Textual Studies, 1500-1800

2008-05-01T14:20:00.002-04:00

American Antiquarian Society, Worcester MA
NEW ACQUISITION--Early Montreal Imprint

Catholic Church. Officium in honorem Domini Nostri J. C. summi sacerdotis et omnium sanctorum sacerdotum ac levitarum. Monti-Regali [Montreal]: Fleury Mesplet, 1777.

One of the earliest imprints from the first press established at Montreal. Born in France, Fleury Mesplet moved first to London and then to Philadelphia in 1774. There he printed for a short time.including, at the behest of the Continental Congress, a French translation of a military manual for use in the ill-fated Canadian campaign.before moving his press to American-held Montreal in May 1776. But Montreal fell to the British a month later, and Mesplet remained to print a newspaper and other works, though his relations with British authorities were understandably strained. Six hundred copies were printed of this pamphlet containing the office to be celebrated on the first Thursday following August 29. It is now the second earliest Montreal imprint at AAS.

Visit the AAS's website.

2008-05-01T14:13:00.003-04:00

Black Founders: The Free Black Community in the Early Republic
An exhibition at The Library Company of Philadelphia
March 10-October 10, 2008

Abraham Lincoln was not the Great Emancipator. True, Lincoln did sign the Emancipation Proclamation 145 years ago, on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation did outlaw slavery in Confederate states. It validated the freedom journeys undertaken by many enslaved people toward the North. But the struggle of American blacks to secure rights as citizens—as free people—began years before our first bearded President took up his pen.

Take Absalom Jones. Born into slavery in 1746, he purchased freedom for himself and his wife, and then became the first African American priest in the Episcopal Church and an outspoken abolitionist.

Or the Allens. Richard Allen and Jones founded the Free Africa Society in 1787, the first organization in the U.S. founded by blacks for blacks. Sarah Allen outlived her husband by almost two decades and was herself a leader in Philadelphia’s free black community, piloting many slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad.

The Library Company’s new exhibition, “Black Founders: The Free Black Community in the Early Republic” features Jones, the Allens, and many other newly-freed African Americans in the north. It tracks their struggles to found independent churches, schools, fraternal, and educational associations, and to champion the status of African Americans as equal citizens on the American landscape. They held close the tenants of egalitarian Christianity and championed that single-sentence affirmation of “certain unalienable rights” in the American Declaration of Independence. Theirs was the most consistent voice for multi-racial democracy in the new republic, and their words and deeds helped inspire a vigorous American antislavery movement.

The issues of abolitionism, exodus, and white supremacy consumed popular media for decades before the Civil War. “Black Founders” features books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles by these individuals, promoting their
own welfare, championing their rights, struggling against slavery, and defining themselves as Americans in what was a mostly hostile white society. Excluded from national civic ceremonies such as Fourth of July festivities, they
celebrated the abolition of the slave trade in 1808—two hundred years ago, on January 1, 1808—by making January 1 the first African American holiday. Excluded from schools and educational societies, they formed their own. Denied access to the political system, they made alliances with supportive whites to promote their political rights. As movements arose to drive them from American society, they protested and resisted—but at the same time supported movements to consider emigration beyond the influence of American slavery and racism. In fact, the liveliness of the printed debate makes Lincoln look like nothing less than a Johnny-come-lately.

The exhibition runs through October 10 in the Louis Lux-Sions and Harry Sions Gallery at 1314 Locust Street (open from 9:00am to 4:45pm, Monday through Friday). It covers the years after the American Revolution up to 1830, when the first national convention of African Americans brought together blacks from all over the north to consider a national program for their rights and sharpen their campaign against slavery. Though “Black Founders” features African Americans from all over the United States, the primary focus is on the Philadelphia black community, the largest of the northern free black communities in the remaining years of American slavery.

“Black Founders” builds on one of the Library Company’s greatest subject strengths. The Afro-Americana Collection comprises over 13,000 titles and almost 1,000 graphics, and includes books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, broadsides, and graphics. Ranging in date from the mid 16th century into the early years of the 20th century, it covers an equally vast range of topics. It documents the western discovery and exploitation of Africa; the rise of both slavery in the new world and the movements against slavery; the development of racial thought and racism; descriptions of African American life, slave and free, throughout the Americas; slavery and race in fiction and drama; and the printed works of African American individuals and organizations. “Black Founders” will give visitors a choice view of items important in the development of liberty and justice for all.

