Medlemroybeardenwhite

When the Vatican library was first constructed under Pope Sixtus IV in 1473, Bortolommeo Platina catalogued 2,527 volumes. Although this may seem modest compared to other collections on LibraryThing, my goal is to eventually exceed that number.

I teach Composition and Literature at South Plains College. My main field of research interest is eighteenth-century British literature, particularly those texts which represented new expressions of written communication such as the newspaper, the essay, the novel, and the autobiography. Since such works were often thought of as 'literature of the common people,' I am particularly interested in how that dynamic helped to shape individual identity and how it evolved into the twentieth-century. From that standpoint, I find comic books, pulps, and other 'lower' forms of literature just as important and fascinating.