I teach the novel, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and occasionally French culture, gender, and book history.
My books include How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain (Princeton UP, 2012) and The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel (Cambridge UP, 2000). I also edited Unpacking my Library: Writers and their Books (Yale UP, 2011); Literary Secretaries/Secretarial Culture (with Pamela Thurschwell); and (with Seth Lerer) a special issue of PMLA on The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature.
I write for the New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe and Public Books (where I am also a section editor).
Forthcoming: Overbooked: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Reading Wars (Basic Books, 2018). I am curious about what, where, when, and how you read (sitting or standing? in public or private? on paper or plastic? by purchase or loan or hand-me-down or gift?), with whom, & most of all why.
- Join the Humanities Center research seminar on the History of the Book (convened by me, Ann Blair, Alex Csiszar and Deidre Lynch).
- Sign up to be notified of Boston-area book history events.
- Browse resources for Book history @ Harvard.
