Reflect a little, if you will, on exactly what it is that you are doing at this moment. I have, of course, no way of knowing who you are, or where you are, or when this moment is – whether a day, a month, a year, or (I flatter myself) a century after these words first see the light of print – but I can still affirm, with absolute certainty, what activity you are currently engaged in. You are reading; your eye is scanning a page on which are printed certain symbols whose arrangement forms patterns to which you are able to assign meaning on the basis of your acquaintance with the semiotic system we call the English language. In so doing, you are participating in a remarkably complex and demanding enterprise whose nature is still by no means fully understood. This book begins from the recognition that what is involved in reading requires very careful consideration indeed from those of us who claim to do it well enough to wish to share the results of our reading with others.

The actions and processes that constitute the enterprise of reading, which the vast majority of people (at least in the Western world) are happily able to take for granted and, I suspect, rarely if ever pause to consider, have provoked a good deal of interest in various branches of the academic community in recent decades.