Editorial Institute at Boston University
Graduate Programs

The Editorial Institute at Boston University, which began instruction of students in 2000, was formed with the conviction that the textually sound, contextually annotated edition is central to the intellectual life of many disciplines. Its primary aims are the promotion of critical awareness of editorial issues and practices and the provision of training in editorial methods.

The Institute offers advanced degrees (M.A. and Ph.D.) to students who successfully prepare either editions of important writings, with textual apparatus and annotation, or monographs concerned with editing or textual bibliography. Guidance to students is provided through courses that cover such topics as: establishing an authoritative text; the practice of annotation; current technologies for storing, disseminating, or editing information; legal and professional considerations concerning copyright and intellectual property; historical changes in the concept of authorship; the practice of annotation; and recent theorizing about texts. Students are encouraged to think widely about the applications of editing: to letters, sound archives, oral transcripts, music, manuscript fragments, legal and historical documents, journalism, notebooks, anonymous writings, and marginalia, as well as to the literary and philosophical writing most often associated with the idea of the edition.

For more information on the Institute and its graduate programs, click here

Call for Nominations
Association for Documentary Editing (ADE)
Officers, 2007-2008

The Nominating Committee seeks advice, informal suggestions, and formal nominations of candidates for offices in the association, particularly President-Elect and Councilor-at-Large. The President-Elect will serve in that capacity for one year, beginning at the conclusion of the 2007 annual meeting, and then as President of the association for a one-year term, beginning at the conclusion of the 2008 annual meeting. The Councilor-at Large will serve a three-year term, beginning at the conclusion of the 2007 annual meeting.

The deadline for suggestions or nominations is April 1, 2007. Send them to: Anne Decker Cecere, chair of the Nominating Committee, via email (adcecere@hotmail.com) or surface mail (50 Longfellow Road, Norwood, MA 02062). Other members of the committee are Elaine W. Pascu, Barry Pateman, Mary Lamb Shelden, and Kenneth H. Williams.

EDINBURGH BOOK HISTORY SEMINAR
Spring Schedule 2007

Fridays (1-2 pm)
Wolfson Suite
Edinburgh University
Main Library

19 January
'Royalism and Romance: Re-politicising the 'Lives' of Anne, Lady Halkett (1621/2?-1699)'
Suzanne Trill (University of Edinburgh)

2 February
'The 19th Century Reception of Walter Scott in Germany and Austria'
Norbert Bachleitner (University of Vienna)

16 February
'Books, Guns and Barges: Reassessing the Stationers' Company of London'
Ian Gadd (Bath Spa University)

2 March
The Disraeli Library at Hughenden Manor: Owners and Bookplates'
Marvin Spevack (University of Münster)

16 March
'The Portable Library: Old French Epic at the End of the Middle Ages'
Philip Bennett (University of Edinburgh)

Organized by the Centre for the History of the Book & Edinburgh University Library

Textual Studies at MLA 2006, Philadelphia
Panels of potential interest, compiled by Eleanor Shevlin

Thursday, 28 December
173. Textual Materialities
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Grand Ballroom Salon I, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the Society for Textual Scholarship

Presiding: Neil Fraistat, Univ. of Maryland, College Park

1. “Save As: Textual Studies and the Challenges of Born-Digital Literature,” Matthew Gary Kirschenbaum, Univ. of Maryland, College Park

2. “Picture Criticism: Textual Studies and the Image,” Kari M. Kraus, Univ. of Rochester

3. “Textual Studies and the Book,” Peter Bigland Stallybrass, Univ. of Pennsylvania

Thursday, 28 December
174. Early Modern Women’s Manuscripts
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Grand Ballroom Salon K, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the Renaissance English Text Society

Presiding: Margaret P. Hannay, Siena Coll.

1. “Petitioning Power: The Rhetorical Fashioning of Elizabethan Women’s Letters,” Erin Anne Sadlack, Marywood Univ.

2. “‘Leaven for a Suspitious Jealous Cake’: Cooking, Cash, and Civil War in Jane Cavendish’s Manuscript Poetry,” Emily Smith, Decatur, GA

3. “‘Saturn (Whose Aspects Soe Sads My Soul)’: Lady Hester Pulter’s Feminine Melancholic Genius,” Alice Eardley, Warwick Univ.

