Bw Nbv2013 8SW Bw-Nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 1

bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 1

Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 2 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 3

Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20/2013

Uitgeverij Vantilt, Nijmegen & Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging, Leiden bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 4

Deze uitgave kwam tot stand dankzij een bijdrage van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Den Haag.

Redactie Sandra van Voorst (hoofdredacteur), Erik Geleijns (redactiesecretaris), Goran Proot, Steven van Impe, Djoeke van Netten, Ed van der Vlist en Janneke Weijermars

Redactieadres Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis Erik Geleijns Koninklijke Bibliotheek Postbus 90407 2509 LK Den Haag e-mail: [email protected]

Kopij voor het jaarboek wordt ingewacht op het redactieadres.

Secretariaat Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging Marijke Huisman Pauwstraat 8 3512 TG Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] website: www.boekgeschiedenis.nl

Vormgeving: Martien Frijns, Doetinchem

Afbeelding omslag: Wereldkaart uit Gerard Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmograficae meditationes de fabrica mundi et fabrica figura. Amsterodami, sumptibus & typis aeneis Henrici Hondii, 1628. Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience, Antwerpen, K 20202

Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden vermenigvuldigd en/of openbaar gemaakt door middel van druk, fotokopie, microfilm of op welke andere wijze ook, zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de uitgever. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 5

Inhoud

7 Voorwoord

11 Preface

15 Introduction

19 David McKitterick The United Kingdom: a national history of the book

33 Roger Osborne Taking turns in Australasia Histories of the book in Australia and New Zealand

49 Frederick Nesta The book in China and modern Western book history

59 Christine Haug, Slávka Rude-Porubská & Wolfgang Schmitz ‘Buchwissenschaft’ in Germany An overview

79 Peter R. Frank, Johannes Frimmel & Murray G. Hall Book history in Austria

87 Benito Rial Costas Bibliography and the history of the printed book in Spain Some insights into an old and new field of study

99 Stijn van Rossem Book history in Belgium Who harbours the harbourless?

111 Rikard Wingård Swedish book historical research 2006-2012 A survey

125 Peter Kornicki Recent work on the history of the book in Japan

141 Aina Nøding Book history in Norway From peasant readers to reading Ibsen

153 Archie L. Dick Book history in South Africa Recent developments and prospects

163 Anders Toftgaard Princely libraries, the readings of common man and the entry of the book cover into literary studies Trends in book history research in Denmark bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 6

187 César Manrique Figueroa Studying the book in Hispanic America The process of consolidation of national identities

201 Adriaan van der Weel Pandora’s box of text technology

205 Jos A.A.M. Biemans Book history and manuscript studies at the University of Amsterdam A personal story

209 Samenvattingen

217 Biographies bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 7

Voorwoord

Voor u ligt het jubileumnummer van het Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis, sinds 1993 de meest wezenlijke manifestatie van de Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging. Twintig jaar! In een feestelijk voorwoord horen vanzelfsprekend enkele opmerkingen over heden, verleden en toekomst. Ik besef dat ik met die ‘enkele opmerkingen’ veel boekhistorici die zich de afgelopen jaren met hart en ziel voor de vereniging hebben ingespannen, tekort doe door ze niet te noemen. Ik hoop dat u mij dat vergeeft.

Ter zake.

Het Nederlandse boekhistorische landschap leek in het begin van de jaren 1990 aardig aangekleed; de Tiele-Stichting bevorderde ‘de wetenschap van het boek en de drukkunst en de daarmede samenhangende technieken’, het genootschap Petrus Scriverius behar- tigde de belangen van de wat traditioneler ingestelde liefhebbers van boek en bibliotheek en het gezelschap Convoluut bood boekhistorici een uitwisselingsplatform voor lopend onderzoek. Toch werden niet alle doelgroepen bereikt. In een ongepubliceerde tekst uit 1993 wenste Paul Hoftijzer een landelijke vereniging ‘die allen, die een actieve of passieve interesse voor de Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis hebben, kan samenbinden en die tevens de cultuurhistorische waarde van het boek onder de aandacht van een breed publiek kan brengen en daarvoor, waar nodig, ook in de bres kan springen’. Niet veel later was Hoftijzer een van de oprichters van de Nederlandse Boekhistorische Ver- eniging (nbv). Bij de oprichting van de nbv waren de volgende boekhistorici betrokken: Han Brou- wer, Berry Dongelmans, Paul Hoftijzer, Marika Keblusek, Lisa Kuitert, Otto Lankhorst, Jeroen Salman en Garrelt Verhoeven. De vereniging bleek een schot in de roos. De leden kregen een Jaarboek en werden uitgenodigd voor excursies en symposia. Al gauw groeide hun aantal tot 300. En de inspanningen van de daaropvolgende besturen en redacties hebben ervoor gezorgd dat het ledental meer dan verdubbelde. De nbv heeft ook de afgelopen jaren niet stil gezeten. Op 6 april 2010 organiseerde de nbv een congres in Utrecht, getiteld, ‘Aanstormend en gevestigd’, over de stand van de boekgeschiedenis in Nederland. De presentaties waren interessant en de discussies bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 8