More info here.

2008-04-25T09:25:00.002-04:00

The Getty Center
Los Angeles
SOME UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Imagining Christ
May 6–July 27, 2008
Medieval and Renaissance images of Christ functioned as powerful entry points to prayer. This exhibition of manuscripts from the Getty's permanent collection spans the years from around 1000 to 1500, and demonstrates the multiple, overlapping ways in which Christ was understood: as the son of God and as God, as human and divine, as the sacrifice made for mankind and the divine judge who would come again. The exhibition examines the role Christ played in the devotional life of medieval and Renaissance faithful and demonstrates how manuscript images allowed viewers to imaginatively participate in Christ's life, sacrifice and acts of salvation.

The Marvel and Measure of Peru: Three Centuries of Visual Histories, 1560–1880
July 8–October 19, 2008
This exhibition features Martín de Murúa's (Spanish, active late 16th and early 17th centuries) Historia general del Piru held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, a recently rediscovered and related manuscript chronicle by Murúa in a private collection in Ireland, textiles from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the University of California, Santa Barbara, two early books in the Huntington Library, and books, prints, maps, watercolors and photographs from the special collections of the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. The Research Library's collections include such famous volumes as de Bry's Grands voyages of 1596 and 1617, and the gently satirical watercolors by 19th-century Lima caricaturist Pancho Fierro. Other highlights are early photographs from a newly acquired collection of long lost views of ancient sites by the pioneering archeologist Augustus Le Plongeon, and studio albums depicting modern Peruvian life. Leading up to the exhibition, the Research Institute is working with the Museum and Conservation Institute, as well as outside scholars, on technical analysis of the two manuscript chronicles. A scholarly workshop, a facsimile publication of the Getty Murúa, and an accompanying volume of essays on the manuscript by an international group of scholars are also under way.

Faces of Power and Piety: Medieval Portraiture
August 12–October 26, 2008
The art of portraiture in illuminated manuscripts developed from the highly stylized portrayals of the early Middle Ages to the late medieval emergence of recognizable portraits. The exhibition explores both historical portraits of people from the past, including religious figures, authors, and artists, and portraits of living individuals, usually the owner or donor of a book. Throughout the period, the goal of portraiture was to present a person not at a particular moment in time, but as the subject wished to be remembered for the ages.

The Belles Heures of the Duke of Berry
November 18, 2008–February 8, 2009
The Belles Heures of John, Duke of Berry is one of the most beloved books of the Middle Ages and one of the most sumptuous. Painted by the Limbourg brothers when the art of manuscript illumination in France reached new heights of elegance and sophistication, the book, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be presented with its individual leaves unbound. The resulting display offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the visitor to walk through the book to view all of its major miniatures, a unique gallery of paintings of sublime beauty.

Go to the Getty website.

2008-04-22T12:33:00.002-04:00

Illuminating the Medieval Hunt
The Morgan Library and Museum New York City April 18--August 10, 2008

The most influential medieval treatise on hunting was Livre de la chasse, written by Gaston Phoebus between 1387 and 1389. The forty-six surviving manuscripts and numerous printed editions of the text testify to its popularity. The Morgan Library & Museum is fortunate in possessing one of the two most luxuriously illustrated manuscripts; the other, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, was made at the same time and also contains eighty-seven miniatures. Both were made in Paris about 1407 and were probably commissioned by John the Fearless. Since the manuscript had to be disbound—for reasons of conservation and the preparation of a facsimile—the Morgan has decided to exhibit as many leaves with miniatures as possible, providing the public a unique opportunity to "walk" through the manuscript as well as to turn the pages of the facsimile. Four parts of the exhibition will show miniatures from the four books of the treatise, which deal with gentle and wild animals, the nature and care of dogs, instructions to hunters with dogs, and the use of various snares and crossbows by hunters. Another part would comprise other hunting-related manuscripts and printed books, including among the latter the famous St. Albans's Hunting Book of 1486 and the first illustrated version of Livre de la chasse (ca. 1505–07).

More info here.

2008-04-18T16:30:00.003-04:00

FORMS OF EARLY MODERN WRITING
A Conference and Exhibition presented by the Columbia Early Modern Seminar, in collaboration with the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University

Friday, April 25th
523 Butler Library (on the south side of Columbia University's 116th
street campus).