Respondent: Elizabeth H. Hageman, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham

Thursday, 28 December
193. Wikis, Authority, and the Public Sphere: Examining the Impact of Dynamic, Multiauthored Digital Texts
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Grand Ballroom Salon L, Philadelphia Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Amit Ray, Rochester Inst. of Tech.

1. “The Digital Palimpsest: Reviewing the Author Function in the Age of Wikis,” Erhardt Graeff, Rochester Inst. of Tech.; Amit Ray

2. “Wikipedia: The University and the Open Archive,” David Parry, Univ. at Albany, State Univ. of New York

3. “Rewriting Hejinian’s My Life: Authorship, Gender, and Drag on a Collaborative Wiki,” Leisha J. Jones, Penn State Univ., University Park

For copies of abstracts and working papers, visit http://honors.rit.edu/~wiki.

Thursday, 28 December
246. Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century Concord
1:45–3:00 p.m., 302, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the Association for Documentary Editing

Presiding: Joel Myerson, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia

1. “Letting Them Down Gently: Rejection Slips in Nineteenth-Century Concord,” Barbara Lee Packer, Univ. of California, Los Angeles

2. “Hawthorne’s Reading of His Neighbors’ ‘Words That Burn,’” Larry J. Reynolds, Texas A&M Univ., College Station

3. “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: The Concord Writers in the Wider World,” Robert Gross, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs

Thursday, 28 December
318. Cold War–Era American Publishing and Ideas of Cultural Democracy
7:15–8:30 p.m., 302, Philadelphia Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Greg Barnhisel, Duquesne Univ.

Speakers: Brett Gary, New York Univ.

Lisa Gitelman, Catholic Univ. of America

Daniel Raff, Univ. of Pennsylvania

Trysh Travis, Univ. of Florida

John Hench, American Antiquarian Soc.

Respondent: Catherine Turner, Coll. Misericordia

Friday, 29 December
383. Hidden Transcripts: Recovering Underrepresented Literatures
10:15–11:30 a.m., 307, Philadelphia Marriott
Program arranged by the Division on Methods of Literary Research

Presiding: Laurie Anne Finke, Kenyon Coll.

1. “A Rationale of Recovery,” Jean Lee Cole, Loyola Coll.

2. “Literature of the Dawn: Recovering Indigenous New England,” Siobhan Senier, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham

3. “Artless Stories, Simple Facts: Editorial Practices and the Misreading of Nineteenth-Century African American Literature,” John Ernest, West Virginia Univ., Morgantown

4. “Vestiges of Old Madras: Epistemological Encounters in the Archives of Fort Saint George,” Rajani Sudan, Southern Methodist Univ.

Friday, 29 December
388. Print Cultures in the Atlantic World
10:15–11:30 a.m., 406, Philadelphia Marriott
Program arranged by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing

Presiding: Melissa J. Homestead, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln

1. “English Imprints in the Atlantic World, 1620–88,” Jennifer Mylander, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana

2. “Trading Bodies, Stealing Texts: Richard Cumberland’s The West Indian,” Molly O’Hagan Hardy, Univ. of Texas, Austin

3. “Literary Pirates of the Caribbean: Emmanuel Appadocca and Atlantic World Print Culture,” Marcy J. Dinius, Univ. of Delaware, Newark

Respondent: Melissa J. Homestead

Friday, 29 December
398. Reading Code
10:15–11:30 a.m., 306, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Media and Literature

Presiding: Rita M. Raley, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara

1. “Code? (((Who?) Reads?) What?),” John Cayley, London, England

2. “Becoming Encoded,” David A. Golumbia, Univ. of Virginia

3. “Exe.cut(up)able Statements: Algorithmics as a Structural Dimension of Literature,” Florian Cramer, Piet Zwart Inst.

Respondent: Mark Marino, Univ. of Southern California

Friday, 29 December
420. Tenure, Promotion, and Textual Studies
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 302, Philadelphia Marriott
Program arranged by the College English Association

Presiding: Maura Carey Ives, Texas A&M Univ., College Station

1. “Tenure, Promotion, and Textual Editing at the Teaching Institution,” John M. Ulrich, Mansfield Univ.

2. “Putting an End to Textual Exploitation, Discrimination, and Abuse,” John Gouws, Rhodes Univ.

