The Reading Experience Database 1450-1945 (RED)
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Grant Holder:
Professor W. R. Owens
The aim of this project is to investigate how and why reading as an individual and social practice has changed over the period 1450 to 1945, in terms of who readers were; how they accessed reading material; what, where, and how they read; and how they responded to what they read. Supported by funding from AHRC and from The Open University, the central achievement of the project to date has been the establishment of The Reading Experience Database (RED) at The Open University. RED is an open access electronic resource that provides users with a searchable body of evidence for the experiences and practices of British readers from 1450 to 1945. It currently contains over 30,000 records of documented, traceable reading experiences, in the form of bibliographical information and quotations drawn from sources such as autobiographies, diaries, marginalia and letters, and also from databases such as the Old Bailey Sessions Papers and Mass Observation. As well as details of the work(s) being read, such information as is available about readers is recorded. The first project of its kind anywhere in the world, it provides fascinating evidence of how readers from all levels of society interacted with books, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, and all kinds of written or printed texts.
Reading, however, is not confined within national boundaries, but is a transnational phenomenon. The current phase of the project, again funded by AHRC, is directed at the establishment of RED projects in Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, and New Zealand. The UK RED software is being made available to partners in these countries, and an 'umbrella search' function will enable a user of one national RED to search across all the others. These developments will enhance the attractiveness of REDs to a wide variety of users, and will facilitate further international collabration in the history of reading.
| Project start date: 1996-01 |
Subject domains:
Era(s):
Country/region(s):
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| Collaborative publishing | Data publishing and dissemination |
Funding sources:
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), The Open University
Content types created:
Dataset/structured data, Text
Software tools used:
SQL, PHP, GNU E-Prints
Source material used:
Evidence of reading in the past is collected from a variety of print and manuscript sources, including autobiographies, dairies, commonplace books, letters and personal papers, social investigation studies and court records. The specific evidence of the reading experience is recorded in a specially designed contribution form, which is then submitted to the RED team. It is checked by an academic member of the team before release into the database.
Digital resource created:
MySql database containing texual resources on the history of reading. This is an open access resource, designed not only for historians of the book and of reading, but for social historians, local and family historians, literary scholars, biographers, book collectors, librarians, and anyone interested in the readership and reception of particular authors or books, and in the activities of specific readers or groups of readers.
Access to digital resource:
Open Access
Data Formats created:
MySQL
Publications:
Colclough, Stephen, 'Readers: Books and Biography', in Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose, eds, A Companion to the History of the Book (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007)
Crone, Rosalind, Katie Halsey and Shafquat Towheed (eds), The History of Reading: A Reader (Routledge, 2010)
Crone, Rosalind and Shafquat Towheed (eds), The History of Reading, Vol 3, Methods, Strategies, Tactics (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Crone, Rosalind, "The Common Reader", History Today (January 2008), 42-43.
Crone, Rosalind, “Cries of murder and sounds of bloodshed: The practice of reading cheap fiction in working-class communities in early Victorian London”, in Rosalind Crone, et al, New Perspectives in British Cultural History (Newcastle, 2007).
Halsey, Katie and W. R. Owens (eds), The History of Reading, Vol 2, Evidence from the British Isles, c. 1750-1945 (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Halsey, Katie, "Reading the Evidence of Reading", Popular Narrative Media, 2 (Autumn 2008), 123-137.
Halsey, Katie, "'Critics as a race are donkeys': Margaret Oliphant, Critic or Common Reader", Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 2 (2007), 42-68.
Halsey, Katie, "'Much may be learned with regard to lovely woman by a look at the book she reads in': The Reading Experience Database 1430-1945", The Female Spectator, 2.1 (Spring, 2007).
Halsey, Katie, '"Folk Stylistics" and the History of Reading: a discussion of method', Language and Literature, 18 (2009).
Hammond, Mary, "The Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945", in Robin Myers, Michael Harris and Giles Mandlebrote, eds., Owners, Annotators and the Signs of Reading (London, 2005), pp. 175-187.
Hammond, Mary, Reading, Publishing and the Formation of Literary Taste in England, 1880-1914 (Ashgate, 2006).
Hammond, Mary, 'Readers and Readerships,' Cambridge Companion to Literature 1830-1914 (forthcoming).
Towheed, Shafquat and W. R. Owens (eds), The History of Reading, Vol 1, International Perspectives, c. 1550-1945 (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Towheed, Shafquat, 'Reading History and Nation: R.L. Stevenson's reading of William Forbes Mitchell's Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny', Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 31 (2009), 3-17.
Weedon, Alexis 'The Uses of Quantification' in Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose eds. A Companion to the History of the Book (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), pp. 33-49.
Crone, Rosalind, Katie Halsey and Shafquat Towheed (eds), The History of Reading: A Reader (Routledge, 2010)
Crone, Rosalind and Shafquat Towheed (eds), The History of Reading, Vol 3, Methods, Strategies, Tactics (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Crone, Rosalind, "The Common Reader", History Today (January 2008), 42-43.
Crone, Rosalind, “Cries of murder and sounds of bloodshed: The practice of reading cheap fiction in working-class communities in early Victorian London”, in Rosalind Crone, et al, New Perspectives in British Cultural History (Newcastle, 2007).
Halsey, Katie and W. R. Owens (eds), The History of Reading, Vol 2, Evidence from the British Isles, c. 1750-1945 (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Halsey, Katie, "Reading the Evidence of Reading", Popular Narrative Media, 2 (Autumn 2008), 123-137.
Halsey, Katie, "'Critics as a race are donkeys': Margaret Oliphant, Critic or Common Reader", Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 2 (2007), 42-68.
Halsey, Katie, "'Much may be learned with regard to lovely woman by a look at the book she reads in': The Reading Experience Database 1430-1945", The Female Spectator, 2.1 (Spring, 2007).
Halsey, Katie, '"Folk Stylistics" and the History of Reading: a discussion of method', Language and Literature, 18 (2009).
Hammond, Mary, "The Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945", in Robin Myers, Michael Harris and Giles Mandlebrote, eds., Owners, Annotators and the Signs of Reading (London, 2005), pp. 175-187.
Hammond, Mary, Reading, Publishing and the Formation of Literary Taste in England, 1880-1914 (Ashgate, 2006).
Hammond, Mary, 'Readers and Readerships,' Cambridge Companion to Literature 1830-1914 (forthcoming).
Towheed, Shafquat and W. R. Owens (eds), The History of Reading, Vol 1, International Perspectives, c. 1550-1945 (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Towheed, Shafquat, 'Reading History and Nation: R.L. Stevenson's reading of William Forbes Mitchell's Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny', Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 31 (2009), 3-17.
Weedon, Alexis 'The Uses of Quantification' in Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose eds. A Companion to the History of the Book (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), pp. 33-49.
Institutions affiliated with this project:
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| University of Southampton |
| The Open University |
| University of London |
| University of Stirling |
| University of Bedfordshire |
| University of Wales Bangor |
Project staff and expertise:
| Principal staff member: | Professor Bob Owens (Director and PI), Dr Shafquat Towheed (Project Supervisor and CoI), Dr Rosalind Crone (CoI) |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | Computing officer(s) / Technical supporter(s), Postdoctoral researcher(s) / Research assistant(s) |
| External expertise: |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | Bob Owens |
| Title | The Reading Experience Database 1450-1945 (RED) |
| Record created | 2007-04-03 |
| Record updated | 2010-08-12 16:12 |
| URL of record | http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2239 |
| Citation of record | Bob Owens: The Reading Experience Database 1450-1945 (RED). <http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2239> created: 2007-04-03, last updated 2010-08-12 16:12 |