9:00 Opening Remarks
Michael Ryan, Columbia University
Alan Stewart, Columbia University

9:15
Alan Farmer, Ohio State University, "Forms of News: Printed Newsbooks and the Politics of the Thirty Years' War in England"
Zachary Lesser, University of Pennsylvania, "Shakespeare's Crown and Globe (Bookshops)"

Chair: Benedict Robinson, SUNY Stony Brook

11:15
Amanda Bailey, University of Connecticut, Storrs, "Reading the Hand of Human Capital"
Shankar Raman, MIT, "Specifying the Unknown"

Chair: Henry Turner, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

2:30
Hannibal Hamlin, Ohio State University, "The Geneva Bible as Bible for Dummies"
Heather James, University of Southern California, "Commonplaces, Inventories, and the Forms of Authorship"
Tanya Pollard, CUNY Brooklyn College, "Translating Greek Drama: Schoolbooks and Popular Theater in Early Modern England"

Chair: Adam Zucker, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

5:00 Keynote Lecture
Peter Stallybrass, University of Pennsylvania, "Making Commonplaces in English Printed Books"

6:00 Reception

Please also join us for the complementary exhibition---curated by Patricia Akhimie, Rebecca Calcagno, Saskia Cornes, Musa Gurnis, Adam Hooks, Bryan Lowrance, Sara Murphy, and Brynhildur Heiðardóttir Ómarsdóttir in collaboration with the speakers---on display in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, located on the 6th Floor of Butler Library.

Sponsored by Columbia University's Department of English and Comparative Literature, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Graduate Student Advisory Council, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

With questions, contact Allison Deutermann (akd2006@columbia.edu) and András Kisery (ak508@columbia.edu).

2008-04-18T16:28:00.003-04:00

Scriptorium
Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Online

Scriptorium: Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Online is a three-year (2006-2009) AHRC-funded Resource Enhancement Project, based in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge.

We are constructing a digital archive of manuscript miscellanies and commonplace books from the period c. 1450-1720; our website will provide unrestricted public access to these images. We will also develop and publish a set of online pedagogical and research resources supporting late medieval and early modern manuscript studies.

We will be working with the manuscript collections in a number of college libraries in Cambridge, as well as the Cambridge University Library, the Brotherton Library in Leeds, and other archives, such as that of Holkham Hall in Norfolk.

We will also host three conferences: one-day workshops in online manuscript research in July 2007 and 2009, and a larger, two-day conference in manuscript studies in 2008, which will form the basis of an edited collection of essays.

Access her e.

2008-04-18T16:27:00.001-04:00

UVA Rare Book School Launches Directory of ARL Librarians

Two years ago, the RBS staff compiled a directory of the principal librarians, curators, directors, and suchlike working in member institutions of the Association of Research Libraries – a non-profit organization of 123 large research libraries in the US and Canada. It is now on the RBS website.

Access here.

2008-04-18T16:26:00.000-04:00

THE MACHINE THAT MADE US: GUTENBERG'S BRILLIANT INVENTION
Tuesday 6 May 18.30 - 20.00
Conference Centre
The British Library
96 Euston Road, NW1 2DB

Johann Gutenberg's printing press, which brought about the dawn of mass communication is of barely equalled significance in the development of human culture. His achievement reached its pinnacle with the printing of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455. A new documentary 'The Machine That Made Us', presented by Stephen Fry, was screened on BBC4 on 14 April 2008, 9 pm, and excerpts will feature in the event at the BL. For the programme, and in order to unravel mysteries of Gutenberg's technique, a team of experts built a unique copy of his press: watch it action at the event, alongside discussion of the remarkable story behind its invention. Speakers include Alan May (printing expert and press builder), Martin Andrews (University of Reading) and Patrick McGrady (Wavelength Films) Price £ 6 (concessions £ 4), bookable at http://boxoffice.bl.uk by phone on 01937 546546 or in person at the British Library Information Desk.

2008-04-18T16:24:00.001-04:00

Institut de Histoire du Livre
Lyon, France
Book History Workshop, 2008

For the sixth edition of its Book History Workshop, organised in collaboration with the Rare Book School (University of Virginia), the Lyon-based Institut d'histoire du livre is offering four advanced courses in the fields of book and printing history.