3. “Confessions of a Fence-Sitter: A Graduate Student Perspective on Textual Studies,” Christopher E. Garrett, Texas A&M Univ., College Station

Respondent: Maura Carey Ives

Friday, 29 December
448. Electronic Literature and Textual Scholarship
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Commonwealth Hall D, Loews

Program arranged by the Division on Methods of Literary Research

1. “Typee, Revision, and Editing a Fluid Text: Making the Invisible Visible,” John Bryant, Hofstra Univ.

2. “Human Computer Collaboration: Literary Interpretation as Provocation and Response,” Tanya Clement, Univ. of Maryland, College Park

Friday, 29 December
475. The History of the Book in Early Modern Britain III: Modes of Literacy
1:45–3:00 p.m., 411–412, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the Divisions on Seventeenth-Century English Literature and Literature of the English Renaissance, Excluding Shakespeare

Presiding: Nigel S. Smith, Princeton Univ.

1. “Manual Labor: Learning to Read the First Literacy Textbooks,” Gwynn A. Dujardin, Queen’s Univ.

2. “Printers, Paratexts, and Visual Translation of French Gender Discourses in Early Renaissance England,” A. E. B. Coldiron, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge

3. “Reading for Revenge: The Trial of Stephen Colledge and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion,” Steven Zwicker, Washington Univ.

Respondent: Kevin Sharpe, Univ. of London, Queen Mary Coll.

Friday, 29 December
486. Interrogating Reading Nation with William St. Clair
1:45–3:00 p.m., 201-B, Convention Center

Program arranged by the Division on Late-Eighteenth-Century English Literature

Presiding: Clifford Haynes Siskin, New York Univ.

Interrogators: Jon P. Klancher, Carnegie Mellon Univ.

Maureen Noelle McLane, Harvard Univ.

Respondent: William St. Clair, Univ. of Cambridge, Trinity Coll.

Friday, 29 December
516. Electronic Textual Editing: What’s Next?
3:30–4:45 p.m., 203-A, Convention Center

Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions

Presiding: Martha Nell Smith, Univ. of Maryland, College Park

Speakers: Julia H. Flanders, Brown Univ.

David Lee Gants, Univ. of New Brunswick, Fredericton

Steven E. Jones, Loyola Univ., Chicago

For copies of abstracts visit www.mith.umd.edu/CSE/MLA2006 after 1 Dec.

Friday, 29 December
30. Literature and the New Media Economy
3:30–4:45 p.m., Washington A, Loews

Program arranged by the Division on Luso-Brazilian Language and Literature

Presiding: Peggy L. Sharpe, Florida State Univ.

1. “The Erotic and Exotic Lure: A Cultural Decoy,” Maria José Somerlate Barbosa, Univ. of Iowa

2. “The Material Girl’s Digital Archive: Literature and New Media Economy in Clarah Averbuck’s Máquina de pinball,” Leila Maria Lehnen, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque

3. “A hora da estrela: A doméstica no cinema brasileiro contemporâneo,” Sonia M. Roncador, Univ. of Texas, Austin

4. “Singing under Siege: Resistance Music in Portugal and Brazil,” Patricia I. Vieira, Harvard Univ.

Saturday, 30 December
649. Meet the Bloggers: Blogging and the Future of Academia
8:30–9:45 a.m., 308, Philadelphia Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Scott Kaufman, Univ. of California, Irvine

1. “Instantaneous Citation Index,” Michael F. Bérubé, Penn State Univ., University Park

2. “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” Tedra S. Osell, Univ. of Guelph

3. “Form Follows the Function of the Little Magazine,” John Holbo, National Univ. of Singapore

4. “The New Interdisciplinary,” Scott Kaufman

Respondent: Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed

For copies of abstracts, visit http://acephalous.typepad.com/abstract.html.

Saturday, 30 December
662. Editing Is Interpretation: American Literary History
10:15–11:30 a.m., 306, Philadelphia Marriott
Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions

Presiding: John Bryant, Hofstra Univ.

1. “William Stanley Braithwaite and the Impressions of Type,” Susanna Margaret Ashton, Clemson Univ.

2. “Revision and the Question of History in Henry James’s New York Edition,” J. Stephen Murphy, Univ. of California, Berkeley

3. “Re-presenting Willa Cather,” Marilee Lindemann, Univ. of Maryland, College Park

For copies of abstracts, visit www.mith.umd.edu/CSE/MLA2006 after 10 Dec.

