“Drawing upon middle English almanacs, prognostications, charms, medical and household recipes, and guides to daily prayer, Reading Practice upends a narrative that views practical guides and written recipes as the self-evident outcome of hands-on experience. Reynolds argues instead that, from the 1400s to the 1600s, English readers came to appreciate natural knowledge and experience through engaging with words and texts, not through work in the kitchen and workshop. Reynolds insightfully picks her way through the tumultuous advent of Reformation, the spread of printing, burgeoning lay literacy, and expanding markets to tell a complex story about the often-counterintuitive interplay between words and experience, natural and divine, manuscripts and print, and new and old knowledge in early modern England.”
— Pamela H. Smith, author of From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World