Textual Studies, 1500-1800

2011-07-05T11:44:00.000-04:00

Legal History: The Yearbooks, 1268-1535
A Project from BU's School of Law

Year Books are the law reports of medieval England. The earliest examples date from about 1268, and the last in the printed series are for the year 1535. The Year Books are our principal source materials for the development of legal doctrines, concepts, and methods from 1290 to 1535, a period during which the common law developed into recognizable form. More than 22,000 individual reports or 'pleas' have been printed, and others remain in manuscript. This database indexes all year book reports printed in the chronological series for all years between 1268 and 1535, and many of the year book reports printed only in alphabetical abridgements. Of these reports, all 6,901 from 1399 through 1535 have been fully indexed and paraphrased in this database.

2011-04-15T10:24:00.004-04:00

Unfolding the Story of Bess of Hardwick’s Letters

Exhibition Unsealed – The Letters of Bess of Hardwick at Hardwick Hall (Derbyshire, UK)

Bess of Hardwick (Elizabeth, countess of Shrewsbury) was one of Elizabethan England’s most famous figures, an influential matriarch and dynast, lady at Elizabeth I’s court, and the builder of great stately homes like Hardwick Hall. For the first time, her correspondence now features in an exciting exhibition at Hardwick Hall: Unsealed – The Letters of Bess of Hardwick.

Dukes and spies, queens and servants, friends and lovers – all of the Elizabethan world populates Bess of Hardwick’s letters. Bess herself wrote hundreds of letters throughout her life. They were her lifeline to her travelling children and husbands, to the court at London, and to news from the world at large. And when she moved to Hardwick Hall in the final years of her life, the old countess received current and family news into her house through her correspondence. Unsealed lets Bess and her correspondents tell their stories in their own words. The stunning banners and letter facsimiles bring Bess and her correspondents to life. Interactive features for both children and adults include a series of podcasts on food, fashion and gossip exchanged with Bess’s letters. The exhibition will remain at Hardwick Hall throughout the 2011 season, to be seen by thousands of visitors.

In collaboration with the National Trust, Unsealed was created by Dr Anke Timmermann with support from Dr Alison Wiggins at the University of Glasgow, where the AHRC Letters of Bess of Hardwick Project team has been working on an online edition of this important corpus of Renaissance letters for more than two years to date. This project reconsiders the story of Bess’s life, which as told to date typically emphasises her modest birth, her opportune marriages and rise through the ranks of society, and her ambitious aggrandisement of her family. But Bess’s surviving correspondence, which numbers more than 230 letters, shows her personal and public life in all its complexity, with as much detail as a diary would. The exhibition Unsealed – The Letters of Bess of Hardwick now also invites the general public to discover just who Bess of Hardwick was.

Unsealed is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, and supported by the National Trust and the University of Glasgow.

See further: AHRC Letters of Bess of Hardwick Project

2010-10-08T13:26:00.003-04:00

New Ashgate Series:
"Material Readings in Early Modern Culture"
Series Editors: James Daybell (Plymouth) and Adam Smyth (London)

This series provides a forum for studies that consider the material forms of texts as part of an investigation into early modern culture. The editors invite proposals of a multi- or interdisciplinary nature, and particularly welcome proposals that combine archival research with an attention to the theoretical models that might illuminate the reading, writing, and making of texts, as well as projects that take innovative approaches to the study of material texts, both in terms the kinds of primary materials under investigation, and in terms of methodologies. What are the questions that have yet be to asked about writing in its various possible embodied forms? Are there varieties of materiality that are critically neglected? How does form mediate and negotiate content? In what ways do the physical features of texts inform how they are read, interpreted and situated?
Consideration will be given to both monographs and collections of essays. The range of topics covered in this series includes, but is not limited to:

History of the book, publishing, the book trade, printing, typography (layout, type, typeface, blank/white space, paratextual apparatus)
Technologies of the written word: ink, paper, watermarks, pens, presses
Surprising or neglected material forms of writing
Print culture
Manuscript studies
Social space, context, location of writing
Social signs, cues, codes imbued within the material forms of texts
Ownership and the social practices of reading: marginalia, libraries, environments of reading and reception
Codicology, palaeography and critical bibliography
Production, transmission, distribution and circulation
Archiving and the archaeology of knowledge
Orality and oral culture
The material text as object or thing

For more information on how to submit a book proposal to the series, please contact Ashgate acquisitions editor, Erika Gaffney, at egaffney@ashgate.com

2010-02-25T13:55:00.003-05:00

Call for Papers

"Reading Anthologies in Renaissance Europe"
(1450-1650), Trinity College Dublin, July 19^th-21^st 2010

As print culture developed through the Renaissance, authors, printers and editors quickly came to exploit the commerical and literary potential of compendia and anthologies. These works took many different forms: ‘recueils’, ‘œuvres’, ‘poésies choisies’, song books, joke collections. In both printed or manuscript form, anthologies circulated in sixteenth-century Europe in Latin and the vernacular.

This conference will explore the factors that governed the production, circulation and reception of anthologies in the Europe of the Long Renaissance. What editorial and commercial imperatives drove their appearance? What cultural practices arose from their publication? How are the cultural practices of the anthology related to or different from those of collected and multi-part works? How did readers react to the concept of multi-authored works?

The organisers welcome panals of up to three participants and individual papers which are related to the following broad thematic areas:

· The Semantics of the Anthology

o What is an anthology?

o Re-presenting works to the reader

o Material reconstruction of previously-circulated works

o The role of illustration in anthologies

o Literal and Metaphorical collections

· Commercial imperatives

o The emergance of collected works

o The notion of branding

o Case studies of failed brands

o The re-ordering of texts for commercial purposes

o Print vs Mansuscript

o The place of Anthology in print culture

· Anthological Methods & Editorial Practices

o How was matierial collected?

o Selection vs compliation

o Case studies of items left out or excluded

o The role of the printer/publisher/author/editor/translator

o Editorial changes

o The role of translation

o Bibliographical approaches and methodologies

· The Reader

o Strategies to modify appeal to the reader

o Moralisation as a means of attracting a new readership

o Spatial metaphors of reading and the reader’s ‘journey’

o New reading experiences

· Anthologies and Longevity

o How does the form of the anthology either promote or hinder the longevity of the text?

o Poetry

o Literature

o Moral philosophy

o Science

o Law

o Historical writing

Proposals of up to 300 words for a 20-minute paper (proportionately longer for panels) should be sent to conference organisers Sara Barker (s.k.barker@warwick.ac.uk) and Pollie Bromilow (pollie.bromilow@liverpool.ac.uk) by March 31^st 2010.

2009-10-17T21:58:00.004-04:00

CALL FOR PAPERS

Rethinking Early Modern Print Culture

15-17 October 2010

An international and interdisciplinary conference at The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

The view that early modernity saw the transformation of European societies into cultures of print has been widely influential in literary, historical, philosophical, and bibliographical studies of the period. The concept of print culture has provided scholars with a powerful tool for analyzing and theorizing new (or seemingly new) regimens of knowledge and networks of information transmission as well as developments in the worlds of literature, theatre, music, and the visual arts. However, more recently the concept has been reexamined and destabilized, as critics have pointed out the continuing existence of cultures of manuscript, queried the privileging of technological advances over other cultural forces, and identified the presence of many of the supposed innovations of print in pre-print societies.

This multi-disciplinary conference aims to refine and redefine our understanding of early modern print cultures (from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century). We invite papers seeking to explore questions of production and reception that have always been at the core of the historiography of print, developing a more refined sense of the complex roles played by various agents and institutions. But we especially encourage submissions that probe the boundaries of our subject, both chronologically and conceptually: did print culture have a clear beginning? How is the idea of a culture of print complicated by the continued importance of manuscript circulation (as a private and commercial phenomenon)? How did print reshape or reconfigure audiences? And what was the place of orality in a world supposedly dominated by print textuality? What new forms of chirography and spoken, live performances did print enable, if any?

Other possible topics might include:

* Ownership of texts and plagiarism; authorship; “piracy”

* Booksellers and printers, and their local, national, and international networks

* Readers and their material and interpretative practices

* Libraries, both personal and institutional

* Beyond the book: ephemeral forms of print and manuscript

* Text and illustration, print and visuality

* Typography, mise en page, binding, and technological advances in book-production

We invite proposals for conference papers of 20 minutes and encourage group-proposals for panels of three papers. Alternative formats such as workshops and roundtables will also be considered. Abstracts of 250 words can be submitted electronically on the conference website.

The deadline for submissions is 15 December 2009.

All questions ought to be addressed to the conference organizers, Grégoire Holtz (French, University of Toronto) and Holger Schott Syme (English, University of Toronto), at printconference@gmail.com.

2009-05-16T20:55:00.005-04:00

‘Texts beyond Borders: Multilingualism and Textual Scholarship’
Academy for Science and the Arts (KVAB), Brussels, Belgium
November 19-21, 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS:
The European Society for Textual Scholarship
Sixth International Conference
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2009

Contacts between languages, especially translations, have always played a crucial role in the making of European culture, from Antiquity until today. Bilingual or multilingual documents, literary works created in another language than their creators’ mother tongue, translations and translated texts are special textual objects which require appropriate editorial treatment. The conference will explore how textual scholarship responds to multilingualism in its various forms, such as:

1) Scholarly editing and annotating: Using translations as witnesses to an “original” text
How do we edit ancient or medieval texts (or parts of texts) that are preserved only in ranslations? How can we handle those cases where translations do not appear to be based on direct witnesses to the text?...
2) Scholarly editing and annotating: Translations as literary objects
Is the original text the only source used by a translator? How did he use earlier translations? How can we trace the sources and tools used by a translator? ...
3) Book history, the history of reading and translations
Dissemination of translations; bilingual editions; the role of Bible translations in the history of philology; translations which become more popular than the original; texts which circulate first or more widely in translation than in their original form (e.g. Flemish performances of Michel de Ghelderode’s theatre prior to the French original); annotations and marginalia in languages other than the reader’s native tongue: how do readers respond to works not written in their own language? …
4) Authorship and translations
Revisions of translations by the author himself may contain precious interpretative information. Translations may seem less authoritative than other texts and editors might therefore be tempted to emend translations on a larger scale than in the case of “original” texts. ...
5) Multilingualism and scholarly editing
Do multilingual works of literature need other methods of editing than monolingual writings? It might also be necessary to make a distinction between different types of multilingual works (self-translations, ‘hybrid’ writings, …). Do these different types require different editorial treatments? Is it necessary to find adequate methods to edit works by authors writing in languages not their own? Or works not written in any “natural” language, such as nonsense poetry? …

The programme chairs invite the submission of proposals for full panels or individual papers devoted to the discussion of current research into different aspects of textual work, preferably focusing on the topics mentioned above. A selection of papers will be published in Variants: The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship. Proposals and abstracts (250 words) should be submitted electronically to:

Caroline Macé, University of Leuven:

Caroline.Mace@arts.kuleuven.be and
Dirk Van Hulle, University of Antwerp:

dirk.vanhulle@ua.ac.be
Deadline: 31 May 2009
All participants in the ESTS 2009 conference must be members of ESTS. For information, click here.

