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The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing was founded to create a global network for book historians working in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. Research addresses the composition, mediation, reception, survival, and transformation of written communication in material forms from marks on stone to new media. Perspectives range from the individual reader to the transnational communication network. With more than a thousand members in over forty countries, SHARP works in concert with affiliated academic organizations around the world to support the study of book history in all its forms.

New York Songlines

Virtual Walking Tours of Manhattan Streets. A unique and rewarding hyperwalk through Manhattan.

from The Gate of Angels

From here she could see the light in the Wrayburns’ front room opposite—one light only until Mr Wrayburn got back, but at the 
Turner’s farm, well set back from the road, every window seemed to blaze, as though they were all keeping it up for some kind 
of celebration. There were two or three loud shouts from the house and then a creaking and splashing. As a dream repeats itself, 
Daisy saw a horse and cart coming out of the Turner’s entrance. It might have been the same cart, only it was well-lit now with 
safety oil lamps. It crossed the road, turned right and pulled up where Daisy stood. 

There was a woman driving, wrapped up like a parcel in rugs and tarpaulin. She said nothing, so Daisy picked up her bag, wiped 
her face with the back of her hand, put her foot on the slippery iron pedal, sprang up and edged into the passenger seat. As the 
cart rocked a little and steadied, the woman said without apparent feeling of any kind, “I’m going to my sister’s at Chesterton, I 
can’t stand any more of that old Turner tonight.”

The horse was evidently unwilling to leave its home as darkness fell. The woman beat it vigorously and it shook its head, throwing 
off showers of raindrops that glittered in the light of the new headlamp, then started off at a jog trot. It was a slow journey—
everything on the road passed them—but not a quiet one. The cart, like a ship at sea, had a pitch as well as a roll, and there was 
a recurrent screech from a loose spoke on the wheel, along with the creak of the collar and traces and the blowing and rumbling 
like a deep inner protestation from the horse itself as its feet clocked and clapped in hollow succession on and on. The ride 
seemed neither short nor long. It was isolated from everyone and everything else on the road by its peaceful, noisy, familiar, 
monotonous discomfort. 

Daisy knew by the lamps that they must have got to the Chesterton Road, where she hoped to catch a motor-bus to the station. 
She had been rocked almost to sleep, but now she turned to the rugs and tarpaulin beside her. 

“If you’d be kind enough to slow up, I can jump down. It was very good of you to stop for me. I don’t know what I’d have 
done otherwise.”

“You looked as if you’d lost something, that’s why I stopped for you.” 

Daisy hesitated. “You don’t know who I am.”

“Yes, I do,” said Mrs Turner.
Penelope Fitzgerald