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Литературные антологии середины XIX века: читательская аудитория, книжные форматы, гендер
The article examines some aspects of the physical appearance of 23 Russian-language literary anthologies of 1853–1871. The main goal of the study is to analyze their material characteristics (size, quality of paper, font, illustrations, etc.) and how they shape the image of the target audience of these anthologies. This allows us to reconstruct the publishers’ view on the potential reader of their anthologies. During our research, four most frequent types of literary anthologies and almanacs of 1853–1871 were distinguished. Besides, it was discovered that their editing pragmatics is associated both with modeling their potential readers, and with shaping a literary hierarchy. These types of anthologies include anthologies for the people, for ladies and damsels, for easy reading and anthologies of exemplary Russian-language prose and poetry. Detection of these types and analysis of common features within each type (which are similar in format and target audience) revealed a direct dependence of the anthologies’ physical appearance on their pragmatics and their implicit reader. In addition, the material constituent of literary anthologies, being related to the publishing strategies, pragmatics, and cultural economics, can explain how publishers imagined the tastes, needs and interests of the target audience of their editions, its cultural and educational level, as well as purchasing power. By choosing the format, font, illustrations, and various kinds of embellishments in the text (drop caps, vignettes, etc.), publishers and editors thereby segmented the potential readership of their anthologies. Reactualization of the format of the literary collection in the 1850s–1860s. (with an eye to the pragmatics of publishing of the anthologies of 1810s., the tradition of the «almanac period» and the publishing practices of the 1840s.) changes our understanding of this time in literary field as the hegemony of «thick» journals. With the appearance of new readers in the 1860s., there was a need for new types of editions that would correspond to the material possibilities and cultural level of the new reading audience.