Courses on offer this year are:

Sandra Hindman
GOTHIC ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK (new course, in English)

Michael Twyman
PRINTED EPHEMERA UNDER THE MAGNIFYING GLASS (course in French)

James Mosley
TYPE, LETTERING AND CALLIGRAPHY: PART TWO 1830-2000 (existing course, for the first time in English)

Kristian Jensen
INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF INCUNABULA (course in English)

The Book History Workshop is aimed at book and printing historians and at the many other specialists who encounter questions related to book and printing history in the course of their work: researchers, teachers, archivists, librarians, museum curators, antiquarian booksellers, collectors, designers, etc.

The four-day courses offered by the Institut d'histoire du livre cover various aspects of the history of the book and graphic communications. Subjects are dealt with from both theoretical and practical points of view through illustrated lectures, discussions and close study of original documents. The courses make abundant use of the collections of Lyon City Library and Museum of Printing.

The courses will take place in Lyon from the 1st to the 4th September 2008. Classes will be held at the Ecole normale supérieure - lettres et sciences humaines (Lyon) with sessions at the Lyon City Library and Printing Museum.

Tuition fee: 490 euros (mid-day meals included).

In order to facilitate access to collections of original documents the number of participants is limited to twelve per class.

More info here.

2008-03-25T21:32:00.003-04:00

Call for Papers
Popular Print Culture--Past and Present, Local and Global
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada
27-30 August, 2008

This is an international conference to be held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada from 27 to 30 August 2008. The conference and its associated popular culture festivals consider what most people read, here and elsewhere, now and in the past. Though popular print shows an almost overwhelming diversity, adaptability, and mobility over the centuries, and around the world, it is still measured—and too often disparaged—in relation to canonical literature and "high" culture. Yet people read what they do because they find it interesting, and they find it interesting because it speaks to their real material interests, in everyday life. Popular print characteristically includes both words and images, and it is intertwined with music and performance. In these forms it has been and continues to be the most powerful cultural force in human history. Morphing into new media and new technologies, from the phonograph record through radio, film, and television to video games and the internet, it continues to be an awesome cultural, ideological, and political force.

The conference program of papers and presentations and concurrent popular culture festivals include a series of public events that illustrate, celebrate, create, and show the mobility of popular print cultures. There will be reports and displays by students from around the world on popular print cultures in their own countries and regions—their own "local." There will be open-floor forums for participants to discuss popular print cultures informally, as issues arise from and during the conference. There will be a film festival featuring a repertory cinema of global Popular Films from Popular Books; a comics festival highlighting the work of local artists and publishers; and a writers festival bringing together authors, aspiring writers, and fans in discussions, panels, and workshops.

Popular print culture is now a global phenomenon, with striking similarities in what most people read, anywhere. Yet there are also striking local differences, inflections, and variations in what most people read, here or elsewhere. In this complex crossing of the local and global, Canada is one of the leading players, through Harlequin enterprises. The "Continuities and Innovations" conference and festival will bring together in Harlequin's homeland all those who are interested in popular print culture—readers and writers, publishers and fans, distributors and sellers, librarians and collectors, researchers and adapters, teachers and students, and of course student and full-time researchers in many academic disciplines.

Proposals are welcomed from all of these groups for "Continuities and Innovations," directly addressing the conference theme, or taking up any aspect of "Popular Print Cultures, Past and Present, Local and Global." Topics can include relations between popular print and other media, between popular and "high" literatures, between words and images, between words and music. Presentations can be from writers, readers, publishers, teachers, students, distributors, sellers, librarians, illustrators, opponents, promoters, adapters to other media, fans, collectors … Papers and presentations can be on censorship of popular print and undergrounds and underworlds of popular print, on reading it and creating it, publishing it and selling it, counteracting it or transforming it, adapting it and influencing it. Participants can consider popular print and politics, religion, sexuality, class, ethnicity, "race," nationality, or any other theme.

Proposals should be about 200 words in length and clearly state the central theme or argument, the kind of popular print or related media to be considered, and its social and cultural location in time and place. Each proposal should be accompanied by a brief resumé stating the name, address, contact information, and relevant academic, professional, or personal background and knowledge of popular print culture or the particular aspect discussed.

Proposals should be sent by email as a pasted-in document or as an attachment in an up-to-date format to: popprint@ualberta.ca.

Alternatively, a hard copy may be mailed to: Popprint, Gary Kelly, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E5. Any questions or requests to display materials or put on conference-related special events should be sent to either of these addresses.

More info here.