Saturday, 30 December
684. Early Modern Englishwomen in the Book Trades: A Session in Honor of Katharine F. Panzer
10:15–11:30 a.m., Grand Ballroom Salon K, Philadelphia Marriott
Program arranged by the Division on Methods of Literary Research

Presiding: Elizabeth H. Hageman, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham

1. “Women and Patronage in the Early Modern Book Trades,” Helen Smith, Univ. of York

2. “Joan Brome and the Lyly Plays: A Feminist History of the Book,” Tara Lyons, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana

3. “Printing and Bookselling Preferences of Women in the Early Modern London Book Trade,” David Lee Gants, Univ. of New Brunswick, Fredericton; Sarah Neville, Univ. of New Brunswick, Fredericton

HIBOLIRE
The Nordic-Baltic-Russian Network on the History of Books, Libraries, and Reading launches a new website

The Nordic-Baltic-Russian Network on the History of Books, Libraries and Reading (HIBOLIRE) is a multinational and multidisciplinary network of scholars in the fields of book history, history of libraries and history of reading. The activities of HIBOLIRE are supported by Nordforsk, an independent institution operating under the Nordic Council of Ministers for Education and Research, during 2006–2009. The network also works in close cooperation with the international research school NORSLIS.

The aim of the network is to enhance cooperation between individual members and their organizations, disseminate information, and organize seminars, summer schools and conferences. We seek to create opportunities for an exchange of scholars between academic institutions, support doctoral students and ultimately, start research and other projects, such as popularization of the research results, and establish an international scholarly journal.

Producing the Renaissance Text: Current Technologies of Editing in Theory and Practice

Saturday, February 3, 2007, 10:00am
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Duke University

This conference will explore the interface between texts produced during the first 150 years of the printing press in early modern Europe and the theories and technologies of the present moment, in which forces from digitalization to the new philology have revolutionized the practice of editing. Several recent developments have converged to give this once sedate realm new excitement and urgency. A host of theoretical and practical questions as well as new knowledge about textual production in the period have been developed in the field known as History of the Book. Newly digitized databases also make it possible to rethink our understanding of the physical production of the Renaissance text. The Early English Books Online (EEBO) makes available an image of virtually every page printed in England since the beginning of printing and thus enables all students to scan the actual physical layout of pages read by readers of the Renaissance. Concurrent with the expansion of this technology there has been a revolution in assumptions about editing canonical texts and also bringing previously unedited texts before the 21st century reader, especially work written by women which remained in manuscript, or which, while printed, were never issued in modernized versions. Our conference seeks to address the questions, both theoretical and absolutely practical, facing anyone who would edit--or simply read--a Renaissance text today.

The conference will feature several distinguished specialists in the field of textual theory and editing from Duke University and other institutions. Three sessions followed by a round table discussion are being planned. Details to be announced later. Save the date!

Call for Papers
Print Networks Conference

The twenty-fourth annual Print Networks conference on the History of the British Book Trade will take place at the University of Chester on 24-26 July 2007. The theme for the conference is Print culture in the provinces: the creation, distribution, and dissemination of word and image. Provincial-metropolitan inter-trade connections will be acceptable or on aspects of trade relations with any part of the former colonies & dominions.

A selection of the papers will be published in July 2008 as part of the Print Networks series, published by the British Library and Oak Knoll Press. Papers should be of up to 30 minutes duration. An abstract of the offered paper and a brief CV, (no longer than one side of A4 in total) of the likely contents should be submitted by 31 January 2007.

Further information, including contact details, available here

Printing Historical Society
Research Grants in Printing History for 2007
Deadline: January 1, 2007

The Printing Historical Society is pleased to continue its limited number of small grants for the promotion of the history of printing for the third year. Grants are offered for three categories: Research on topics relating to the history of printing; Publishable reports on archives relating to the history of printing; Conference fellowships for students giving papers at Printing Historical Society conferences

Mindful that there are grants available from related societies, the Society will limit its grants to historical research in the following areas: printing technology, the printing and related industries, printed materials and artifacts, type and typefounding, print culture, and printing processes and design.

