Question 67·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Information and Ideas
Historians of reading have often counted handwritten notes in surviving books to estimate how actively earlier readers engaged with texts. By that measure, inexpensive nineteenth-century pamphlets appear to have inspired little engagement because surviving copies contain few annotations. Imani Reyes questions that inference. Borrowing registers and printers’ accounts indicate that pamphlets circulated rapidly, were read aloud in clubs, and were often discarded after heavy use; copies carrying the strongest physical traces of engagement were thus among the least likely to reach an archive. Costly books, meanwhile, were more likely to be preserved regardless of how intensively they had been read. In her research, Reyes compares annotations directly only among editions with similar prices and circulation patterns. When examining unlike editions, she combines annotations with lending, production, and ownership records.
Which choice most accurately states the central idea of the text?
For a central-idea question, identify the initial method or belief, the evidence that complicates it, and the author’s resulting approach. Then test every clause of each option against the passage, especially choices that accurately mention one factor but omit another factor essential to the author’s conclusion.
Hints
Consider what survives
Ask whether the books that reached an archive necessarily represent all the books that readers used.
Compare the two kinds of texts
Notice the contrast between heavily circulated pamphlets and costly books that were more likely to be preserved.
Examine Reyes’s method
Use the final two sentences to determine whether Reyes abandons annotations or changes the conditions under which she interprets them.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify the questioned inference
Historians have treated the number of annotations in surviving texts as a measure of reader engagement. This method makes pamphlets appear to have attracted little engagement.
Examine the preservation problem
Other records show that pamphlets circulated widely and were often discarded after heavy use. Consequently, the pamphlets with the strongest evidence of engagement were especially unlikely to survive, while costly books were more likely to be preserved regardless of how much they were read.
Determine Reyes’s approach
Reyes does not reject annotations. She compares them directly only when editions had similar circumstances and supplements them with other records when the editions differed. Thus, the central idea is that annotation counts must be interpreted in light of circulation and preservation differences.