2008-03-20T23:41:00.002-04:00

The Manuscript and Printed Book in Germany
Friday, 2nd May 2008
The Scottish Centre for the Book
National Library of Scotland

PROGRAM

09.15 Registration

09.30 General introduction

09.50 Dr. Mary Fischer (Napier University)
Winning hearts and minds: the role of the written word in the conquest of
Prussia in the fourteenth century

10.30 Prof. Dr. Henrike Lähnemann (University of Newcastle)
From print to manuscript: the case of a manuscript workshop in Stuttgart
around 1475

11.10-11.35 Coffee

11.35 Prof. Dr. John Flood (University of London)
A typographical conundrum from 1479

12.15-13.35 Lunch (to be arranged by participants. There are several
suitable establishments in the immediate vicinity of the National Library)

13.40 Dr. William Kelly (Napier University):
Medical and scientific publishing in Germany, 1601-1800

14.20 Susan Reed (British Library)
Printing the revolution: Berlin broadsides from 1848

15.00 Jasmin Adam (University of Mainz)
Marketing rules: changing publishing strategies in the Weimar period

15.40 Questions and general discussion

17.00-18.00 Reception for speakers and participants

2008-03-16T23:36:00.002-04:00

Introduction to Manuscript Studies
Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham
Cornell University Press, 2007

Providing a comprehensive and accessible orientation to the field of medieval manuscript studies, this lavishly illustrated book by Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham is unique among handbooks on paleography, codicology, and manuscript illumination in its scope and level of detail. It will be of immeasurable help to students in history, art history, literature, and religious studies who are encountering medieval manuscripts for the first time, while also appealing to advanced scholars and general readers interested in the history of the book before the age of print.

More info here.

2008-02-20T23:54:00.002-05:00

The Atlas of Early Printing
A New Online Resource from the University of Iowa Library

The Atlas of Early Printing is an interactive site designed to be used as a tool for teaching the early history of printing in Europe during the second half of the fifteenth century. While printing in Asia pre-dates European activity by several hundred years, the rapid expansion of the trade following the discovery of printing in Mainz, Germany around the middle of the fifteenth century is a topic of great importance to the history of European civilization. This website uses Flash to depict the spread of European printing in a manner that allows a user to control dates and other variables.

Access Atlas here.

2008-02-14T22:26:00.002-05:00

NEW BOOK
The Work of Print: Authorship and the English Text Trades, 1660--1760
(University of Washington Press, January 2008)
Lisa Maruca

"The Work of Print" traces a shift in the very definition of literature, from one that encompasses the material conditions of the production and distribution of books to the more familiar emphasis on the solitary author's ownership of an abstract text. Drawing on contemporary accounts of printers, booksellers, publishers, and distributors, the author examines attitudes about the creative process and approaches to the commodification of writing.

More here

2008-01-07T21:38:00.000-05:00

Dying Speeches and Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides Collected by the Harvard Law School Library

The Harvard Law School Library announces the launch of a new digital collection highlighting its extensive holdings of crime broadsides. It can be viewed here.

Just as programs are sold at sporting events today, broadsides--styled at the time as "Last Dying Speeches" or "Bloody Murders"--were sold to the audience that gathered to witness public executions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. The Library's collection of more than 500 of these broadsides is one of the largest recorded and, to our knowledge, the first to be digitized in its entirety. The examples digitized span the years 1707 to 1891 and include accounts of executions for such crimes as arson, assault, counterfeiting, horse theft, murder, rape, robbery, and treason. Many of the broadsides vividly describe the results of sentences handed down at London's central criminal court, the Old Bailey, the proceedings of which are now available online, here.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Peck Stacpoole Foundation, the collection has been expertly conserved by the Harvard University Library's Weissman Preservation Center and imaged by the Harvard College Library's Digital Imaging Services.

2008-01-07T21:36:00.000-05:00

"The Newspaper and the Culture of Print in the Early American Republic"
The 2008 American Antiquarian Society Summer Seminar in the History of the Book in American Culture

“The Newspaper and the Culture of Print” will be led by David Paul Nord of Indiana University and John Nerone of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at the AAS in Worcester, MA, June 18-23. Vincent Golden, Curator of Newspapers and Periodicals at the AAS, will serve as a guest instructor. The seminar will be of particular interest to scholars from a wide range of fields whose work deals with print culture.

The application deadline is March 14, 2008. Additional information is available here.

