Introduction: Transforming reading

To investigate reading practices in the decades on either side of the turn of the twenty-first century is to expose a rapidly evolving field whose inner dynamics are still in the process of being mapped and understood. Interpretive practices that previously might have been found only among a small circle of intimates can now be shared and disseminated online, and as a result are becoming visible, searchable, and, increasingly, commercially significant. The same is occurring with the digital traces left by book purchasing. A variety of technological developments are emerging as alternatives to existing systems of book production and distribution: the near-instantaneous delivery of texts to an e-book reader such as the Kindle, for example, and the arrival of technology that can print and bind a single book on demand and deliver it directly to the consumer within minutes. Interest in- and concern about-these developments registers in the popular press as well as in the academy, where a steadily rising tide of interest in the field of book history has coincided with developments in reception study, communications, and cultural studies. ¹ Methodologies for the study of reading are also evolving, with ethnographic approaches being adopted for use, and critiqued, by those in fields such as literary studies within which the study of reading had in earlier decades found a home.² In the context of such rapid and recent change, it is an area in need of scholarly attention, and one worth braving the perils of setting down any conclusions in codex form.