Research grant applications may be for funding up to £ 1,000; applications for publishable reports on archives may be up to £ 500. In both cases grants may be used to cover material or other expenses, including travel, subsistence, photography, etc. Applications should specify the amount requested and the use of funds envisaged; costs incurred before application are unlikely to be successful. The Committee will feel free to award less than the amount requested. The archival reports will be considered for publication in Printing History News or the Journal of the Printing Historical Society.

More information here

Re-Reading the Early Republic: From Crèvecoeur to Cooper
The American Antiquarian Society 2007 Summer Seminar
June 18–22, 2007


Seminar Director: Wayne Franklin, University of Connecticut at Storrs
Visiting Faculty: Lance Schachterle, Associate Provost, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Jeffrey Walker, Associate Professor of English, Oklahoma State University; David Whitesell, Curator of Books, AAS

"Re-reading the Early Republic" will explore the expansion of the press as an element in American public culture from the end of the Revolution to 1830. This was a period of remarkable growth in both the number and nature of items published and in the role of the press in public life. Paying particular attention to the practices of textual production as these evolved across the five decades, we shall be concerned with three key issues: 1) authorial practices -- how writers conceived and produced their texts as both intellectual constructs and material artifacts; 2) printing and publishing practices -- how texts moved from manuscript to print and then to and through the market; and 3) reading practices -- how books were owned and understood by individual readers, as well as how they were handled in and by the periodical press. To focus these concerns, we shall look at a trio of examples from the period. The first is provided by the French émigré essayist St. Jean de Crèvecoeur: we shall consider how he wrote and organized Letters from an American Farmer (1782) and its associated texts (both the so called Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America and the "Agricola" papers, as well as the two vastly expanded French "translations" of Letters), and how parts of these texts were re circulated in the American periodical press. The second example centers on how the various texts penned by members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1803-1806 were edited and altered as they began to make their way into print, especially how the key contemporary record of expedition, the 1814 Paul Allen Nicholas Biddle History, shaped immediate public understanding of the Louisiana Territory. The third example centers on the immensely popular fiction of James Fenimore Cooper, whose authorial practices from 1820 to 1830 were experimental both conceptually and in terms of how they were produced for Cooper's growing public in the United States and abroad. This part of the seminar will make special use of the riches in the Antiquarian Society's Cooper collection, including manuscripts of various published works, correspondence with his literary agents and publishers, and other documents. Finally, since all three of these examples from the period have undergone exhaustive re editing in the past thirty years, we shall ask how modern editorial treatment of texts alters the way in which an earlier period is -- and should be -- read and understood. Our primary reading will be Letters from An American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth Century America, ed. Albert E. Stone, Gary E. Moulton's Definitive Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (both on-line and the one volume abridgement), and the Cooper edition's version of The Red Rover, ed. by Thomas and Marianne Philbrick.

More information available here

The HENRIK Database
Books and their Owners in Finland up to 1809

HENRIK contains information about books and their owners in Helsinki up to and including 1809. This information has been retrieved from estate inventory deeds and auction protocols. When conducting searches, information about books and their owners can be combined. HENRIK represents a multifaceted resource and will yield new opportunities for research in cultural history.

This database was named after Henrik Grönroos Ph. D. [honorary doctorate]. Material collected by Grönroos over several decades has been at the centre of our work in creating this database. The Grönroos Collection is preserved by the Archive of Literature and History attached to the Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland [the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland]. Additional information has been assembled from various sources in the City Archives of Helsinki. To date, the database covers all estate inventory deeds and auction protocols in Helsinki up to 1809. We hope to include similar material from other towns in the future.

Database access here

Grolier Club Library Fellowships, 2007
New York, NY

The Grolier Club Library is a focused research collection of approximately 100,000 volumes on the art and history of the book, with particular strength in book catalogues of all types -- printed and manuscript inventories of private libraries, catalogues of antiquarian booksellers, and book auction sales. The Grolier Club Library collections of book catalogues are among the most comprehensive in the US, and have long been recognized as an important resource for collectors and scholars in book history.

For its fourth annual fellowship competition, awards of up to $2,500 are available for research in the Library's areas of strength, with emphasis on the history of antiquarian bookselling and private collecting of books and prints in the United States, Great Britain, and Western Europe. Fellowship awards may be used to pay for travel, housing, and other expenses. A minimum research stay of two weeks is required, and fellows are expected to present a seminar or lecture at the Grolier Club, and submit a written report.

