Pg. 99: Bill Bell's "Crusoe's Books"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Crusoe's Books: Readers in the Empire of Print, 1800-1918 by Bill Bell.

About the book, from the publisher:

This is a book about readers on the move in the age of Victorian empire. It examines the libraries and reading habits of five reading constituencies from the long nineteenth century: shipboard emigrants, Australian convicts, Scottish settlers, polar explorers, and troops in the First World War. What was the role of reading in extreme circumstances? How were new meanings made under strange skies? How was reading connected with mobile communities in an age of expansion? Uncovering a vast range of sources from the period, from diaries, periodicals, and literary culture, Bill Bell reveals some remarkable and unanticipated insights into the way that reading operated within and upon the British Empire for over a century.

Visit the Crusoe's Books blog.

The Page 99 Test: Crusoe's Books.

--Marshal Zeringue