2009-04-09T13:17:00.006-04:00

Poetry on the Plaza

Marathon reading of Shake-speares Sonnets

In a special Poetry on the Plaza event in honor of National Poetry Month, the Harry Ransom Center presents a marathon reading of Shake-speares Sonnets (1609) on Wednesday, April 22, at noon. Shake-speares Sonnets turns 400 this year, and to celebrate, Shakespeare scholars, poets, and others will read from Shakes-speares Sonnets and The Lovers Complaint. Birthday cake will be served at this free event to honor William Shakespeare's birthday on April 23.

VIEW A LIVE WEBCAST of this event starting at approximately noon on Wednesday, April 22.

For more information click here.

2009-01-13T22:12:00.006-05:00

Language Incorporated: Culture Markets, Actors' Bodies, and Shakespeare's World of Words

McGill University Shakespeare and Performance Research Team

The LINC project's four-year research plan sees a foundation-building first year where the talents and expertise of all team members will be put to use in a tightly focused interdisciplinary experiment designed to test the two principal methodological innovations and to establish a critical mass of interpretive work on literature, theatre, and language. The work in year one will focus on The Merchant of Venice, and that play will remain a touchstone text in subsequent years, even as the work broadens out to consider a number of Shakespeare's other plays. The case-study and workshops of year one will be followed, in year two, by a focus on Shakespeare's language in relation to theatrical conditions and practices and in relation to actors' bodies, mostly but not exclusively in early modern England. Year three will see the team turn its sights from theatre to literature, manuscript and especially print culture, in order to detail Shakespeare's language's relationship to written work across a range of fields and also in order to develop a new account of the kinship between theatre and Shakespeare's literary accomplishments. Year four will pull the first three years of work together in relation to the question of the social power of Shakespeare's language in his own time and over the long term.

For more information, click here.

2008-12-15T15:32:00.005-05:00

e-codices

Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland

The goal of e-codices is to provide access to the medieval manuscripts of Switzerland via a virtual library. On the e-codices site, complete digital reproductions of the manuscripts are linked with corresponding scholarly descriptions. Its aim is to serve not only manuscript researchers, but also interested members of the general public.

For more information, click here.

2008-12-08T20:08:00.004-05:00

Music Books in Early Modern Europe: Materiality, Performance, and Social Expression

July 6-31, 2009; Newberry Library, Chicago

This NEH summer seminar for college and university teachers will explore music books produced in Europe between 1500 and 1700. The seminar will engage with the history of books and readers, and with the social and cultural history of performance. Recent scholarship on the history of the book emphasizes the book object as a space for cultural performance at all levels, from the "how-to" manual to a source for philosophical speculation. Like many book objects, music books are by their nature performative, not only as records of performances (real or imagined), but also as guides or prescriptions for behavior, and as indicators of wider cultural patterns and concerns.

The seminar will meet for four weeks, and will consist of discussion sessions, show-and-tell sessions of rare books, and weekly "cocktails and music making sessions." Under the guidence of the co-directors, participants will be expected to carry out individual research projects using The Newberry's collection of early modern music books and related texts. Participants will be assigned research carrels and and will have all the privilages of a scholar in residence.

Click here for more information.

2008-12-08T19:59:00.004-05:00

Montaigne-Shakespeare: Biographical and Editorial Crossroads

February 29, 2009; Newberry Library, Chicago

This one-day conference will explore the relation between the biography of major authors (Shakespeare and Montaigne) and editorial questions. In what ways – if any – did the lives of Shakespeare and Montaigne determine or shape their editorial projects. How did personal experiences (educational, political, etc.) influence writing and publishing for these two major authors? Should modern scholars take into consideration biographical elements in editing these authors? Essentially, what are the crossroads between the life and works of Renaissance authors?

Participants: Philippe Desan (University of Chicago), Richard Strier (University of Chicago), Lars Engle (University of Tulsa), Peter Mack (Warwick UNiversity), George Hoffmann (University of Michigan), Jean Balsamo (Université de Reims).

Click here for more information.

2008-12-08T19:37:00.005-05:00

The Role of Codicology in the Historical Critical Edition of Medieval Texts

January 9, 2009; Newberry Library, Chicago

Referring mainly to editions of works by the theologians Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus upon which he has worked, Prof. Emery will illustrate how the detailed physical analysis of manuscript books (material, composition, format, handwriting and change of scribes) as well as the history of individual books (time and place of origin, ownership, etc.) serve to confirm (or correct) the Stemma codicum establishing the relative authority of the manuscripts otherwise determined by textual analysis. Prof. Emery outlines the process of producing an historical critical edition from beginning to end.

For more information, click here.

2008-11-23T13:44:00.004-05:00

Renaissance Journalism and the Birth of the Newspaper

September 25, 2008-January 31, 2009
Folger Shakespeare Library; Washington, DC

The first newspaper arrived in England from an Amsterdam publisher on December 2, 1620. Containing the latest foreign news, this publication immediately sparked a huge demand for up-to-the-minute reports on domestic and world events. From stories of war to lurid accounts of celebrity scandals among the royal families of Europe, journalism exploded into the world of Renaissance England. Gossip in the taverns and conversations among the political classes gave way to the phenomenon of a wide cross-section of the populace reading the events of the days and weeks in cheaply-printed serial publications.

The early English newspaper has left an indelible mark upon modern news culture. Even in its earliest manifestation, we see the emergence of the dramatic headline and the editorial, the development of tabloids and advertising, and the advent of attempts at state censorship and control over the presses. The content of the newspapers on exhibit reflects not only politics but the wider cultural, social and economic life of the times they covered.

This exhibition traces the development of journalism and the newspaper in England, from the manuscript antecedents of the coranto form to the introduction of newspapers in America in the late seventeenth century, and the birth of the first daily newspaper in England in 1702.

Click here for more information.

2008-11-22T19:08:00.004-05:00

Samuel Johnson: Literary Giant of the 18th Century

May 23–Sept. 20, 2009
The Huntington; San Marino, CA

Legendary as a writer, moralist, and conversationalist during his lifetime, Samuel Johnson (1709–84) achieved fame with the publication of his Dictionary of the English Language in 1755. In honor of the 300th anniversary of his birth, “Samuel Johnson: Literary Giant of the 18th Century,” will explore how this boy from Lichfield, a small provincial town in the English Midlands, became eminent as an authority on the English language, and became distinguished as the “great moralist.” The story of Johnson’s life and achievements will be told through books, manuscripts, and portraits drawn from The Huntington collections and the Loren and Frances Rothschild collection.

Click here for more information.

2008-11-10T22:03:00.011-05:00

NEH Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers

The Reformation of the Book: 1450-1650

John N. King and James K. Bracken of The Ohio State University will direct a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers on continuity and change in the production, dissemination, and reading of Western European books during the 200 years following the advent of printing with movable type. In particular, they plan to pose the governing question of whether the advent of printing was a necessary precondition for the Protestant Reformation. Participants will consider ways in which adherents of different religious faiths shared common ground in exploiting elements such as book layout, typography, illustration, and paratext (e.g., prefaces, glosses, and commentaries) in order to inspire reading, but also to restrict interpretation. Employing key methods of the History of the Book, our investigation will consider how the physical nature of books affected ways in which readers understood and assimilated their intellectual contents. This program is geared to meet the needs of teacher-scholars interested in the literary, political, or cultural history of the Renaissance and/or Reformation, the History of the Book, art history, women's studies, religious studies, bibliography, print culture, library science (including would-be rare book librarians), mass communication, literacy studies, and more.

This seminar will meet from 22 June until 24 July 2009. During the first week of this program, we shall visit 1) Antwerp, Belgium, in order to draw on resources including the Plantin-Moretus Museum (the world's only surviving early modern printing and publishing house) and 2) London, England, in order to attend a rare-book workshop and consider treasures at the British Library. During four weeks at Oxford, where we shall reside at St. Edmund Hall, we plan to draw on the rare book and manuscript holdings of the Bodleian Library and other institutions.

Those eligible to apply include citizens of USA who are engaged in teaching at the college or university level and independent scholars who have received the terminal degree in their field (usually the Ph.D.). In addition, non-US citizens who have taught and lived in the USA for at least three years prior to March 2009 are eligible to apply. NEH will provide participants with a stipend of $3,800.

Full details and application information are available here. For further information, please contact rankinmc@jmu.edu. The application deadline is March 1, 2009.

2008-11-06T12:55:00.000-05:00

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

2008-11-06T12:48:00.002-05:00

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.

2008-07-23T12:54:00.002-04:00

Letters of a Stuart Princess: the Complete Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia

Nadine Akkerman (Leiden/CELL) and Robyn Adams (CELL) have been successful in winning a Westfield Trust grant to help fund the first volume of their edition of the complete correspondence of King Charles I's sister, wife of the Elector Palatine Frederick V. This project straddles the archival histories of England and the northern Netherlands and will make an important contribution to our historical understanding of European culture and politics during the seventeenth century. More info here.

2008-07-23T12:53:00.000-04:00

Cultures Of Communication: Theologies Of Media In Early Modern Europe And Beyond
A program at the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- & Eighteenth-Century Studies
Directed by: Christopher Wild (UCLA) & Ulrike Strasser (UC Irvine)

Our program re-approaches the history of media in early modern Europe from an original and particularly timely perspective. It resists the technological focus and teleological pull of the Gutenberg galaxy that has long dominated scholarly investigations and concentrates instead on the multimediality of early modern cultures as well as the powerful religious and theological currents informing its communication and media. We suggest that the history of media in early modern Europe is best understood in its longue duree from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century and in reference to the long-term aftershocks of the Reformation and the profound transformation of both media and mediation the Reformation set in motion. The sixteenth-century reformers not only revolutionized the use of media, as has been noted before, but rather the Reformation itself arguably represents an early modern instantiation of media theory. Each camp developed theories and practices of optimizing ‘vertical communication’ with the divine and ‘horizontal communication’ among humanity. Consequently, the recourse to the different theologies of early modern reform can help us examine the complex and competing media cultures of the time. The transformation of media had a persistent corollary in the critique of mediation. Once unleashed, this critique would not go away, but would be reformulated throughout the early modern period and beyond, and in a host of contexts within and beyond the religious domain.

