New book history series from Ashgate Publishing

Ashgate Studies in Publishing History

Offering publishing histories of well-known works of literature, this series is intended as a resource for book historians and for other specialists whose scholarship and teaching are enhanced by access to a work's publication and reception history. Features include but are not limited to sections on the text's composition, production and marketing, contemporary reception, textual issues, subsequent editions, and archival resources. The series is designed to allow for flexibility in presentation, to accommodate differences in each work's history. Proposals on works whose publishing histories are particularly significant for what they reveal about a writer, a cultural milieu, or the history of print culture are especially welcome.

Proposals should take the form of either
1. a preliminary letter of inquiry, briefly describing the project; or
2. a formal prospectus including abstract, table of contents, chapter summaries, sample chapter, estimate of length, estimate of the number & type of illustrations to be included, and c.v.

Please send a copy of either type of proposal to the publisher at the following addresses:

Ann Donahue
Senior Editor
Ashgate Publishing
101 Cherry Street, Suite 420
Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA
email: adonahue@ashgate.com

Artifacts of Childhood
700 Years of Children's Books
September 27, 2008 – January 17, 2009

Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Children's Books explores the Newberry's little-known collection of books and manuscripts created for and by children. The exhibition showcases aspects of the interaction between children and books and includes approximately 65 works, drawn from the Library's collection of thousands of children's books in more than 100 languages, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Artifacts of Childhood features such treasures as: the first illustrated edition of Aesop's Fables (1485); the first edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865); a nineteenth-century collectible story, La Fille de L'Exile, that is similar in format to Pokemon cards; and ABCs from 1544 to 1992.

These and other materials allow exhibit visitors to traverse time, space, and cultures to trace continuity and change within the history of children's books, to examine changing attitudes towards children and childhood, and to understand the importance of the study of the history of childhood through children's books.

More information here.