8 jaarboek voor nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20 (2013)

levendig. Waren de deelnemers onverdeeld positief? Neen. In september van dat jaar publiceerde De Boekenwereld (26, nr. 5) een kritische reactie op dat congres. Het artikel was geschreven door Vlaamse boekhistorici en droeg de fraaie, naar Xenophon verwij- zende titel ‘Thalassa! Thalassa? De laaglandse boekgeschiedenis en haar zee van mogelijkheden’. De auteurs maakten bezwaar tegen de geest van zelfvoldaanheid die het congres volgens hen had gedomineerd. Ze constateerden een gebrek aan visie, en een ‘gemis aan theoretische reflectie en methodologische transparantie’. Naar hun mening dreig- de het draagvlak van onze wetenschap te worden verpulverd. Hoewel sommigen de kri- tiek eloquent pareerden, werd duidelijk dat de Vlamingen een gevoelige snaar hadden geraakt. De nbv pakte de handschoen op en organiseerde samen met de Tiele-Stichting op 10 februari 2012 een expert meeting onder de titel ‘Een toekomst voor de boekwetenschap’. De sprekers waren Kevin Absilis (Universiteit Antwerpen), Jeroen Salman (Universiteit Utrecht), August den Hollander (Vrije Universiteit) en Boudien de Vries (Universiteit van Amsterdam). De dag werd geleid door Lisa Kuitert (Universiteit van Amsterdam). Er was veel ruimte voor discussie en de aanwezige boekhistorici maakten daar goed gebruik van. Een verslag van de bijeenkomst werd gepubliceerd. Concluderend werd gesteld dat er een intensievere gedachtenwisseling op vakin- houdelijk vlak noodzakelijk is en dat – om de organisatie van het vak te versterken – actieve samenwerking essentieel is: een platform voor de boekwetenschap kan helpen de Nederlandse én Vlaamse boekhistorische krachten te bundelen en daarmee de toene- mende concurrentiestrijd op de subsidiemarkt versterkt aan te gaan. En nu moeten we concrete stappen zetten. De nbv en de Tiele-Stichting organiseren in samenwerking met de Vlaamse Werkgroep Boekgeschiedenis (vwb) dit jaar een vervolg op de expert meeting, waarin de theorie in de praktijk wordt omgezet. Uit het bovenstaande zou kunnen blijken dat de aandacht van het zittende bestuur van de nbv vooral uitgaat naar de wetenschap. Maar zo is het niet. Voor het begrijpen van de geschiedenis van het boek is de wetenschap weliswaar essentieel, maar voor het overbrengen van de daaruit voortvloeiende kennis kunnen naast doorwrochte artikelen ook andere activiteiten worden ingezet, zoals leerzame excursies, interessante jaarvergaderingen (deze keer in het eveneens jubilerende Vredespaleis) en prikkelende lezingen. En daar laat de nbv het dit jaar niet bij. In november wordt een congres georganiseerd waarin acht deskundigen vanuit hun boekhistorische expertise uitleggen wat de geschiedenis van het boek ons kan vertellen over de mediarevolutie waar wij middenin zitten, in het bijzonder als het gaat om de receptie van teksten. De deelnemers aan het congres krijgen volop de ruimte om met de sprekers in debat te gaan. Tot slot wil ik u iets vertellen over ons Jaarboek. In een geanimeerde discussie kwa- men redactie en bestuur tot de conclusie dat het Jaarboek een nieuwe impuls nodig had. Deels werd de voorgestelde vernieuwing gedreven door wens om de aanlevering van hoogstaande artikelen te garanderen en een zo breed mogelijk publiek te bedienen, maar ook de veranderingen bij de andere Nederlandstalige boekhistorische periodieken, Quærendo, De Gulden Passer en De Boekenwereld noopten tot een herijking van de koers van ons Jaarboek. We hebben ons voorgenomen om vanaf 2014 ook Engelstalige artikelen op bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 9

Voorwoord 9

te nemen met een uitvoerige Nederlandstalige samenvatting. De ruime meerderheid van de artikelen blijft overigens Nederlandstalig. Het onderscheid tussen themanummers en ‘gewone’ nummers wordt losgelaten: ieder Jaarboek zal een thematisch gedeel- te bevatten, aangevuld met ‘losse’ artikelen. Daarnaast krijgen de boekbesprekingen een prominentere plaats. De redactie zal er vanzelfsprekend scherp op letten dat de artikelen zo toegankelijk mogelijk blijven. Zo krijgt het Jaarboek een heldere positie tussen het volledig Engelstalige tijdschrift Quærendo en het vernieuwde, laagdrempelige blad De Boekenwereld. Deze nieuwe opzet lijkt veel op het voorstel dat door Hoftijzer in de hier- boven aangehaalde tekst uit 1993 werd geformuleerd: ‘Het recent opgerichte Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte met zijn kortere en langere artikelen, Forschungsberichte, documentaire bijdragen, mededelingen en recensies is wat mij betreft een uitstekend model’. De nbv heeft in de twintig jaar van haar bestaan enorm veel ondernomen om in het Nederlandse taalgebied iedereen te bereiken die geïnteresseerd is in de geschiedenis van het boek. Daar mogen wij trots op zijn. Het is duidelijk dat het nooit was gelukt zonder al die boekliefhebbers die hun (vrije) tijd hebben opgeofferd om dit mogelijk te maken. Hoewel, ‘opoffering’... Ik weet zeker dat niemand dat zo voelde. Dit is leuk werk! Ik hoop, nee verwacht dat wij op de ingezette weg nog heel veel jaren zullen voortgaan en dat we de nbv vitaal, scherp, actueel en allemachtig interessant houden.

