I teach book history, novel theory, and Victorian culture. After chairing the History and Literature program at Harvard and then moving to Rutgers to build the Book Initiative and Scarlet Letterpress, I am moving to Oxford in 2027 to become the Professor of Modern Book History and to build a new manual humanities space (working title: The Book Kitchen).
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, Boston Globe and Public Books (where I am also a section editor: pitch me). My research on the history of reading has recently been profiled in El Pais, The Atlantic, New Yorker, The Economist, Businessweek, Dagens (Copenhagen), and the New York Times.
Contact
Email:leah.price@ell.ox.ac.uk