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Alberto Manguel meticulously traces the history of reading from the earliest examples of the clay tablets and cuneiform of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt via the invention of printing in the fifteenth century to the birth of a mass reading public and today′s digital revolution. A History of Reading argues that it is the demands and expectations of the reader, acting alongside the creative will of the writer, that is the evolutionary motor of literary forms and genres. From man′s first use of the written word simply as a form of reference, to the emergence of the first holy or devotional texts, and on to the development of fictions, both poetic and novelistic, A History of Reading in it′s wide scope will amuse, challenge and enlighten.
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