This title offers an engaging look at how debates over the fate of literature in our digital age are powerfully conditioned by the 19th century's information revolution. What happens to literature during an information revolution? How do readers and writers adapt to proliferating data and texts? These questions appear uniquely urgent today, but these concerns are not new-they also mattered in the 19th century, as the rapid expansion of print created new relationships between literature and information. Exploring four key areas-reading, searching, counting, and testing- and delving into diverse writings, the book argues that, rather than being at odds, literature and information were surprisingly collaborative. An unexpected, historically grounded look at how a previous information age offers new ways to think about the anxieties and opportunities of our own, it illuminates today's debates about the digital humanities, the crisis in the humanities, and the future of literature.