I teach book history, novel theory, and Victorian culture.
My books include What We Talk About When We Talk About Books (Basic Books, 2019, Ukrainian translation 2020, Russian translation 2027; Christian Gauss Prize); How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain (Princeton UP, 2012; Patten Prize, Channing Prize, honorable mention for James Russell Lowell Prize) and The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel (Cambridge UP, 2000). I also edited Further Reading (with Matthew Rubery, Oxford UP 2020), Unpacking my Library: Writers and their Books (Yale UP, 2011); Literary Secretaries/Secretarial Culture (with Pamela Thurschwell); and (with Seth Lerer) a cluster of essays of PMLA on The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature.
I write for the New York Times Book Review, , New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe and Public Books (where I am also a section editor: pitch me). My research on the history of reading has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Economist, New York Times Book Review and the New York Times.
Contact
Email:leahpr@gmail.com