Reading It Wrong : An Alternative History of Early Eighteenth-Century Literature

How eighteenth-century literature depended on misinterpretation-and how this still shapes the way we readReading It Wrong is a new history of eighteenth-century English literature that explores what has been everywhere evident but rarely talked about: the misunderstanding, muddle and confusion of readers of the past when they first met the uniquely elusive writings of the period.Abigail Williams uses the marginal marks and jottings of these readers to show that flawed interpretation has its own history-and its own important role to play-in understanding how, why and what we read. Focussing on the first half of the eighteenth century, the golden age of satire, Reading It Wrong tells how a combination of changing readerships and fantastically tricky literature created the perfect grounds for puzzlement and partial comprehension.Through the lens of a history of imperfect reading, we see that many of the period’s major works-by writers including Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Mary Wortley Mo