A World of Fiction: Digital Collections and the Future of Literary History, a lunchtime book discussion with Katherine Bode. The workshop will discuss the book’s Introduction and Chapters 1 & 6 (entire work attached). Contact jlg2r@virginia.edu for a pdf of the readings.
Bode’s most recent book is the outcome of an Australian Research Council-funded project that explores fiction in historical Australian newspapers. By analyzing the millions of newspaper pages digitized by the National Library of Australia's Trove database, Bode discovered over 21,000 publications of fiction in Australia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These stories came from across the globe, including Britain, America, and Australia, as well as from France, Germany, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, and elsewhere. Exploring their circulation and contents offered new insights into how literature travelled globally during this period, and the consequences of this movement for literary, reading, and cultural history. The book offers a reconsideration of the relationship of literary history to the archive in this age of digital remediation.