2008-01-07T21:00:00.000-05:00

Transatlantic Partnership Puts Medieval Manuscripts Online

A partnership between Stanford University and Cambridge University will make 538 manuscripts spanning the 6th to the 16th centuries available online. The collection, which has been located in the Parker Library at Cambridge's Corpus Christi College since the 16th century, consists mostly of manuscripts from monastic libraries, and includes about a quarter of all surviving early Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.

More information here.

2007-12-15T21:18:00.000-05:00

Book History and Print Culture
A collaborative program at the University of Toronto

The Collaborative Program in Book History and Print Culture is designed to bring together graduate students from a variety of disciplines based on their common research interest in the physical, cultural, and theoretical aspects of the book. As a collaborative program, it is designed to augment the learning and research potential of existing master's and doctoral programs by pooling the expertise of U of T faculty members in this field from several disciplines. All students begin with the core course, which introduces scholarly approaches to the field. The core course is complemented by courses from other departments either cross-listed with or approved by the program. At the doctoral level, students in the program are required to undertake a practicum and bring their skills to bear on a major research project. Students who graduate from the program will have acquired a thorough knowledge of the emerging field of book history and print culture and will have demonstrated an ability to incorporate that knowledge into their research.

For more information, click here.

2007-12-04T23:47:00.000-05:00

London Rare Books School, 2008

The University of London's Institute of English Studies announces the second London Rare Books School (LRBS), a series of five-day, intensive courses on a variety of book-related subjects to be taught in and around Senate House, which is the centre of the University of London's federal system. The courses will be taught by internationally renowned scholars associated with the Institute's Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, using the unrivalled library and museum resources of London, including the British Library, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the University of London Research Library Services, and many more. All courses will stress the materiality of the book so you can expect to have close encounters with remarkable books and other artefacts from some of the world's greatest collections.

Each class will be restricted to a maximum of twelve students in order to ensure that everyone has plenty of opportunity to talk to the teachers and to get very close to the books.

In its second year the LRBS will be running for two weeks: 30 June - 4 July and 14 July - 18 July. The courses planned for 2008 are:

Week 1 30 June - 4 July

1. The Book in the Ancient World
Course Tutors: Professor Mike Edwards and others.

2. The Medieval Book
Course Tutor: Professor Michelle Brown

3. The Printed Book in Europe 1455-2000
Course Tutor: Professor John Feather

4. A History of Maps and Mapping
Course tutors: Mrs Sarah Tyacke and Dr Catherine Delano-Smith

5. Historical Bibliography
Course tutor: Professor Tony Edwards

6. Children's Books
Course tutors: Dr Jill Shefrin, Mr Brian Alderson and others

Week 2 14-18 July

1. The Carolingian Book
Course tutors: Professor David Ganz

2. The Early Modern Book in England: Exploring the Evidence
Course tutors: Dr Arnold Hunt, Mr Giles Mandelbrote

3. Modern Literary Manuscripts
Course tutor: Dr Wim van Mierlo

4. Modern First Editions
Course tutors: Mr Laurence Worms, Julian Rota, and others

5. Bookbinding Decoration
Course tutor: Professor Mirjam Foot

6. Map Production
Course tutors: Mrs Sarah Tyacke and Dr Catherine Delano-Smith

Each course will consist of thirteen seminars amounting in all to twenty hours of teaching time spread between Monday lunchtime and Friday afternoon. There will be timetabled 'library time' that will allow students to explore the rich resources of the University's Senate House Library, one of the UK's major research libraries. There will also be a full evening programme with an opening reception and talk, a major book history lecture, and a reception hosted by a major London antiquarian bookseller. For those able to stay on to the Saturday, there will be various additional book history-related activities on offer.

Postgraduate credit is available for these courses at the Institute, which is one of the ten member-Institutes of the University of London's School of Advanced Study. In order to achieve the award of credit a student will have to complete and pass a 5,000 word essay within two months of the course (an extra fee to cover marking and other costs will be charged).

The fee will be in the region of £500 which will include the provision of lunch, and coffee and tea throughout the week. It is likely that a small number of bursaries will be available, details will be provided later.

A range of different sorts of accommodation will be available including cheap student housing (on a bed and breakfast basis) close by Senate House; Senate House is next to the British Museum in the heart of Bloomsbury.