Applicants should submit a curriculum vitae and a proposal, not to exceed 750 words, stating necessary length of residence, historical materials to be used, relevance of the Grolier Club Library collections to the project, a proposed budget, and two letters of recommendation. The deadline for applications and letters of support is March 1, 2007, and announcement of awards will be made in early May, 2007. Research terms can take place any time between June 1, 2007 and May 30, 2008, but please note that the Club is closed for the month of August. Applications should be sent to The Fellowship Committee, The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY, 10022, or by email to ejh@grolierclub.org.

Call for Papers
New Developments in Textual Culture
A one-day symposium hosted by the Department of English, University of Stirling, UK
17 February, 2007

Textual Culture is a cross-period, interdisciplinary feld of enquiry focused on the production, circulation, and use of texts conceived in material, discursive, and economic terms. It brings together several strands of existing research interest, principally book history, publishing studies, discourse analysis, and reader/audience study. This one-day symposium, intended as an exploration of the continuing development of these research traditions and the relationship between them, follows the highly successful Textual Culture conference of 2005 and precedes the Autumn 2007 launch of the Master of Research (M.Res) degree in Textual Culture at the University of Stirling.

Proposals (max. 200 words) are sought for twenty-minute plenary papers, as well as for three- to five-minute ‘position papers’ for a concluding panel and roundtable discussion. Proposals from postgraduate students are particularly encouraged.

Proposals (max. 200 words) are sought for twenty-minute plenary papers, as well as for three- to five-minute ‘position papers’ for a concluding panel and roundtable discussion. Proposals from postgraduate students are particularly encouraged.Proposals (max. 200 words) are sought for twenty-minute plenary papers, as well as for three- to five-minute ‘position papers’ for a concluding panel and roundtable discussion. Proposals from postgraduate students are particularly encouraged. Deadline, 6 January, 2007.

Henry Machyn, A London Provisioner's Chronicle, 1550-1563
A pathbreaking new electronic edition by Richard W. Bailey, Marilyn Miller, and Colette Moore (link)

The Chronicle was one of the treasures of the library of the antiquarian Robert Cotton, and it was stored in the same bookcase with the Beowulf manuscript. Its location was in the book press surmounted by a bust of the Roman emperor Vitellius, and it takes its shelf mark in the British Library from that location: Cotton Vitellius F.v. In the terrible fire that did so much damage to this library in the early eighteenth century, the 162 leaves of the diary were badly damaged and portions of the outside margins and the top of the text were charred or burned away. Fortunately extensive selections had been published by the historian John Strype who used the manuscript before the fire, and it is possible to supply many missing portions by consulting his historical works. The burned pages of the Chronicle were jumbled in a box until the early nineteenth century when one of the librarians at the British Museum had them mounted on framing pieces of paper and sorted into order. In 1848, an antiquarian produced an edition, but even a century ago scholars pointed to its errors and questioned its value for scholarship. The present edition gives a complete inventory of material required by scholars and readers: images of the manuscript, a faithful transcript of those images, and a rendering in modern English of this fascinating document.

Beinecke Library Long-Term Research Fellowship
Deadline: February 15, 2007

The new Osborn Postdoctoral Research fellowship, for the academic year 2007-2008, is open to scholars of British history, literature, society or culture in any period from the Middle Ages through the end of the Twentieth Century who will devote the term of the fellowship to research in the Beinecke Library\'s extensive collection of books, manuscripts, prints, and original art concerning the literature, history, and culture of the British Isles. The ten month fellowship provides a stipend of $40,000 and a residential apartment within walking distance of the Library. The Osborn Fellow will be expected to take up residence in New Haven by August 1, 2007, to conduct research in Beinecke Library on a consistent basis, and to participate in the intellectual life of the Yale community through May 31, 2008. Applicants must have received their Ph.D. (or equivalent degree) between September 1, 2001 and February 14, 2007.

