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040 _aMAIN
041 _aEng
100 _aDobraszczyk,Paul
245 _aCity Reading:
_bThe Design and Use of Nineteenth-Century London Guidebooks
_cPaul Dobraszczyk
260 _aOxford:
_bOxford University Press,
_c2012.
300 _aVolume 25, Issue 2, June 2012,(123–144 p.)
310 _aQuarterly
520 _aThis article focuses on the design and use of information in London guidebooks in the nineteenth century, a time when the city guidebook developed into what is recognizable as its modern format. Focusing for the first time on the information content of guidebooks in this period, it examines, in turn, the typographic characteristics of guidebooks and their visual counterparts, maps. The article assesses how the producers of guidebooks—publishers, map-makers and printers—addressed the perceived needs and abilities of their intended readers and explores how actual readers responded, whether through textual annotations or accounts of navigation in the city. It is demonstrated that guidebooks were subject to varied acts of reading (browsing, studying, searching) applied to equally varied information carriers (descriptive text, indexes, schedules and maps). If this ‘useful’ reading has received some attention by analysts of human perception and information, that attention has seldom been directed at information or readers of the past.
650 _aBook Design
_yNineteenth Century
_zGreat Britain
_zLondon
650 _aTourism
650 _aTypography
773 0 _09229
_913521
_dOxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
_oJ000524
_tJournal of Design History
_x0952-4649
856 _uhttps://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/eps015
942 _cART
999 _c15467
_d15467