Phonographic Books and the Late Nineteenth-Century Reader
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8891964 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Helen Groth (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Publication date | 2014-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Australian Literary Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0004-9697 • E-ISSN: 1837-6479 |
| Publisher | Australian Literary Studies (PUBLISHER • AU) |
| DOI | 10.20314/als.dfe18da7c4 |
| OpenAlex | W2467089588 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
While assimilating the writing on phonographic books produced in the immediate wake of Edison's essays into the history of 'audiobooks' is an important project, one currently being undertaken by Matthew Rubery, this essay is more concerned with tracing continuities between these various responses and mid- to late-nineteenth-century theories of reading that attended to its physiological and technological dimensions. As these responses indicate, the phonograph represented an extension of the socially inscriptive force of reading, to adapt Nicholas Dames, in which the solitary reader was 'not a sign of the atomization of preindustrial sociability, but the very location of contemporary sociability' (44). The novel, more than any other literary form in this period, was associated with an immersive reading experience that fostered distinctively modern 'automatic, or preconscious, styles of consumption' (Dames 44)
Art · Literature · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · History · Libraries, Manuscripts, and Books · Media, Communication, and Education
| Citations per year | 0.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |