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History of reading: An introduction to reading in the past
This free course, History of reading: An introduction to reading in the past, consists of a series of essays, drawn from material contained in the Reading Experience Database, that illustrate different aspects of reading in Britain during the period from 1450 to 1945. These essays are designed for you as the reader to dip in and dip out, allowing you to pick which essays best suits your purpose.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
- recognise an increased interest in exploring the history of reading
- understand a range of examples of research into the history of reading
- use RED to follow up any personal interests in the history of reading.
First Published: 09/08/2012
Updated: 17/03/2016
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There was a lot that I never knew before. I'd never given any thought to what famous people might have read, or to what other authors' texts another author might turn to read for themselves. Quite interesting that Samuel Pepys read a work by Boyle, and that Boyle himself had written about something other than the volume of gas; we were only taught about Boyle's Law in school, not that he had written other things. So to discover he'd written about colour, when we were only ever taught about Isaac Newton writing about colour!