{"product_id":"dockside-reading-9781478015123","title":"Dockside Reading","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIsabel Hofmeyr traces the relationship between print culture, colonialism, and the ocean through the institution of the late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British colonial custom houses, which acted as censors and pronounced on copyright and checked imported printed matter for piracy, sedition, or obscenity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“As we have come to expect from Isabel Hofmeyr, \u003ci\u003eDockside Reading\u003c\/i\u003e is dazzlingly creative, intellectually playful, and immaculately crafted. This is a brilliant history of the ideas and textual forms that emerged from the damp crates that customs officials scoured at the water’s edge for signs of contamination. Setting sail from South Africa, ranging across the world’s oceans, this is a quietly revolutionary, fully aquatic literary history for our times.” -- Sunil Amrith, Dhawan Professor of History, Yale University\u003cbr\u003e“What happens to books when they cross borders? Isabel Hofmeyr sets her radically new history of literature not in the library but at the dock. In pages where authors and scholars are upstaged by censors, customs officers, and even dockhands, she challenges literary critics to think beyond the text as a static entity tied to a single nation or a single landmass. This is that rare book that will make it impossible to continue doing business as usual—for literary critics, for legal scholars, and for book historians.” -- Leah Price, author of * What We Talk about When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading *\u003cbr\u003e“Hofmeyr addresses themes that acknowledge but transcend the particularities of place, revealing instead the connecting threads that bind disparate parts of the world together.” -- Dane Kennedy * International Journal of African Historical Studies *\u003cbr\u003e“Hofmeyr’s scholarship is exemplary in its marriage of evocative detail with magisterial overview. She gives a compelling account of how customs procedure developed and changed over the course of almost a century. . . . She teaches us a new way to read.” -- Matthew P.M. Kerr * Modern Language Review *\u003cbr\u003e\"[Hofmeyr's] work sheds important light on the interdependency between reading practices and the book as object. . . . Hofmeyr deftly interweaves her research into customs documents with environmental and postcolonial theory, animating what is usually perceived as a dull or colorless archive through semantic resignification.\" -- Neelam Srivastava * Journal of Postcolonial Inquiry *\u003cbr\u003e\"In her stimulating investigation, \u003ci\u003eDockside Reading\u003c\/i\u003e, Isabel Hofmeyr offers a fresh perspective on book history in the British Empire.\" -- Katharine Anderson * Journal of British Studies *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Hofmeyr has produced a remarkable volume combining elements of both historical and 'literary' scholarship. It is a must read for those who study English Literature, the British Empire, the history of material culture, and international trade transactions of both human and non-human 'cargo.'”\u003c\/p\u003e -- Paul Chiudiza Banda * African Studies Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments  ix\u003cbr\u003e Introduction. Hydrocolonialism: The View from the Dockside  1\u003cbr\u003e 1. The Custom House and Hydrocolonial Governance  27\u003cbr\u003e 2. Customs and Objects on a Hydrocolonial Frontier  39\u003cbr\u003e 3. Copyright on a Hydrocolonial Frontier  49\u003cbr\u003e 4. Censorship on a Hydrocolonial Frontier  63\u003cbr\u003e Conclusion. Dockside Genres and Postcolonial Literature  77\u003cbr\u003e Notes  85\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography  103\u003cbr\u003e Index  117","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49408997654871,"sku":"9781478015123","price":62.9,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781478015123.jpg?v=1730505024","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/dockside-reading-9781478015123","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}