Reading Revolution

In this book Sharpe charts the reading of one seventeenth-century gentleman, using a spectacular archive (Huntington Library CA, Folger Library DC, London University) of 50 volumes of his reading notes from the 1620s to the 1660s; the book investigates how through his negotiations with books he came to 'fashion' himself socially and politically. In doing so he advocates the need for a broader understanding of 'political thought' and civil identity, calling for interdisciplinary study and closer correlation between theory and archival scholarship.