Reading, Wanting, and Broken Economics

Uses a historical study of bookselling and readers as a way to question and rethink our understanding of the market for symbolic goods. Combining historical study, theorization, and experimental fiction, this book takes commodity culture and book retail around 1900 as the prime example of a market of symbolic goods. With the port of Southampton, England, as his case study, Simon R. Frost reveals how the city's bookshops, with their combinations of libraries, haberdashery, stationery, and books,