Echo Chambers and Paper Memorials: Mid and Late-Seventeenth-Century Book-bindings and the Practices of Early Modern Reading

Recent work in early modern English collecting and bookbinding has shown the extent to which readers viewed books as malleable collections rather than unified totalities. This essay expands our understanding of these practices by examining a series of volumes collected and bound during the second half of the seventeenth century. These volumes show texts transformed by their proximity to other, often incongruous imprints, as well as readers registering their own presence amidst the chaotic print world of Civil War England.