Application forms will be available by early February but you are invited to register your interest in a course or courses now (given the likely demand you would be well-advised to list a second choice). Those who register now will be the first to receive application forms. You can register your interest in LRBS 2008 by emailing your name and address (with an indication of preferred courses) to: cmps@sas.ac.uk.

Further details can be found here.

2007-12-04T23:45:00.000-05:00

Teaching the History of the Book to Undergraduates
A One-Day Symposium
Saturday 8 December 2007
Institute of English Studies, London

Organisers: Dr Ian Gadd, Dr Aileen Fyfe, Dr John Hinks, Dr Cathy Shrank and Professor Simon Eliot

History of the book, long the preserve of the graduate seminar, is beginning to find its way into the undergraduate curriculum, as tutors find that the questions history of the book raises, the methodologies it uses, and the perspectives it provides are increasingly useful to their students. Yet, how can something so interdisciplinary ‹ that is taught in departments of history, English, media studies, publishing and elsewhere ‹ and so material ‹ that needs access to books and archives ‹ make its way successfully into the undergraduate classroom? What disciplinary, institutional, pedagogical, and intellectual problems does it encounter? And what are the possible implications for history of the book as a field or mode of enquiry?

This one-day symposium, the first of its kind in the UK, brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines and universities, research librarians, and undergraduate students to debate these questions and to share experiences and good practice. We hope that it will be of interest to anyone involved in, or thinking about becoming involved in, teaching the history of the book.

The conference programme and registration form is available here. Registration is £30 (£20 concessions) and covers refreshments, but not lunch.

On the website, there is also information about a survey of Book History teaching in the UK and Ireland. We've already received a good number of responses, but we would welcome more!

2007-12-04T23:44:00.000-05:00

Justin Winsor Prize of the American Library Association Library History Round Table

The Justin Winsor Prize is presented by the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association each year to recognize the best essay written in English on library history, including the history of libraries, librarianship, and book culture.

The award honors Justin Winsor, distinguished 19th century librarian, historian, and bibliographer. The winning essayist will receive a $500 prize and an invitation to submit the winner paper for consideration by the journal Libraries & the Cultural Record.

Eligibility and criteria. Manuscripts submitted should not have been previously published, submitted for publication, or under consideration for publication or for another award. Entries should embody original historical research on a significant topic in library history, based on primary source materials whenever possible, and written in a superior style. If a suitable candidate is not found, the award will not be presented in that year.

Essays should be organized in a form similar to that of articles published in Libraries & the Cultural Record, with footnotes, spelling, and punctuation conforming to the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Papers should not exceed 35 double-spaced pages (plus footnotes and bibliography). Please see http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/journals/jlc.html for more information about the journal.

Submission process: Three copies of the manuscript should be submitted. The name and other information identifying the author should appear only on a separate cover letter. Fax and e-mail submissions are not acceptable. Applications must be received by
February 29, 2008. Send manuscripts to:

Letitia Earvin
Program Coordinator
American Library Association/LHRT
Office of Research and Statistics
50 E. Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611

The Justin Winsor Prize will be presented at the Library History Round Table awards ceremony during the annual conference of the American Library Association.

2007-12-04T23:42:00.000-05:00

Call for Papers
74th IFLA Conference
Quebec, Canada, 10-15 August 2008

Session Theme:
Expanding Frontiers of Knowledge:
Documents of Exploration, Discovery, and Travel

The IFLA Rare Books and Manuscripts Section invites librarians, researchers and others involved in this area of work to express their interest in making presentations at the Section's programme in Québec.

As the boundaries of the known world expand with explorations of land, sea, space, and parallel scientific experimentation, likewise institutional collections that document voyages, discoveries, scientific initiatives, and collected materials are developing and changing. This session is intended to complement the RBM Preconference on Maps which will be held at the Library of Congress, Washington DC.

Papers at the RBMS session in Québec should focus on records of explorations, diverse types of travel literature, and related documents of discoveries, including new media and electronic records. Materials and collections presented may be in any format (manuscripts, diaries, archives, prints, books, photographs (but excluding maps). They may date from any period, but should constitute a coherent and substantial group, either relating to discoveries made by individual explorers and their teams or from particular regions or periods. Collections may be preserved in a single instutition or distributed over several collections. Discussions of a range of different holding institutions, including museums and archives as well as libraries, are encouraged.

