlapping material cultures of book making, reading, viewing, and collecting. The Book Unbound reconstructs a Romantic textual condition of unbound forms in which the book acted as a repository for open-ended collections of discrete book parts, prints, watercolours, manuscripts, and serial publications, ca. 1750–1850. Three case studies trace changing material practices of book making before and after publisher's bindings marked a turning point from a culture of unbound books. Through the restricted coterie gathered around Horace Walpole's private press at Strawberry Hill, William Blake's printmaker-poet's book making, and Charles Dickens's serialized part publications, this monograph changes understandings of the book as a medium.

Luisa Calè writes about the visual and material cultures of reading, viewing, and collecting in the Romantic period, from literary galleries to extra-illustrations, altered books, periodical, and print culture. She is Exhibitions Editor for Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, Associate Editor at Word & Image. She works at Birkbeck, University of London.