Details here

American Antiquarian Society Fellowships, 2007-08
Deadline: January 15, 2007

The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) invites applications for its 2007-2008 visiting academic fellowships. At least three AAS-National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships will be awarded for periods extending from four to twelve months. Long-term fellowships are intended for scholars beyond the doctorate, for which senior and mid-career scholars are particularly encouraged to apply. Several short-term fellowships will be awarded for one to three months. The short-term grants are available for scholars holding the Ph.D. and for doctoral candidates engaged in dissertation research. Special short-term fellowships support scholars working in the history of the book in American culture, in the American eighteenth century, and in American literary studies, as well as in studies that draw upon the Society's preeminent collections of graphic arts, newspapers, and periodicals.

Details here

Texas A & M Book History Workshop
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

Registration for the sixth annual Book History at A&M Workshop, May 20-25, 2007, is now open. Taking place in the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives at Texas A&M University, this five-day workshop provides an intensive, hands-on introduction to the history of books and printing with an emphasis on hand press era printing and its allied technologies--typecasting, papermaking, bookbinding, illustration, and ink-making. The combination of labs with seminars will provide students with practical experience as well as a broad historical survey of the field. Students will have the opportunity to cast type in a hand mould, set lines of type, impose formes, make paper, produce relief and intaglio illustrations and print on a replica common press. The workshop typically attracts librarians, archivists, students, teachers, book collectors and private individuals who work in areas related to or who have an interest in book history. Past workshops have also featured a series of evening lectures by scholars active in the field of book history.

The New World
An Exhibition of Early Printed Books on Exploration and Discovery
Marsh's Library, Dublin
May 22, 2006 - Spring 2007

This exhibition contains spectacular sixteenth and seventeenth-century books relating to the discovery and exploration of North and South America, illustrated with splendid engravings, woodcuts and maps. The books on display include the first description of New York in English, and the romantic and famous story of the Indian princess Pocahontas and Captain John Smith. There are fascinating early maps of North and South America including a map of the entire course of the Mississippi. Also on display are books on the flora and fauna of America. There are accounts of the infamous witchcraft trials in Salem as well as books by Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine, and President James Monroe, who made the famous declaration which became known as the Monroe Doctrine.

The English and French explorers in Canada are also included. Such famous names as Samuel de Champlain who explored the St Lawrence and discovered the great lake in the north east of America which is named after him. Also here are Henri de Tonti and Robert de la Salle who followed the course of the Mississippi and claimed the whole area for France. Other explorers were Fr Pierre de Charlevoix, who gave a fine description of Québec, and Fr Louis Hennepin, who gave the first printed description of Niagara Falls.

The books on South America describe the arrival of the Portuguese and Spanish explorers in Brazil, Peru and Chile. There are accounts of the great Amazon River and the city of Cuzco which was the centre of the Inca empire.

More information available here

Texts and Transitions: Studies in the History of MSS and Printed Books
A new monograph series from the Early Book Society

This projected series is based on the ideals and aims of the Early Book Society. It will publish monographs dealing with late medieval manuscripts and early printed books to about 1550, particularly those that explore the transition from manuscript to print and questions to do with readers and literacy, owners and patronage, the dissemination of texts, and the reception of medieval texts. A ‘text' may be either a word or an image, where a picture serves also as a text that can be read and interpreted. The focus is mainly on manuscripts and books produced in England or for the English market, and closely related French and Continental works. Books to be encouraged would include monographs of about 250 - 300 pages, collections of previously published essays by one author (updated and revised), or in some cases essay collections with a clearly unified theme or one main subject. It is anticipated that most of the monographs to be published would include illustrations. Pictures would be reproduced in black and white, though color illustrations may be included in special cases. Authors are responsible for purchasing photographs and securing the permissions to reproduce them.

The immediate organizers and general editors of the series are Martha Driver (Pace University, NY) and Derek Pearsall (Harvard University, emeritus). They will have the help of an advisory board whom they will consult about proposed volumes and working practice. The board comprises scholars expert in the various fields of late medieval and early modern literature and culture and in the history of manuscripts and books. The members of the board are: Julia Boffey (Queen Mary, University of London), Jennifer Britnell (University of Durham), Ardis Butterfield (University College, London), Philippa Hardman (University of Reading), Dieter Mehl (University of Bonn), Alastair Minnis (Ohio State University), Oliver Pickering (Brotherton Library, Leeds), John Scattergood (Trinity College, Dublin), and John Thompson (Queen's University, Belfast).

Inquiries about MS submissions may be addressed to Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, or Simon Forde at Brepols.