Materials presented should be placed in a broader cultural-historical context in order to demonstrate their relevance to a wide range of (academic) subjects and users, taking up the theme of IFLA president Claudia Lux for 2007-9: "Libraries on the Agenda" and the conference theme "Libraries without borders: Navigating towards global understanding". Papers therefore should not only introduce audiences to surviving materials and potentially under-represented collections, but also describe innovative and appropriate methods by which they are made accessible, for example by catalogues, preferably in electronic form (databases, websites) or through digitization projects. Provisions for access should not focus exclusively on historians and other scholars, but also comprise outreach programmes (exhibitions, educational activities) by which a wider group of users can enhance their knowledge of old and new worlds.

Send an abstract (c. 300 words) of the proposed paper and relevant biographical information of author(s)/presenter(s) and their institutional affiliation by 31 December 2007 via email to:

Dr. Bettina Wagner
Abteilung für Handschriften und Alte Drucke
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Ludwigstr. 16
D-80539 Muenchen
Germany
email: bettina.wagner@bsb-muenchen.de
Fax. +89 / 28638-12982 oder 2266

2007-11-30T00:28:00.001-05:00

Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England
(UPenn, December 2007)
William Sherman

William H. Sherman's Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England recovers a culture that took the phrase "mark my words" quite literally. Books from the first two centuries of printing are full of marginalia and other signs of engagement and use, such as customized bindings, traces of food and drink, penmanship exercises, and doodles. These marks offer a vast archive of information about the lives of books and their place in the lives of their readers.

Based on a survey of thousands of early printed books, Used Books describes what readers wrote in and around their books and what we can learn from these marks by using the tools of archaeologists as well as historians and literary critics. The chapters address the place of book-marking in schools and churches, the use of the "manicule" (hand-with-pointing-finger symbol), the role played by women in information management, the extraordinary commonplace book used for nearly sixty years by Renaissance England's greatest lawyer-statesman, and the attitudes toward annotated books among collectors and librarians from the Middle Ages to the present.

This wide-ranging, learned, and often surprising book will make the marks of Renaissance readers more visible and legible to scholars, collectors, and bibliophiles.

Details here.

2007-11-23T20:50:00.000-05:00

Fellowships and Grants for Textual Scholars
Follow links for details

Newberry Library
Huntington Library
Folger Shakespeare Library
Bibliographical Society of America
Houghton Library, Harvard University
Harry Ransom Center
Beinecke Library, Yale University
Library Company of Philadelphia
"Making Publics" Fellowships
American Antiquarian Society
Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences
British Academy
Leverhulme Trust
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture
National Endowment for the Humanities
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies
American Printing History Association
McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Rare Books and MSS Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Printing Historical Society
Grolier Club Library

2007-11-05T14:53:00.000-05:00

The Conference on Editorial Problems
at the University of Toronto

Click here for forthcoming events.

History and Background
The Conference on Editorial Problems (CEP) was inaugurated in 1965, and has been held annually since then at the University of Toronto. Its longevity is witness to a long tradition: critical editions of the works of numerous authors, in many languages and disciplines, have had a long association with Toronto, from the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia and the notebooks of Coleridge to the correspondence of Zola and the collected works of Northrop Frye.

The Conference has benefited from the support of University College, the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, the School of Graduate Studies, as well as departments and centres across the University. Its affiliation with St Michael's College and Victoria College, with the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, allows the conference to draw on both the reach and promise enjoyed by the University's programs in Book and Media Studies and Book History and Print Culture, as well as the Collaborative Program in Editing Texts. These associations bespeak a wider commitment. The conference is a strong supporter of the professional training of graduate students in the humanities. It has provided important opportunities for students interested in textual scholarship and editing to participate as co-convenors and co-editors of individual programmes and volumes, to chair sessions, and to organize roundtable discussions.

Although its earliest programmes were devoted mainly to the canon of English, French, and Italian literature, the conference has expanded over the years to encompass a wide variety of topics. A representative sample would include: Editing Illustrated Books (1979), Editing Greek and Latin Texts (1987), Music Discourse from Classical to Early Modern Times (1990), The Politics of Editing Medieval Texts (1991), Editing Early and Historical Atlases (1993), Editing Women (1995), Editing Aboriginal Texts (1996), Computing the Edition (1997), Reconstructing Ancient Texts (2001), Editing Philosophers (2002), and Editing the Image (2003).

The meetings of the conference are usually held over the first weekend of November each year. Sessions take place at St Michael's College or at Victoria College in the University of Toronto.