{"product_id":"willful-listeners-kate-nesbit-9780813955568","title":"Willful Listeners: Reading Aloud and the Politics of Attention from Austen to Audiobooks","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA cultural and literary history of domestic reading aloud\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Listening,\" a recent Audible advertising campaign proclaimed, \"is the new reading.\" But this is no new phenomenon. In the nineteenth century, reading aloud was one of the most popular evening entertainments and one of the primary ways people consumed fiction. In \u003ci\u003eWillful Listeners\u003c\/i\u003e, Kate Nesbit considers the Victorian practice of reading aloud from the perspective of listeners--especially the rowdy and disobedient ones.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA counternarrative to more nostalgic portraits, this book spotlights fiction's unruly audience: tired laborers who zone out while listening to the Bible, women who fall asleep to their husbands' Shakespeare delivery, and children who eavesdrop on their parents reading the newspaper's sex scandals. Nesbit analyzes the ritual of reading aloud not merely as an idealized form of domestic intimacy or a method of moral improvement but rather as a praxis enmeshed in the period's contentious politics of attention. These scenes are about more than reading and reading aloud, Nesbit argues--they speak to attention's ties to social hierarchy. These are moments that call into question assumptions about who needs to pay attention to whom, about whose voices were deemed worth a listen, and whose voices required amplification. This is a history of both the audiobook and its audience before sound recording.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Kate Nesbit\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0813955564\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780813955568\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Virginia Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/02\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 270\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback","brand":"Kate Nesbit","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48997484101887,"sku":"9780813955568","price":29.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/willful-listeners-kate-nesbit-9780813955568","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}