Professor Simon Eliot

(Director of the LRBS)

Previously he was Lecturer and subsequently Senior Lecturer in Literature at the Open University and then Professor of Publishing and Printing History at the University of Reading. He is Director of the MA in the History of the Book programme in the Institute of English Studies and has taught the course 'Printing, Publishing and Consuming Texts in Britain 1770-1919' at the Rare Book School at Charlottesville in 2002 and 2006. He has also appeared on British television teaching everything from Shakespeare to science fiction.

His current research interests cover quantitative and economic book history, publishing history (including the careers of Sir Walter Besant and John Camden Hotten), the history of libraries, and the history of reading (particularly reading in artificial light before electricity). He is one of the Directors of the Reading Experience Database (RED).

His publications include Some Patterns and Trends in British Publishing 1800-1919 (London , 1994) and A Handbook to Literary Research (London , 1998) (with W.R. Owens); he has edited The Blackwell Companion to the History of the Book (forthcoming) with Jonathan Rose and Literary Cultures and the Material Book (forthcoming with Andrew Nash and Ian Willison. He has contributed to volume 3 of The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge , 2006) and to volume III of The History of the Book in Scotland (forthcoming). He was an Associate Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and is editor of the journal Publishing History . He has recently been appointed General Editor of the new four-volume History of Oxford University Press .