Against this backdrop, our conference cycle takes as its starting point the conjunction of Reformation theology and the rise of new media in the sixteenth century to then trace the ripple effects of these phenomena in the following centuries. It will feature programs on Theology as Media Theory, Media of Reform: Between the Local and the Global, Multimediality: Print Culture in Context, and Religious Media and the Birth of Aesthetics.

Scholars who have received a Ph.D. in the last six years and are engaged in research pertaining to the announced theme are eligible to apply. Fellows are expected to make a substantive contribution to the Center's workshops and seminars. Awards are for one full academic year in residence at the Clark.

Stipend: $37,500 for the academic year.

Application and Instructions here.

2008-07-23T12:52:00.000-04:00

Live and Letters
A new online journal launched by the Center for Editing Lives and Letters in London

Submissions are invited for a new online, peer-reviewed journal, highlighting the archival research into the early modern period championed by the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. Articles should be based on archival research concerning the period 1500-1800 or the subsequent perception of that period. The journal is interdisciplinary in approach and articles on any aspect of the period are welcome, provided that they are firmly rooted in archival sources.

2008-06-24T12:39:00.003-04:00

The Printed Book in the Post-Incunabula Age, 1500-1540
Reformation Studies Institute University of St Andrews
3-5 September 2008

The period 1500-1540 is the least well studied in the in the early history of printing. The surviving books of the 15th century, the incunabula age, have been subjected to minute investigation, and now a comprehensive composite study (the I-STC). The later 16th century is the subject of numerous specialist bibliographies. The forty years between represent the awkward age: the period of adolescence when the printed book was approaching but had not reached full maturity; and when the industry experienced a period of stagnation, before the vast expansion of the reading public in the later 16th century. The book had not yet fully evolved as the mature artefact, with title-page, date and place of printing that we associate with the printing of the Hand Press Book era. This itself introduces elements of difficulty for the book specialist, since so many of the books published are undated, necessitating complex bibliographical analysis to place them correctly. The experience of this period was also very different in different parts of Europe, as the Reformation reshaped the industry in Germany, but not elsewhere. This conference, by drawing together leading specialists in book culture from different parts of Europe, will compare these diverse experiences of print, and examine how the book industry faced the challenge of the re-structuring that followed the first exuberant age of experimentation. It will also chart the growth of a pan-European book market, as print groped its way towards the robust business model that would underpin its later spectacular success. This conference will take place from the 3rd to the 5th of September and is sponsored by the British Historical Society and Brill publishing. Speakers will include:

Professor Marie-Luce Demonet
(Directrice, Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours)

Professor Andrew Pettegree
(St Andrews, Head of the School of History)

Dr Neil Harris
(Insegna Bibliologia all'Università degli Studi di Udine)

Dr David Shaw
(Secretary, Consortium of European Research Libraries/British Library)

Dr Malcolm Walsby
(St Andrews, Project Manager, U-STC project)

Dr Hanno Wijsman
(Faculteit der Letteren, University of Leiden)

Dr Alexander Wilkinson
(Director, Centre for the History of the Media, University College, Dublin)

Magali Vène
(Paris, BNF, Réserve des livres rares)

Dr. Hans-Jörg Künast
(Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Buchwissenschaft)

2008-06-23T07:51:00.001-04:00

University of Wisconsin—Madison, Memorial Library
Grants-in-Aid for Residential Research

The Friends of the University of Wisconsin—Madison Libraries is pleased to offer a minimum of four grants-in-aid annually, each one month in duration, for research in the humanities in any field appropriate to the library’s collections. The purpose is to foster the high-level use of the University of Wisconsin—Madison Libraries’ rich holdings, and to make them better known and more accessible to a wider circle of scholars. Awards are $2,000 each, or $3,000 for those traveling from outside North America.

Memorial Library, the university’s principal research library is distinguished in almost every area of scholarship. It boasts world-renowned collections of:

• history of science from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment

• pseudo science and medical and scientific quackery

• the largest American collection of avant-garde “Little Magazines”

• a rapidly growing collection of American women writers to 1920

• Scandinavian and Germanic history and literature

• Dutch post-Reformation theology and church history

• French political pamphlets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

• many other fields

Generally, applicants must have a Ph.D. or be able to demonstrate a record of solid intellectual accomplishment. Scholars and graduate students who have completed all requirements except the dissertation are also eligible.

The grants-in-aid are designed primarily to help provide access to UW—Madison library resources for people who live beyond commuting distance. Preference will be given to scholars who reside outside a 75-mile radius of Madison. The grantee is expected to be in residence during the term of the award, which may be taken up at any time during the year.

Applications are due 1 February of any year. For application forms or more information, click here, or write to Friends of the University of Wisconsin—Madison Libraries, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 990 Memorial Library, 728 State St., Madison, WI 53706, or contact the Friends at 608-265-2505; fax: 608-265-2754, E-mail: friends@library.wisc.edu.

2008-06-03T21:51:00.000-04:00

Bibliographical Society of America
New Scholars Program

The Bibliographical Society of America each year invites three scholars in the early stages of their careers to present twenty-minute papers on their current, unpublished research in the field of bibliography as members of a panel at the annual meeting of the Society, which takes place in New York City in late January. The New Scholars Program seeks to promote the work of scholars who are new to the field of bibliography, broadly defined to include any research that deals with the creation, production, publication, distribution, reception, transmission, and subsequent history of texts as material objects (print or manuscript). Papers of New Scholars are published in the December issue of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America as part of the proceedings of the annual meeting.

Junior (i.e., untenured) faculty and graduate students at the dissertation level are eligible, as are professional librarians, members of the book trade, and book collectors who are at the beginning of their careers. Candidates should submit a letter of application, an abstract of not more than 250 words, and a curriculum vitae. Graduate students should also submit a letter of recommendation from their dissertation director. For submissions to be considered for the following January, materials should be received by July 31. Please address and send applications (preferably via email) to:

New Scholars Program
Bibliographical Society of America
P.O. Box 1537
Lenox Hill Station
New York, NY 10021
email: bsa@bibsocamer.org

New Scholars selected for the panel receive a subvention of $600 toward the cost of attendance at the annual meeting and a complimentary one-year membership in the Bibliographical Society of America. For further information on the Society's website.

2008-06-03T21:48:00.001-04:00

Some New Books About Books From the British Library

The New Testament 1526 A Facsimile
Edition translated by William Tyndale
Introduction by David Daniell

This volume is a complete facsimile of William Tyndale’s pioneering translation of the New Testament from Greek into English, held at the British Library, and only one of the two last copies remaining in the world.

Publishing September 2008
Co-published with Hendrickson Publishers, USA

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Books as History
The Importance of Books Beyond Their Texts
David Pearson

This text explores books from the Middle Ages to the present day to show why books may be interesting beyond their texts. Books can develop their own individual histories, which provide important evidence about the way they were used and regarded in the past, and which make them an indispensable part of the fabric of our cultural heritage.

Publishing June 2008
Published in N America by Oak Knoll Press

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Book Trade Connections
From the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries
Edited by John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong

This ninth volume of the Print Network series contains twelve chapters from scholars working on the connections between the parties involved in the production of print artefacts, from author to printer, publisher, bookseller and reader.

Publishing June 2008
Published in North America by Oak Knoll Press

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Small books for the Common Man
A Descriptive Bibliography
Edited by John Meriton with the assistance of Carlo Dumontet

The hundred years prior to the mid-19th century saw a flowering of ephemeral publishing. This book is an analytical bibliography of the National Art Library’s collection of literary ephemera of the period: histories, tales, verse collections, primers and alphabets.

Publishing October 2008
Published in North America by Oak Knoll Press

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A Nation of Readers
The Lending Library in Georgian England
David Allan

This pioneering study explores the origins, organisation and impact of book clubs, reading societies, subscription libraries and circulating libraries in Georgian England, together with the opportunities increasingly offered to readers by a variety of other collections.

Published April 2008
Distributed in USA by U of Chicago Press

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Typeforms A History
Alan Bartram

This book is the long-awaited successor to the classic An Atlas of Typeforms, the great visually-led history of type which Alan Bartram and James Sutton produced in 1968. Nearly 75 different types are shown in their original metal forms, and placed in their historical background. Alan Bartram explores the correlation (or lack thereof) between the printed letterform and its parallel form in sculpture, engraving and other public spaces.

Published 2007
Published in North America by Oak Knoll Press

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The Design and Printing of Ephemera in Britain and America 1720 – 1920
Graham Hudson

This book discusses ephemera as an aspect of design history, showing how function, process and period have affected the changing appearance of leaflets, tickets, posters, trade cards and other ephemera. Richly illustrated, this is a book for collectors, students, design historians and all those with an interest in the visual arts.

Published February 2008
Published in North America by Oak Knoll Press

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Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade
Edited by Robin Myers, Michael Harris and Giles Mandelbrote

From the Frankfurt book fairs in the 16th century to the Farringdon Road barrows in the 20th, fairs and markets have played a crucial role in the circulation of books. In this volume, leading book historians investigate the presence of the book trade in the streets and public spaces of Europe.

Published 2007
Published in North America by Oak Knoll Press

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Literary Cultures and the Material Book
Edited by Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash and Ian Willison

The wide range covered by the thirty contributors to this book, from across the globe, is evidence of growing international interest in book history.

Published 2007
Distributed in USA by U of Chicago Press

Full catalogue available here.

2008-06-03T21:46:00.001-04:00

California Rare Book School

Need to learn more about rare books and manuscripts this summer? This August the California Rare Book School (CALRBS) is offering 8 week long courses including:

Special Collections Librarianship
Descriptive Bibliography
The History of the Book in Hispanic America
Books of the Far West
Preservation Stewardship of Library Collections
Book Illustration: Processes to 1900
Book Collecting: History and Techniques

CALRBS courses are taught by expert faculty and take full advantage of the unique collections of rare books, manuscripts and archival materials housed in greater Los Angeles. There is still space in all this summer's courses.

To see a schedule of classes, detailed course descriptions, faculty bios and application procedures please click here. Facebook members can access the CALRBS group page here.

2008-05-22T10:05:00.001-04:00

Call For Papers
Writing Cultures: Gender, Class, and Authorship in Early Modern England
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Texas A&M University

The Early Modern Studies Working Group at Texas A&M University is now accepting paper proposals for its fall symposium, “Writing Cultures: Gender, Class, and Authorship in Early Modern England,” which will be held Saturday, October 25th, 2008, in College Station, TX. Though the symposium’s title hints at a more focused approach to the concepts of “gender, class, and authorship,” papers may address any aspect of the symposium’s theme of “Writing Cultures.” Papers may explore writing culture(s) based in any facet of early modern English literature, theater, history, politics, performance, visual art, sexuality, philosophy, religion, or economics. Some of the broad goals for this event are to: further investigate the intersection of gender, class, and writing practices; reflect on the history of these topics within Early Modern humanities scholarship; and consider their impact on current critical trends. Thus possible topics could include:

Confessional narratives
Journals and periodicals
Manuscript culture
Accounting guidebooks
Dramatic paratext (prologues, epilogues, afterpieces)
Epistolary culture
Pamphlets
Travel writing & practices
Advertisements
Bookselling, printers, and the literary marketplace
Cookbooks
Domestic advice manuals
Writing cultures at Court
Contracts and contract theory

Keynote speakers for the event are Wendy Wall, Chair and Professor in the Department of English at Northwestern University, and Devoney Looser, Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri and Co-Editor of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies.

Proposals of 1-2 pages should be sent via e-mail attachment, along with name, contact information, and vitae, to Courtney Beggs at cbbeggs_at_tamu.edu by September 1st.

2008-05-19T15:24:00.002-04:00

Comité International de Paléographie Latine XVIth Colloquium
Teaching Writing, Learning To Write
September 2-5, 2008
University of London, Senate House

From the medieval viewpoint writing meant not only the skill of handwriting, but also the ability to write with 'correct' understanding of grammar, punctuation, etc. The colloquium will address the psychology and sociology of the medieval scribe. How did scribes learn to write in the Middle Ages? What was the social and cultural significance of a script chosen for a particular function? How was script influenced by features of fashion? What was the interface between scribe and reader and the graphic signs used to communicate a message? Such questions impact on the transmission of texts, the growth of literacy and history of reading.

Dans l'optique médiéval, savoir écrire signifiait non seulement maîtriser la technique d'écriture, mais aussi être capable d'écrire avec une intelligence "correcte" de la grammaire, de la ponctuation, etc. Le colloque s'intéressera à la psychologie et à la sociologie du scribe médiéval. Comment les scribes apprenaient-ils à écrire au Moyen Age? Que signifiait, en termes sociaux et culturels, l'adoption d'une écriture pour une fonction particulière? Dans quelle mesure l'écriture était-elle influencée par les tendances de la mode? Quelle était l'interface entre le scribe, le lecteur et les signes graphiques utilisés pour transmettre un message? Ce type de questions a des répercussions sur la tradition des textes, le développement de l'alphabétisme, et l'histoire de la lecture.

Provisional program, registration forms, and additional info available here.

2008-05-19T15:22:00.002-04:00

London Old and Middle English Research Seminar Summer Conference
Studies in the Auchinleck MS

June 20-21, 2008
Institute for English Studies
University of London, Senate House

Conference program and registration forms available here.

2008-05-19T15:21:00.000-04:00

PLACES STILL AVAILABLE

London Paleography Summer School and London Rare Books Summer School
at the Center for MS and Print Studies
Institute of English Studies
University of London

More info here.

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.

2007-11-05T14:46:00.000-05:00

Call for Papers
“Manuscripts and Miscellaneity, c. 1450-1720”
University of Cambridge, UK
3-4 July 2008

An international conference organized by Scriptorium: Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Online. Speakers to include: Barbara Benedict, Julia Boffey, Victoria Burke, Margaret Connolly, Alexandra Gillespie, Earle Havens, Arthur Marotti, Steven May, Marcy North, Fred Schurink, John Thompson

Commonplace books, collections, miscellanies; collections of lyric verse, extracts from authors, sacred and profane, topographical, heraldic and legal information, estate andhousehold accounts and recipes. How do we describe or classify manuscripts with such miscellaneous contents? What importance did such objects, frequently used for several different purposes over the course of their lives, have in the manuscript culture of the late medieval and early modern periods? And in what ways can recent critical interests in the material history of the book and of the history of reading practices help us to understand them?

In addressing these questions, this conference will bring together literary scholars and cultural historians, codicologists and historians of the book. It will foster discussion of manuscript miscellanies written or compiled between the mid-fifteenth and early-eighteenth centuries: their contents, their material forms, how they were written and read, the ways in which their contents were arranged and disposed (within single books or across sequences of books), who owned them and how they used them, and the places that they might have had in the schoolroom or university, home or library.

It will also question the very concept of miscellaneity, in relation to other kinds of compilation and collection, and to other methods of book-classification - is miscellaneity a helpful critical, methodological or bibliographical term? And how do we view the miscellany differently in this age of digital facsimiles and hypertext?

We have limited space for further papers at the conference, and would like to invite proposals in the following or related areas, though by no means restricted to them:

- Concepts of miscellaneity (as collection, variety, multiplicity)

- The categorizing / classification of miscellaneous manuscripts (within libraries or criticism)

- Manuscript and printed miscellanies and their relation

- Commonplace books

- Poetic miscellanies

- Household miscellanies (and the miscellany in the home)

- Religious miscellanies

- The ownership and circulation of miscellanies

- Female writers and miscellanies

- Education (miscellanies in the school, university, educational theory)

- The materiality of the miscellaneous manuscript (layout or arrangement of books, their material structures and construction)

- Miscellanies as 'literature'

- Contemporary editing or printing of miscellanies

- The manuscript miscellany in the digital age

Please send proposals, or enquiries, to Dr Christopher Burlinson, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge (cmb29@cam.ac.uk) by 31 January 2008.

We hope to be able to arrange accommodation in Cambridge for our speakers and attendees, but cannot guarantee the availability of accommodation to those who register for the conference after 31 January 2008. In order to register for the conference, please contact Dr Christopher Burlinson (cmb29@cam.ac.uk) as soon as possible.

2007-11-02T16:26:00.000-04:00

The Interacting with Print group at McGill University, Montreal
Upcoming Workshops

"Cultural Practices of Intermediality, 1700-1830"
November 3, 2007
McGill, Arts 160

"Senses of Print: Interactions of Literary, Visual, and Musical Print Cultures"
November 7, 2007
McGill, Arts 160

For more info, see the Interacting with Print website

2007-10-28T22:47:00.000-04:00

World Digital Library Agreement
The Library of Congress and UNESCO

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and UNESCO Assistant Director for Communication and Information Abdul Waheed Khan today signed an agreement at UNESCO headquarters in Paris pledging cooperative efforts to build a World Digital Library Web site.

The World Digital Library will digitize unique and rare materials from libraries and other cultural institutions around the world and make them available for free on the Internet. These materials will include manuscripts, maps, books, musical scores, sound recordings, films, prints and photographs. The objectives of the World Digital Library include promoting international and intercultural understanding, increasing the quantity and diversity of cultural materials on the Internet, and contributing to education and scholarship.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Library of Congress and UNESCO will cooperate in convening working groups of experts and other stakeholders to develop guidelines and technical specifications for the project, enlist new partners and secure the necessary support for the project from private and public sources. A key aspect of the project is to build digital library capabilities in the developing world, so that all countries and regions of the world can participate and be represented in the World Digital Library.

To test the feasibility of the project, the Library of Congress, UNESCO and five other partner institutions -- the Bibliotheca Alexandrina of Alexandria, Egypt; the National Library of Brazil; the National Library of Egypt; the National Library of Russia; and the Russian State Library -- have developed a prototype of the World Digital Library. The prototype is being demonstrated to national delegations at the UNESCO General Conference currently underway. The World Digital Library will become available to the public as a full-fledged Web site in late 2008 or early 2009.

The prototype functions in the six U.N. languages -- Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, plus Portuguese -- and features search and browse functionality by place, time, topic and contributing institution. Input into the design of the prototype was solicited through a consultative process that involved UNESCO, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, and individuals and institutions in more than 40 countries.

"UNESCO has been an exceptional partner of the Library of Congress during the development of this important global resource," said Billington. "We look forward to strengthening our collaboration with UNESCO as we work with current and future partners in this exciting enterprise to bring the cultural treasures of the world to the world."

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States and the largest library in the world, with more than 134 million items in more than 450 languages. Its collections are universal in scope and available in all formats in which information is recorded. The Library seeks to further understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge and by celebrating human achievement.

Additional information about the World Digital Library can be found here.

2007-10-28T22:33:00.000-04:00

Major Digitization Project Underway at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München (BSB)

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München (BSB) holds the largest collection of incunabula world wide, which currently comprises 9708 editions in nearly 20.000 copies. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft has granted funding for a complete digitization of the collection.

Over the coming years, one copy of each 15th-century edition held in the BSB will be digitzed. It is intended to start digitization with the ca. 1150 incunabula in German and the ca. 680 editions of which the BSB holds the sole surviving copy in a German library. After that, books printed in the German-speaking countried in the 15th century and books printed abroad will be digitized. Illustrations (mainly woodcuts) will be indexed with an iconographic classification system.

The digital reproductions will be made accessible through the electronic catalogue BSB-Ink and other databases (e.g. OPAC, union catalogues). Currently, BSB-Ink online already provides access to digital reproductions of nearly 700 incunabula, of which ca. 540 are broadsides. A list of digitized incunabula (by shelfmark only) is accessible via the Index Search.

2007-10-28T22:31:00.000-04:00

Modern Intellectual History
November 2007 issue

Special cluster of essays on book history:

Bill Bell, “Introduction: What was the History of the Book?”
Robert Darnton, “What is the History of Books Revisited"
Roger Chartier, “The Order of Books Revisited”
Peter Burke, “The Social History of Knowledge Revisited”
David D. Hall, “What was the History of the Book: A Response”

2007-10-28T22:30:00.000-04:00

Bibliography Week 2008

Bibliography Week happens each year at the end of January in New York City when many of the principal national organizations devoted to book history -- the American Printing History Association, the Bibliographical Society of America, the Grolier Club, among others -- have their annual meetings. Other groups plan interesting events, too, and many of these are open to the public.

A preliminary schedule of Bibliography Week events for 2008 (January 22-26, 2008) has been mounted on the Grolier Club website.

2007-10-18T21:37:00.000-04:00

Bound for Glory: the Bible as Book in Scotland
The Library, Merchiston Campus, Napier University, Edinburgh
October 15 - December 14, 2007
Mon-Thurs 9.00-20.00, Friday 9.00-17.00

This exhibition celebrates the printing, publication and distribution of the Bible in Scotland as part of the marking of the first five hundred years of printed word here. It does so in recognition of the significant role that the Bible played in the development of our printing and publishing industries. It is the only book that has remained continually in print over the past five hundred years.

The exhibition covers the relationship between the changing material form of the Bible as book and its differing functions over time. It does not offer or reflect any particular view of the Bible other than as a book; it does not privilege any particular religion or denomination. The exhibition tells the historical narrative of the Bible as book in Scotland through the range of exhibits drawn from the wider Edward Clark Collection of rare books held at Napier University. The Exhibition was formally opened by Professor Philip Esler, Chief Executive of the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) on 12 October.

The Exhibition is complemented by a series of public lectures during the period of its opening. These are held, unless otherwise indicated below, on Wednesdays at 18.00 in lecture theatre B2 of the Merchiston campus.

17 Oct.
Dr K.J. McCann (Cambridge University)
The Early Work of the British and Foreign Bible Society in
Scotland

31 Oct.
Prof Ian Campbell (Edinburgh University)
Reading and Mis-Reading the Bible

7 Nov.
Dr Richard Holloway
How to read the Bible

14 Nov.
Prof David Jasper (Glasgow University)
The Bible in Conversation: The Art of the Good Story

28 Nov.
Dr David McKitterick (Cambridge University)
tbc

5 Dec.
Dr Femke Molekamp (University of Sussex)
The Geneva Bible and its Readers

Further details can be had from k.jamieson@napier.ac.uk

2007-10-18T21:36:00.000-04:00

The Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society
21st Annual Conference
Hosted by Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
26-29 June, 2008

Call for Papers -- The Scottish Cultural Diaspora

In its first trip to Nova Scotia, ECSSS will hold an exciting conference highlighting the spread of Scottish culture to Canada, the Americas and other areas of the world during the very long eighteenth century (1689-1830), as well as the complex ways in which cultural interaction occurred during this period. As always, proposals for papers and panels on other topics related to eighteenth-century Scotland will also be welcome.

The plenary speakers will be Leith Davis of Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, "Scotland, Print Culture and Transnational Identity in Britain, 1689-1707," and John Reid of Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, "Scots, Natives and Empire in Eastern British America, 1760-1800." The conference will feature performances of Scottish music, an exhibit of Scottish books, and a post-conference excursion to Pictou (where there is a reconstruction of an eighteenth-century emigrant ship, the Hector, which landed in 1773 bearing Highlanders). Conference participants may stay at the lovely Lord Nelson Hotel, and the conference sessions will be held at Dalhousie University.

To propose a paper or panel, please email or fax a one-page abstract (with title) and a one-page cv, by 31st October, to:
Richard B. Sher
Executive Secretary -- ECSSS
New Jersey Institute of Technology
University Heights, Newark NJ 07102-1982, USA
sher@njit.edu; fax: 973-596-5345

For general information, please contact the conference organizer:
Fiona A. Black
Director, School of Information Management
Dalhousie University
Halifax, NS B3H 3J5, Canada
fiona.black@dal.ca

2007-10-18T21:35:00.000-04:00

Call for Papers
Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
Monday, 2 June 2008 in the Conference Center, The British Library

We are seeking four or five papers of approx. 30 minutes each, one at 11.15 a.m. and the others after lunch, with ample time for discussion after each paper. Papers dealing with any aspect of printing and book production in Continental Eastern and Western Europe are warmly invited, as are papers dealing with other aspects of historical bibliography, editing, and the history of the book and reading. Papers giving an account of work in progress or offers to introduce discussion of bibliographical interest are a long-standing feature of the seminar. Please let us know by the end of April if you are willing to give a
paper. We should be grateful if you would send us the names and addresses of potential new participants in the seminar, especially postgraduate students.

Barry Taylor
Susan Reed
Early Printed Collections
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB

barry.taylor@bl.uk; tel +44 (0)20 7412 7576
susan.reed@bl.uk; tel +44 (0)20 7412 7311 / 7572
Fax +44 (0)20 7412 7577

2007-10-16T15:40:00.000-04:00

Call for Papers
"Making Meaning from Material"
Chetham's Library, Manchester, UK
January 18, 2008

We invite graduate students at either MA and PhD level from any discipline to present 20 minute papers exploring the critical issues involved in their research into the printed or the manuscript book. We particularly encourage those wishing to discuss the intellectual, methodological and legal effects of recent digitization projects, including EEBO and Google's new partnership with the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

We welcome papers on these generally defined themes:

* The ways in which the physical form of a work influences its function or reception. Participants may here wish to think about the changing form of the book for a new context or period.

* The relationship between audience and textual form. Do audiences (groups or individuals) shape a work's physical form and/or textual content, or are they merely passive receptors of a fixed object?

* The process of making material from meaning. Do we find 'creators' (i.e. authors) and 'makers' (i.e. editors, publishers and book makers) of books disputing the relationship between content and form? What impact does this debate have on the formation of intellectual property law?

* The impact of digitization and the internet on study of the printed and the manuscript book in either methodological or legal terms.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Matthew Yeo, at matthew.g.yeo@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk by 15th November 2007.

More information available here.

2007-10-02T23:53:00.000-04:00

National Endowment for the Humanities
Digital Humanities Initiative

NEH has launched a new digital humanities initiative aimed at supporting projects that utilize or study the impact of digital technology. Digital technologies offer humanists new methods of conducting research, conceptualizing relationships, and presenting scholarship. NEH is interested in fostering the growth of digital humanities and lending support to a wide variety of projects, including those that deploy digital technologies and methods to enhance our understanding of a topic or issue; those that study the impact of digital technology on the humanities--exploring the ways in which it changes how we read, write, think, and learn; and those that digitize important materials thereby increasing the public's ability to search and access humanities information.

For info on various funding programs, many of potential interest to textual scholars, click here.

2007-09-24T14:22:00.000-04:00

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP) Conference 2008

SHARP's sixteenth annual conference will be held at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, Oxford Brookes University, UK, 24-28 June 2008. The organization is now accepting submissions of individual paper and panel proposals. The deadline for submissions is 30 November 2007. For more information, please visit the conference website.

2007-09-24T14:18:00.000-04:00

Marketing Shakespeare: The Boydell Gallery (1789-1805) and Beyond
An exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library
September 20, 2007 -- January 5, 2008

Explore the birth of the Shakespeare market in Jane Austen's England with paintings and engravings from the fashionable Boydell Gallery in London. Then view a variety of Shakespeare knick-knacks inspired by famous actors of the time such as Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble: figurines, jewelry, enamel boxes, and Wedgewood objects. On display will be original paintings, engravings and documents from the Boydell Gallery, as well as cartoons and other reactions to it. We will also show a variety of decorative wares that were sold at the time.

More info here.

2007-09-13T16:15:00.000-04:00

Making Theatrical Publics in Early Modern Europe
A Research Seminar for Dissertation-Stage PhD Students and Junior Faculty sponsored by The Making Publics Project (MaPs) at McGill University.
Leaders: Steven Mullaney (Michigan) and Paul Yachnin (McGill)
Time & Location: Victoria University of the University of Toronto, May 14-June 9, 2008

How did the shift from earlier forms of theatre, such as Corpus Christi cycles or moralities and interludes, to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century forms, such as the amphitheatre drama of Reformation London or the corrales drama of Golden Age Spain, alter the ways in which individual and collective identities were modeled?

As many as 12 Canadian and non-Canadian dissertation-stage students and junior faculty from across the humanities and social sciences will be invited to take part in this month-long interdisciplinary seminar that will bring together scholars interested in the relationship among forms of performance, the formation of "publics," and the development of public life. The travel and living expenses of the participants in the seminar will be covered by the MaPs project. Participants in the seminar will have access to the rich resources of the University of Toronto¹s John P. Robarts Research Library and Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, as well as the specialist collection of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, at Victoria University in the University of Toronto.

Further information and application instructions can be obtained from the MaPs Project website.

Application Deadline: November 15, 2007.

2007-09-10T21:17:00.000-04:00

A History of Social Dance in America
Presented by the Society for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAVIC) at the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA)

One of the goals of CHAVIC is to engage students and scholars with American prints and ephemera to enhance our understanding of

America

's history and culture. A life-long interest in classical ballet led Meghan Meade, a student at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester and Graphics Arts Intern, to undertake a project describing the history of social dance. The content of the project is driven by the holdings of the Society and we are pleased to present her work as a supplement to present scholarship; we encourage others to develop this topic using the Society's collections.

The illustrations and objects depicted in this exhibition provide a brief glimpse into the history of social dance. The abundance of artwork and social artifacts available attest to dance's importance throughout American history. Featured is not only its origin, fashion and forms, but also the unspoken language of dance. Always moving, always changing, dancing has never failed to enchant American society.

Access here.

2007-08-29T17:52:00.000-04:00

Bodleian Library’s Medieval Digital Collection Made Available

The first stage of a digitization initiative which makes available high-quality images from the Bodleian Library’s collection of medieval manuscripts and early printed books has been completed. A batch of 4,000 images is now made available by ARTstor, a non-profit organization which started its collaboration with the Bodleian Library in 2005. Including virtually all of the illuminated manuscript leaves from Bodleian manuscripts through the 16th century, as well as selected 19th and 20th- century manuscripts in the medieval tradition, the entire digital collection will reach 25,000 images with subsequent releases through 2008. The project also selectively includes significant bindings, illuminated initials, and text pages. With more than 10,000 volumes, the Bodleian Library’s Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts has one of the greatest collections of western medieval manuscripts in the world.

Access library here.

2007-08-29T11:37:00.000-04:00

Oxford-Google Digitization Program

The University of Oxford has concluded a mass-digitization agreement with Google, Inc., of Mountain View, California. This ambitious program should lead, over the next three years in the first instance, to the digitization of more than 1 million of the Bodleian Library's printed books, and their worldwide availability on the Internet, through Google's popular search services and the Oxford website.

The project is at a very early stage and over the coming months Oxford University Library Services (OULS) and Google Inc. staff will begin to work together looking in detail at the different components of the project. The Oxford-Google agreement does not currently extend beyond the scope of this project.

More information here.

2007-08-25T14:08:00.000-04:00

Early Americas Digital Archive

The Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) is a collection of electronic texts and links to texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820. Open to the public for research and teaching purposes, EADA is published and supported by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) under the general editorship of Professor Ralph Bauer, at the University of Maryland at College Park. Intended as a long-term and inter-disciplinary project in progress committed to exploring the intersections between traditional humanities research and digital technologies, it invites scholars from all disciplines to submit their editions of early American texts for publication on this site. Texts may be submitted with or without introductions and annotations, as fully marked-up .xml documents or as “plain-text” files. Full credit will be given to contributing guest editors for their work. For more information on contributing, click here.

2007-08-23T11:55:00.000-04:00

The Newberry Library History of the Book Seminar
Newberry Library
Chicago, IL

Friday, September 14, 2007 ~ 2:00 p.m.
“Books Fit for a Portuguese Queen: The Library of Catherine of Austria (1507-1578) and the Milan Connection”
Kevin Stevens, University of Nevada, Reno

Thursday, October 11, 2007 ~ 5:30 p.m.
Title TBA
Brian Stock, University of Toronto

Thursday, January 31, 2008
“The First Printed Library Catalogue? A German Doctor's Library of the Sixteenth Century and its Place in the History of the Distribution of Books by Catalogue”
Giles Mandelbrote, British Library

More info here

2007-08-16T21:56:00.000-04:00

The Pantzer Senior Fellowship in Bibliography and the British Book Trades

The Bibliographical Society of America announces a new fellowship funded by a bequest of Katharine F. Pantzer Jr., an honorary member of the Society and editor of the revised Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640. Providing a stipend of $6,000, the Pantzer Senior Fellowship will support sustained research in topics relating to book production and distribution in Britain during the hand-press period as well as studies of authorship, reading and collecting based on the examination of British books published in that period. It may be held for two to three months and complements the short-term Pantzer Fellowship, which will continue to be awarded by the Society.

Applications for the Pantzer Senior Fellowship, including three letters of reference, will be due on 1 December 2007 and should be addressed to: BSA Executive Secretary, P.O. Box 1537, Lenox Hill Station, New York, NY 10021, email: bsa@bibsocamer.org.

2007-08-16T21:54:00.000-04:00

The St. Louis Mercantile Library Prize in American Bibliography

The Bibliographical Society of America announces the creation of the St. Louis Mercantile Library Prize in American Bibliography. Funded by the St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, an institutional member of the Society, the prize is intended to encourage scholarship in the bibliography of American history and literature. The prize will be awarded in January 2008 and thereafter every three years. It brings a cash award of $2,000 and a year’s membership in the Society. More information here.

2007-08-16T21:53:00.000-04:00

The Bibliographical Society of America Nominations

In January 2008 BSA will elect the officers of the Society and the council class of 2011. The officers (President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer) will serve a two-year term (2008-2010), and four councillors will serve a three-year term (2008-2011). Please suggest possible candidates before November 1 by contacting:

Terry Belanger
Chair, BSA Nominating Committee
114 Alderman Library
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4103
telephone: (434) 924-8851
fax: (434) 924-8824
email: belanger@virginia.edu

2007-08-16T21:45:00.000-04:00

The Justin G. Schiller Prize

The Bibliographical Society of America is pleased to announce
The winner of the first Justin G. Schiller Prize for Bibliographical Work in Pre-20th Century Children’s Books is Lawrence Darton’s The Dartons: An Annotated Check-list of Children’s Books Issued by Two Publishing Houses, 1787-1876 (London/New Castle, Delaware: British Library/ Oak Knoll Press, 2004). It was selected from a very competitive group of candidates, which included monographs, articles, dissertations, exhibition catalogues, and web sites. More information here.

2007-08-07T21:33:00.000-04:00

Reading the Book: How Preservation Impacts Interpretation
A symposium presented by the Intermuseum Conservation Association
and hosted by the Friends of the Oberlin College Library
September 7, 2007
9AM-5PM

This free one-day symposium at Oberlin College will feature four scholars presenting a
broad historical overview of the evolution of the book as an object, with a nod to how the physicality of the book (and actions such as conservation) can impact its use as an historical/literary tool.

Exact campus location will be posted to the ICA website as it becomes available.
RSVPs to Nicole Hayes at 216.658.8700 or nhayes@ica-artconservation.org

2007-08-07T21:32:00.000-04:00

Patricia Klingenstein Research Fellowships 2007-2008
Deadline extended to September 1, 2007

The New-York Historical Society is currently accepting applications for short-term visiting fellowships. The New-York Historical Society, located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is an independent research library and museum, with extensive collections documenting the American experience in general and the history of New York City in particular, from cultural, social, political, military and mercantile perspectives. The collections cover four centuries, and are especially strong in late-18th- through late-19th-century holdings, which helps support our mission to promote serious scholarship about the history of the United States, and the history of New York.

For information on research fellowships, click here

2007-08-03T22:38:00.000-04:00

History of Text Technologies (HOTT)
A new interdisciplinary PhD program at Florida State University brings in five new senior scholars

Professor François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles (Interdisciplinary Humanities) was for two decades rare book curator in the Bibliothèque nationale, one of the world’s finest collections of manuscripts and early printed books, where he organized such exhibitions as “God’s Kingdom. The Bible in France from Saint Louis to the Revolution.” A specialist in the literary and visual cultures of France and Italy he taught for many years the history of the book and the history of comunication in the universities of Geneva, Lugano and Lyon while directing the French national school for chief librarians.

Professor Elaine Treharne (English) works on English manuscripts of the early medieval period, their contexts of production, their physical compilation and their cultural significance. She is the Principal Investigator of a five-year project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, "The Production and Use of English Manuscripts, 1060 to 1220". She is Chair of the Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland, Convenor of the English Association's Research Group "The History of Books and Texts", and an Editor of Review of English Studies, Speculum and Literature Compass.

Associate Professor A. E. B. Coldiron (English) specializes in late-medieval and Renaissance literature. Her research focuses on French-English literary relations, translation, poetics, and early printing, with special attention to cross-cultural aspects of textual transmission. She has held, among other awards, Folger research grants, a Kluge Fellowship in the Library of Congress, and an NEH fellowship.

Associate Professor David L. Gants (English), formerly Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing at the University of New Brunswick, publishes on bibliographical, textual, and technological matters, and is the Electronic Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. He is also director of the Early English Booktrade Database project, which seeks to describe, quantify, and classify every book in the STC period.

Associate Professor Elizabeth Spiller (English) is the author of "Science, Reading, and Renaissance Literature" (Cambridge, 2004), a study of the historic emergence of literature and science that focuses on the role of reading in the creation of knowledge. She has just completed an NEH Fellowship to pursue work on her current book, "Reading in Color: Race, Romance, and the Complexion of Early Modern Print Culture," a project that examines how reading practices contributed to the creation of racial identities in early modern culture. She is also the editor of a two volume collection of seventeenth century English recipe books (Ashgate, forthcoming).

Students interested in HOTT should contact Professor Treharne at etreharne@english.fsu.edu. This year, students will need to apply to a traditional department (English, Interdisciplinary Humanities, etc), for studies beginning in fall 2008; for subsequent years it may be possible to apply directly to HOTT.

2007-08-03T22:36:00.000-04:00

Quintress
An online journal for the history, art, and culture of the Jewish book

Published in association with the Libraries of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and Jerusalem (the Schocken Library), Quintress is now accepting submissions for its innaugural issue.

English submissions should be sent electronically to David Kraemer
(dakraemer@jtsa.edu), Hebrew Submissions to Shmuel Glick
(shglick@bezeqint.net).

2007-07-27T09:57:00.001-04:00

The University of Chicago Library Short-Term Research Fellowships, 2008-2009

The University of Chicago Library announces a program of short-term research fellowships for 2008-2009. Any visiting researcher residing more than 100 miles from Chicago whose project requires on-site consultation of materials in the Special Collections Research Center is eligible. Support for beginning scholars is a priority of the program. Awards will be made based on an evaluation of the research proposal and the applicant's ability to complete it successfully. Priority will be given to projects that cannot be conducted without on-site access to the original materials and where University of Chicago collections are central to the research. Up to $3,000 of support will be awarded to help cover projected travel, living, and research expenses. Applications from women, minorities, and persons with disabilities are encouraged. The deadline for applications is February 15, 2008. Notice of awards will be made April 4, 2008, for use between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009.

For application guidelines and instructions, click here.

2007-07-27T09:45:00.000-04:00

Jamestown at 400: Natives and Newcomers in Early Virginia
An exhibition at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
July 24, 2007 -- January 14, 2008

Early Jamestown, Va., was the place where John Smith met Pocahontas, where settlers discovered the value of growing tobacco, and where the English permitted their colonists to practice self-government. But the fact that the colony survived long enough to achieve any of those distinctions, much less to have an anniversary worth celebrating 400 years later, is something of an accomplishment in itself.

“Jamestown was, in fact, a notorious hellhole perched on the edge of a swamp,” says Peter Mancall, professor of history at the University of Southern California and director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. Typhoid fever and famine wiped out a large percentage of the population each year, he notes. And by 1622, just a generation into settlement there, the Europeans and Indians were at war in a conflict that would ultimately leave hundreds of settlers and natives dead.

Mancall is the guest curator of the new exhibition “Jamestown at 400: Natives and Newcomers in Early Virginia,” on view from July 7 through Jan. 14, 2008, in the West Hall of the Library. The exhibit is co-curated by Robert C. Ritchie, The Huntington’s W.M. Keck Foundation Director of Research. (The show is a companion exhibition to “Legacy and Legend” in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, which also marks the 400th anniversary of Jamestown by examining European depictions of Native Americans across four centuries.)

Drawing on The Huntington's unsurpassed collection of rare materials relating to the early history of Virginia, “Jamestown at 400” explores the role the colony played—against substantial odds—in the development of the nation. It begins by looking at early published accounts that reveal what the English and other Europeans knew (or thought they knew) about the Americas before 1607. Vivid illustrations from 16th-century books testify to the European belief that many Native Americans were cannibals. But those ideas faded away when colonists arrived and met actual Indians. Material on Pocahontas and John Smith is central to the exhibition—historical sources indicate that the nature of their relationship has been highly romanticized in the popular imagination. Illustrations and documents that describe other interactions between colonists and Native Americans will also be displayed.

“In large part, the settlement of Jamestown and Virginia had to do with the quest for economic gain,” says Ritchie. “Settlers first were sent from England in search of gold; they came up empty-handed on that front but landed later on the very lucrative commodity of tobacco.” Among the materials on display from The Huntington’s collection is a rare stock certificate dated 1610 issued by the Virginia Company of London, the enterprise that organized the colonization of the Chesapeake region and sought investors to finance voyages to Jamestown. Shareholders received a portion of the voyages’ profits from cargoes of tobacco sent back on return trips.

Many English settlers traveled across the Atlantic to populate the colony and work the fields, and the exhibit includes documents listing some of the hundreds of men and women who left for the New World for that purpose. Some departing travelers were better prepared than others: an informative document published by the Virginia Company in 1622 lists a number of necessary provisions by which colonists setting off for America could avoid “The inconveniencies that have happened to some persons which have transported themselves from England to Virginia.” For many of the earlier arrivals, those “inconveniences” had often included death. Among the items on the lengthy list of essentials were a complete suit of light armour (17 shillings), eight bushels of meal (£2), three pairs of stockings (4 shillings), one gallon of aquavit (2 shillings sixpence), 60 pounds of lead shot (5 shillings), and a very large quantity of assorted nails (£2).

At the time, the English shared the belief that tobacco was perhaps the most important plant that humans had ever discovered: a panacea capable of curing virtually any human illness. “The colonists’ decision to pursue the plant had far-ranging consequences, especially when a boat carrying approximately 20 Africans arrived on the shores of the Chesapeake,” says Mancall. That moment signaled the birth of slavery in English America.

The exhibition concludes with documents from the period after the dissolution of the Virginia Company in 1624. Among these later materials are very rare 19th- and 20th-century commemorations of earlier Jamestown anniversaries, including an 1857 celebratory poem, an invitation issued by President Theodore Roosevelt to the other nations of the world to join the celebration in 1907, and a mid-20th-century imaginative rendering of Capt. John Smith shaking hands with a modern businessman.

“Jamestown has been part of American lore for centuries,” says Mancall. “One of the goals of this show is to demystify it a bit. The books, letters, maps, and pictures we present reveal what it was really like when the English established what became their first permanent colony in the Western Hemisphere.”

More info here

2007-07-23T18:35:00.000-04:00

Writing and Wonder: Books, Memory, and Imagination
A Spring-Semester Seminar at the Folger Shakespeare Library

In the age of the Wunderkammer, writing itself appeared miraculous: “What, then, is more wondrous?” asked a scholar in 1617. The assumption that cultural continuity depends entirely on writing was commonplace, yet infinitely stimulating to the literate imagination. As scholars consolidated philological study and systematically formed great libraries for patrons and institutions, they sifted ancient and medieval literature for heroic narratives about the origin of writing, the invention of arts and sciences, semi-divine authors, magical books, vast libraries, titanic struggles between writing and erasure, memory and oblivion, civilization and savagery. The appeal of this lore was greatest between 1200 and the “Age of Wonder” and had declined steeply by 1800, after scholarly triage redefined many literary wonders as either counterfeits or nonexistent “imaginary” books. Modern and postmodern disciplines of the book and writing—paleography, library science, the material history of the book—emerged as this process discredited antiquarian fantasies. But works like the *Attempt at an Introduction to Historia Litteraria Antediluviana, that is, A History of Scholars and Scholarship Before the Flood* (1709) are significant for interpreting scholarship, historical counterfeit, fiction, parody, and visual arts in the early modern period. Case studies may include late medieval encyclopedists, Quattrocento humanists, Renaissance compilers (Polydore Vergil, Ravisius Textor, et al.), canonical authors such as Rabelais, Montaigne, Tasso, Cervantes, Milton, Vico, and Voltaire, and other topics that arise from participants’ research.

Director:
Walter Stephens is the Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. He is author of Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (2002) and co-editor of Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1989) among other publications. He is currently working on early modern counterfeit and the mythology of books and writing.

Schedule:
Fridays, 1 – 4:30 p.m., 1 February through 18 April 2008, except 14 March and 4 April.

Application Deadlines:
4 September 2007 for admission and grants-in-aid; 4 January 2008 for admission only. Application guidelines here.

2007-07-08T17:01:00.001-04:00

Bibliographical Society of Canada
Analytical Bibliography Course at the University of Toronto
27 and 31 August 2007

The Bibliographical Society of Canada will sponsor a course on analytical bibliography to be held at the University of Toronto between 27 and 31 August 2007. The course will focus on historical bibliography, textual bibliography, and descriptive bibliography. The course instructor is Carl Spadoni. Guest lecturers (Patricia Fleming, Judy Donnelly, Randall Speller, Elizabeth Driver, etc.) will also give presentations pertaining to early printing, imprint bibliography, subject bibliography, author bibliography, and other matters. This course is intended for librarians, literary scholars, historians, graduate students, and others interested in book collecting and the history of the book. Further information about the course will be supplied to applicants at a later date. The cost of the course is $500 or $250 for students, retirees, and unwaged persons. Please make your cheque payable to the Bibliographical Society of Canada c/o of the address below.

Carl Spadoni
Archives and Research Collections
McMaster University Library
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, ON Canada L8S 4L6
tel: 1-905-525-9140 ext. 27369; fax: 1-905-546-0625

2007-07-08T16:48:00.000-04:00

Land of Silk and Sages: An Exhibition of Early Printed Books on China
Marsh's Library, Dublin

This exhibition was opened in the library by the Chinese Ambassador, H.E. Mr Zhang Xinsen, on 17^th May 2007, and will continue until Spring 2008. The books on display represent some of the earliest accounts of China by Western travellers. The exhibition begins with a magnificent atlas open at a map of the province of Peking (now Beijing). The cartouche shows the emperor and empress seated on either side with servants carrying parasols. Visitors can also see Marco Polo's observations on the geography, government and culture of China.

The famous Chinese sage and philosopher Confucius is regarded as the most important thinker in Chinese history and there is a case devoted to him and his famous maxims. There are books with illustrations of magnificent and spectacular Chinese processions. One procession shows the emperor and his retinue when he appears in public. He is accompanied by men playing twenty-four trumpets other men carrying lances, and four hundred great lanterns. Also included in this majestic procession are princes, foot soldiers, elephants, and chariots.

This exhibition contains accounts of the customs, houses, animals, flora and fauna of the China. There are sections on the Great Wall and on Chinese medicine and illustrations of the silkworm and the making of silk. Another case is devoted to the Jesuit Mission and the famous Rites Controversy.

More info here

2007-07-08T16:38:00.000-04:00

Illuminated Islamic Manuscripts: A Selection of New Acquisitions at Yale University
Beinecke Library
late June - late August 2007

Islamic manuscripts uniquely mirror the civilization that produced them. The entire gamut of learning can be seen in these pages, from grammar, literature, and poetry to theology, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. The Islamic manuscript shows not only the beauty and variety of Islamic calligraphy, illuminations, and paintings, but also the extreme care various artisans took in penmanship, binding, and papermaking. These colorful illuminations and miniatures transcend time and place, providing a window into pre-twentieth-century Islamic culture.

2007-07-08T16:34:00.000-04:00

Ptolemy's Geography and Renaissance Mapmakers
Newberry Library, Chicago (Upcoming!)
November 3, 2007 - February 16 2008

Claudius Ptolemy, the 2nd Century CE Greek astronomer, is known as the father of modern geography. Ptolemy provided instructions for using latitude and longitude to depict the earth as a sphere on paper and compiled tables of coordinates for places in the known Greek world. A revival of Ptolemy’s work during the 15th and 16th centuries led to the creation of maps that at first bore only a slight resemblance to the modern world. This exhibition draws on the Library’s beautiful and internationally renowned collection of printed editions of the Geography to show how Renaissance mapmakers slowly transformed Ptolemy’s work from an ancient text to the foundation for Renaissance atlases. By the end of this era, geographers had created an expanded, modern atlas that relied on new information as well as on the revered work of Ptolemy.

Get more info here

2007-06-24T15:34:00.000-04:00

Call for Papers
American Periodicals, Special Issue

In 2009 American Periodicals will be publishing a special issue on "Immigrant Periodicals." We are calling for essays addressing any area of the broad and relatively understudied field of periodical publications for and by immigrant communities to the United States, focusing on the period between 1740-1920. We are especially interested in research addressing non-English periodicals. For consideration for the Special Issue on Immigrant Periodicals, please submit your essay by January 31, 2008.

Manuscripts should conform to the 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, double- spaced (including quotations and notes), and be roughly limited to 7,000 words. Submissions are accepted electronically as email attachments at amper@osu.edu . If hard copy submission is preferred, please send two hard copies of the manuscript, along with a self- addressed return envelope. Electronic submissions will receive electronic reports.

Please direct all contributions and inquiries to:

amper@osu.edu

American Periodicals
Department of English
The Ohio State University
164 W. 17th Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43210

2007-06-24T15:15:00.000-04:00

Oberlin College Library to Auction Off Evans Microfilm Collection
Early American Imprints, 1639-1800; complete collection
ca. 22,000 microfiche
See publisher's description here

Terms:

Bids close at 5 pm on Tuesday, July 17, 2007. Oberlin College will invoice high bidder, no credit cards accepted. Buyer responsible for all shipping costs. The set occupies 1.5 8-drawer microfiche cabinets; one black microfiche cabinet, in excellent condition, available free to high bidder if shipping is paid for. Oberlin College assumes no responsibility for replacing lost or damaged fiche after the sale has been transacted. Bidders can view the current high bid here and submit additional bids until the deadline.

To bid and for further information:

Contact Alan Boyd, Associate Director, Oberlin College Library, 148 West College Street, Oberlin, OH 44074, USA
alan.boyd@oberlin.edu
(440) 775-5015

All bids must be received by 5 pm on Tuesday, July 17, 2007.

2007-06-14T16:37:00.000-04:00

A Quick Stab at the Eighteenth Century
An Online Exhibition Hosted by the University of Otago (link)

This Online Exhibition provides a brief overview of a rich century. The exhibition focuses on key aspects such as philosophy, religion, music, literature and science, and features notable works such as John Locke's Two Treatises on Government (1694), David Hume's Essays, Moral and Political (1748), a scarce printing of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason (1794), Mary Wollstonecraft's feminist classic A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1796), Sarah Fielding's David Simple (1744), periodicals such as The Tatler (1709) and The Gentleman's Magazine (1731), Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), and a rare limited edition copy of Thomas Gray's Poems illustrated by William Blake (1972). A vast majority of the book and manuscripts are from Dr Esmond de Beer's Collection.

The exhibition coincides with the David Nichols Smith Seminar theme of 'Rewriting the Long Eighteenth Century' at the University of Otago on 10 to 14 April, and two other eighteenth century events: 'Evoking the 18th Century: Works from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery Collection', 17 March -28 September 2007; and 'Scottish Leaves: Books and Manuscripts from Scottish Writers 1711-1822', Dunedin Public Library Special Collections 10 April-15 July 2007.

2007-06-14T16:32:00.000-04:00

The ULRLS Archival Database
A Major New Resource for Researchers

The University of London Research Library Services (ULRLS) launched its new electronic catalogue for archives and manuscripts on 31 May 2007 . This new resource, developed over the past 18 months thanks to a grant from the Vice-Chancellor's Development Fund, is designed to complement the records of books, periodicals and theses available on the main library catalogue. It brings together descriptions of archival and manuscript collections at Senate House Library and the other libraries within ULRLS, making descriptions of more than 2,000 unique collections searchable online in one place for the first time.

The range of archive material held across ULRLS is extraordinarily diverse, covering many different aspects of British and world history over more than 1,000 years. Prominent among the collections held at Senate House Library is the University of London archive, the historic documents of which provide a unique insight into the growth and development of the University since 1836. Other strengths include: medieval manuscripts, literary manuscripts, papers of scholars associated with the University, and material relating to changes in politics, industry and society between the mid 18th and mid 20^th centuries.

2007-06-14T16:21:00.000-04:00

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Muenchen
Digital Database of MSS and MS Fragments,
Medieval and Early Modern, Western and Oriental

Available here

2007-06-14T16:18:00.000-04:00

Patricia Klingenstein Research Fellowships 2007 – 2008
The New-York Historical Society is currently accepting applications for short-term visiting fellowships

The New-York Historical Society, located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is an independent research library and museum, with extensive collections documenting the American experience in general and the history of New York City in particular, from cultural, social, political, military and mercantile perspectives. The collections cover four centuries, and are especially strong in late-18th- through late-19th-century holdings, which helps support our mission to promote serious scholarship about the history of the United States, and the history of New York.

The library’s collections may be searched through the online consortium catalog Bobcat (www.bobcat.nyu.edu). Links to finding aids and collection databases, as well as descriptions of collections, services and policies, may be found on the library portion of the N-YHS website.

The purpose of these fellowships is to encourage scholars whose research would benefit greatly from the use of the New-York Historical Society’s unique collections. The applicant’s field of research must demonstrably and specifically relate to The New-York Historical Society’s collections. United States citizens and foreign nationals may apply. Preference will be given to applicants who hold an undergraduate degree and are engaged in serious historical projects.

The stipend for the fellowship will be $500 per week, for no less than three weeks and no more than four weeks, depending on the time required for the completion of the project. Fellowships must be undertaken for consecutive weeks between September 15, 2007 and June 30, 2008. Fellows will be able to conduct research in the library during the society’s regular research hours, following the regular rules for use of the collections. The library has closed stacks and non-circulating collections. Fellows may also undertake research by appointment in the library’s Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, and in the Museum collections, which are housed in the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture on the society’s fourth floor.

There is no application form. Applicants must submit:

1) A cover sheet with name, telephone, permanent address and e-mail, current employer/affiliation, title of project, proposed dates of residency, and signature of applicant to warrant accuracy of information.

2) A letter of two single-spaced pages maximum describing the project and its relation to specifically cited collections at the society and to previous work on the same theme, and describing the projected outcome of the work. If residents of the New York City metropolitan area are applying, they must explain their financial need for the stipend.

3) A resume.

4) Three confidential letters of reference. Graduate students must include their thesis advisor.

Please mail applications to:

Fellowships, Library Office
The New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024.

Applications must be received by 5:00 p.m., August 1, 2007.

2007-06-04T17:36:00.000-04:00

U Iowa's "Center for the Book" Receives Major Grant

The University of Iowa Center for the Book is happy to announce a major grant won by Timothy Barrett: Tim has merited a $184,000 award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The UICB’s research scientist and paper specialist, Barrett is the principal investigator for a grant to study paper composition from the 15th to 19th centuries, in order to better understand preservation and care decisions for collections. You can read more about the award here.

2007-06-02T22:28:00.000-04:00

CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group Conference, 2007
Imagining The Text: The Role of Images In Printed Books
Wellcome Library, London
12-14 September 2007

The conference will examine the role of illustrations in printed books from the 16th century to the present day, from woodcuts to photographs. It offers an opportunity to examine illustrations, learn about exciting current projects and visit some of the remarkable collections of images and illustrated books to be found in London. Visits and workshops will be held at the British Library, National Art Library, British Architectural Library and the Wellcome Library and the conference reception and dinner will be held at the Royal Society. The event is suitable for librarians, curators, archivists, bibliographers, booksellers, and anyone who has a personal or professional interest in the subject.

A programme of the events for the full three days, details of accommodation in London, and a booking form are available from the Group's website

2007-06-02T22:19:00.000-04:00

Call for Papers
Analogous Spaces: Architecture and the space of information, intellect and action.

The International Conference on Analogous Spaces interrogates the analogy between spaces in which knowledge is preserved, organized, transferred or activated. Although these spaces may differ in material, virtual, or operational ways, there are resemblances if one examines their 'structure,' 'form' and 'architecture'. How do these spaces co-exist and interrelate? The conference seeks papers on the following types of spaces:

* architecture and elements of the built environment (museums, libraries and archives, warehouses, ministries, administrative towns, world capitals, physical infrastructure, functionalist urbanism, etc.);
* information storage and data processing (databases, information retrieval, data mining, conceptual maps, scholarly communication, search engines, etc.);
* the architecture of "the book" (contents and layout of atlases, scientific and scholarly treatises, encyclopedias, guides, manuals, children's books etc.);
* organizational schemes and diagrams (organigrams, functional diagrams, visual language, interfaces, artificial intelligence, taxonomies, classification systems, itineraries, etc.).

Conference papers should examine analogical relationships between these types of spaces by investigating how they produce, accumulate, order, conserve, distribute, classify, and use knowledge.

Calendar
* 31 July 2007 Deadline submission of abstracts
* 31 October 2007 Selection of papers
* 31 March 2008 Submission of final papers and other contributions
* 15-17 May 2008 Conference Analogous Spaces
Practical Information
* Conference language: English
* Conference venue: Ghent (Belgium)
* Publication: A selection of conference papers will be published

Background information and the full CFP can be found here

2007-06-02T21:43:00.000-04:00

Barren Regions: Early Dutch Books on the Exploration of Australia
At the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands)

On the occasion of the celebration of "Netherlands - Australia 1606 - 2006" the Koninklijke Bibliotheek presents the complete digital facsimiles of five early Dutch books on the exploration of Australia.

Without ever having seen the Terra Australis Incognita, or the Unknown Southland, everyone in seventeenth-century Europe was convinced that it existed. Sixteenth-century cartographers were heavily influenced by Ptolemy’s world map of the 2nd century, on which a vast southern land mass is shown to counterbalance the weight of the northern continent. This Southland was rumoured to have enormous riches, such as silver and gold. In the end none of the phantasies proved to be correct, as was shown by the subsequent discoveries of Australia and New Zealand, discoveries mainly made by the Dutch.

Access exhibition here

2007-05-22T12:45:00.000-04:00

Call for Papers
The Fifth International Conference on the Book
Madrid, Spain, 20 to 22 October 2007

This broad-ranging and cross-disciplinary conference will discuss the past, present and future of publishing, libraries, literacy, learning and the information society.

Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the fully refereed International Journal of the Book. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for review and possible publication in the journal, and provide access to the online edition of the journal.

To submit your proposal, please visit the Submit Proposal link on the conference website. We look forward to receiving your proposals and hope you will be able to join us in Madrid in October 2007.

2007-05-22T12:37:00.000-04:00

Call for Papers
"Evidence of Reading, Reading the Evidence"
A major international conference to be held at
The Institute of English Studies,
University of London
21-23 July 2008
Organised by the Open University and the Institute of English Studies

Keynote speakers: Kate Flint, Jonathan Rose, David Vincent

Studies centred on the history of reading have proliferated in the last twenty years. They have sprung from several different disciplines, encompassed different periods and geographical locations and chosen divergent methodologies, but their common quest has been to recover and understand the traces of a practice which is central to our understanding of human history, yet notoriously elusive.

One such approach is ‘The Reading Experience Database 1450-1945’ (RED), a project run by the Open University and the University of London. While RED is already proving its worth as a digital resource, its methodological parameters are necessarily limited and its vision therefore partial. What is needed in order for the study of the history of reading to progress beyond the boundaries of specific institutions, disciplines, methodologies, geographical locations and time periods is a forum in which as many diverse approaches as possible are brought into energetic debate.

This major 3-day conference, the first of its type, seeks to provide such a forum. We invite 20-minute papers from international students and scholars of any discipline - both within and outside the Humanities – who are interested in the history and practice of reading in any period or geographical location.

Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

● Theories of reading

● Issues of literacy

● National and transnational histories

● Reading and readers in fiction

● Reading communities

● Quantitative versus qualitative methodologies

● Genre reading

● Digital resources and their development

● Visual representations of reading

● Reading across disciplines/languages

● Using historical data in contemporary research fields

● The sociology, psychology and neurology of reading experiences

● Evidence of reading from private audio recordings and blogs

● Finding, compiling, interpreting and preserving the evidence of reading

Paper titles, abstracts of no more than 300 words and short biographies should be sent electronically by 31 January 2008 to all three organisers:
Dr Shaf Towheed (S.S.Towheed@open.ac.uk);
Dr Rosalind Crone (r.h.crone@open.ac.uk);
Dr Katie Halsey (Katie.Halsey@sas.ac.uk).