Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"[A] sharp study. . . . The thorough research—drawn largely from margin annotations, letters, and journals—impresses, illuminating the dynamic ways an expanding readership made sense of Augustan literature. English scholars will find much to ponder." * Publishers Weekly *
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Reading It Wrong sounds like a book reviewer’s nightmare, but I’ve come to trust the scholar Abigail Williams. . . . By examining letters, diaries and marginalia, Williams demonstrates that those original ‘imperfect readers’ were awash in ‘a particularly acute sense of puzzlement and confusion.’ But this bafflement wasn’t a bug; it was a feature of dynamic and interactive works of literature."
---Ron Charles, Washington Post"[A] brilliantly astute and deeply learned alternative history of early eighteenth-century English literature."
---Paul Sabor, Voltaire Foundation"[A] fine history of readerly misprision."
---Thomas Keymer, London Review of Books
