Books by Deidre Shauna (University of Toronto) Lynch

Serves as a riposte to those who use the phrase "the love of literature" as if its meaning were transparent, its essence happy and healthy.

At the start of the 18th century, literary "characters" referred as much to letters and typefaces as it did to persons in books. However, this text shows how, by the 19th century, readers used transactions with characters to accommodate themselves to newly-commmercialized social relations.