Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Shipboard Literary Cultures

Reading, Writing, and Performing at Sea

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Editors:
  1. Susann Liebich

    1. Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Laurence Publicover

    1. University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Focuses on how reading, writing, and performance feature on board ships
  • Examines dynamics between crew and passengers or between different classes as well as public and private space
  • Extends oceanic and maritime studies to understand the sea as a site of historical experience

Part of the book series: Maritime Literature and Culture (MILAC)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Shipboard Literary Cultures and the Stain of the Sea

    • Susann Liebich, Laurence Publicover
    Pages 1-40Open Access

  3. Books with Providence: The Power and Influence of Book Ownership on a Seventeenth-Century Man-of-War

    • Christian Algar
    Pages 41-62

  4. The Sailing Ship as a School of Virtue

    • Stephen R. Berry
    Pages 63-83

  5. Recognition and Anonymity: Shipboard Theatricals and Newspapers Aboard USS Macedonian

    • Mary Isbell
    Pages 85-106

  6. Shipboard Diaries as Navigational Instruments

    • Eli Cumings, Laurence Publicover
    Pages 107-129

  7. The Maritime Self on the American Whaleship

    • Jimmy Packham
    Pages 131-156

  8. Writing the Cabin as Cloister in the Diary of Sister Mary Paul Mulquin

    • Tamsin Badcoe
    Pages 157-184

  9. The Torrens as a Space of Writing, Reading, and Performance

    • Helen Chambers
    Pages 185-210

  10. Communities of Print at Sea and Beyond: Troopship Magazines in World War I

    • Susann Liebich
    Pages 211-237

  11. Learning at Sea: Education Aboard the 1926–27 Floating University

    • Tamson Pietsch
    Pages 239-261

  12. Afterword: Down to the Sea in Ships

    • David Punter
    Pages 263-280

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 281-291
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

The essays collected within this volume ask how literary practices are shaped by the experience of being at sea—and also how they forge that experience. Individual chapters explore the literary worlds of naval ships, whalers, commercial vessels, emigrant ships, and troop transports from the seventeenth to the twentieth-first century, revealing a rich history of shipboard reading, writing, and performing. Contributors are interested both in how literary activities adapt to the maritime world, and in how individual and collective shipboard experiences are structured through—and framed by—such activities. In this respect, the volume builds on scholarship that has explored reading as a spatially situated and embodied practice. As our contributors demonstrate, the shipboard environment and the ocean beyond it place the mind and body under peculiar forms of pressure, and these determine acts of reading—and of writing and performing—in specific ways.

Reviews

“I found every one of the ten chapters … absolutely fascinating. A real strength of the collection is its coherence. The extent of cross-referencing across the chapters indicates a particularly careful editing process, and helps the main themes to emerge more strongly from the book as a whole. Shipboard Literary Cultures is a formidable work of collaborative scholarship and will be of great interest to scholars across all areas of maritime studies and book history.” (Faye Hammill, The Mariner's Mirror, April 28, 2023) “Investigating how the material and imagined ocean and the physical and social spaces of ships shape practices of reading, writing, and performing, this collection contributes richly to ocean history. The essays explore the delicious specificity of ships and seas, yet reveal patterns of literary culture forged by social hierarchy, economic difference, appreciation of skill, observation of marine life, hopes for the future, and the capriciousness of natural forces.” (Helen Rozwadowski, Professor of History, University of Connecticut, USA)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Susann Liebich

  • University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Laurence Publicover

About the editors

Susann Liebich is Assistant Professor of Modern History at Heidelberg University, Germany. She is a co-author of The Transported Imagination (Cambria Press, 2018) and has published on the history of reading and on Australian and New Zealand periodicals in the interwar period. Her current research focuses on the sea in personal writing and popular print culture. 

Laurence Publicover is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol, UK. He is the author of Dramatic Geography (Oxford University Press, 2017) and of several articles on early modern literature, maritime culture, and their intersections. His current research focuses on the deep sea and seabed in literary and non-literary contexts. 


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Shipboard Literary Cultures

  • Book Subtitle: Reading, Writing, and Performing at Sea

  • Editors: Susann Liebich, Laurence Publicover

  • Series Title: Maritime Literature and Culture

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85339-6

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-85338-9Published: 25 December 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-85341-9Published: 25 December 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-85339-6Published: 01 January 2022

  • Series ISSN: 2634-5366

  • Series E-ISSN: 2634-5358

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXI, 291

  • Number of Illustrations: 11 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Literature, general

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation