Dr Anne Marie Hagen Work in progress talk
'Books, Guns, and Badly-Adjusted Sights: Debating Eyesight and Children’s Book Design, 1900-1915'
'In the early twentieth century, reading–and the material quality of books–became widely associated with having a potentially negative effect on children’s health. Part of a broader debate on public health and national productivity, the eyesight question was a preoccupation amongst medical and education professionals, education authorities, the national press and, naturally, the printing and publishing trades. This paper gives a brief outline of the debate and examines some publisher responses to this question, paying particular attention to Dr Richard Wilson, senior editor with the Edinburgh and London publishing firm Thomas Nelson & Sons, and his use of embodied aesthetics in formulating a theory of what he considered to be good book design.'