Hans Mulder Voorzitter van de Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 10 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 11

Preface

This is the jubilee issue of the Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis, the Yearbook for Dutch Book History, since 1993 the prime organ of the Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging, the Dutch Book Historical Society. A preface celebrating two decades of book-historical activities in the Netherlands should of course include a few remarks about past, present, and future. I am aware that by offering ‘a few remarks’ and not mentioning anyone by name, I seem to be forgetting all those many book historians who have been dedicating themselves with all their hearts to the society these past years. I hope you will forgive me on this score.

And now to the point.

In the early 1990s, the Dutch book historical landscape appeared to be neatly trimmed, with the Tiele Foundation promoting ‘the science of the book and the art of printing and related technologies’, the Petrus Scriverius society looking after the interests of the more traditionally inclined book and library lover, and Convoluut offering book historians a forum for communicating the results of current research. All the same, it seemed not all if the target audience was covered, and in an unpublished paper of 1993 Paul Hoftijzer accordingly hoped for a national society ‘capable of uniting all those with an active or passive interest in Dutch book history, as well as of informing the wider public about the cultural and historical importance of the book and if necessary champi- oning its cause’. Not much later, Hoftijzer became one of the founding members of the Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging (nbv), the Dutch Book Historical Society. The following book historians were involved in founding the nbv: Han Brouwer, Berry Dongelmans, Paul Hoftijzer, Marika Keblusek, Lisa Kuitert, Otto Lankhorst, Jeroen Salman and Garrelt Verhoeven. The society was an immediate hit, with more than 300 members joining the society in a relatively short time. Membership more than doubled in the following years thanks to the efforts of successive executive commitees and editorial boards. All members of the nbv receive a free copy of the annual Jaarboek and are regularly invited to attend excursions and conferences. The nbv has not rested on its laurels these past few years. On 6 April 2010 the socie- bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 12

12 jaarboek voor nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20 (2013)

ty organised a conference in Utrecht , entitled ‘Aanstormend en gevestigd’ (Fresh and established), on the current state of book history in the Netherlands. The presentations were interesting and the discussions were lively, which might suggest that the conference was unanimously regarded as a success. This was not the case, however, as a critical review appeared in the September issue of De Boekenwereld (26, no. 5) that same year. The article was written by Flemish book historians under the fetching title, reminiscent of Xenophon: ‘Thalassa! Thalassa? De laaglandse boekgeschiedenis en haar zee van mogelijkheden’ (Thalassa! Thalassa? Book history in the Low Countries and its sea of opportunities). In their article, the authors objected to a perceived air of self-satisfaction dominating the conference, which they also felt had suffered from shortage of vision and ‘a lack of theoretical reflection and methodological transparency’. They believed the basis for the discipline of book history was in danger of crumbling. Although there have been some eloquent responses to foil that criticism, it was obvious that the Flemish colleagues had hit a nerve. The nbv rose to the challenge by organising, together with the Tiele Foundation, an expert meeting on 10 February 2012 called ‘Een toekomst voor de boekwetenschap’ (A Future for Book Science). The speakers were Kevin Absilis (University of Antwerp), Jeroen Salman (University of Utrecht), August den Hollander (vu University) and Boudien de Vries (University of Amsterdam). The event was chaired by Lisa Kuitert (University of Amsterdam). The programme allowed plenty of room for discussion and the attending book historians eagerly availed themselves of this opportunity. An account of the meeting was published later. The conclusion reached was that a more thorough professional exchange of views was needed in the field of book history and that active cooperation was vital to strengthen the structure of the discipline. A platform for book science may help harness Dutch and Flemish book-historical forces so together they can face the increasing competition in the world of funding. It is now time to take some concrete steps. In cooperation with the Vlaamse Werkgroep Boekgeschiedenis (vwb, Flanders Book Historical Society), the nbv and the Tiele Foundation are therefore organising a follow-up expert meeting, put- ting theory into practice. Although it might appear from the above that the executive committee of the nbv is mainly focussed on scholarship, this is not the case. Although we need scholarly research to fully understand all aspects of the history of the book, the accumulated scholarly expertise can be communicated in other ways than through academically sound articles only, for instance by offering instructive excursions, interesting annual meetings (this year in the famous Peace Palace in The Hague, which happens to be celebrating its first centenary) and stimulating papers. This is not all the nbv will be offering its members this year. At a conference scheduled for November, eight experts on book history will be sharing their views on what the history of the book can tell us about the media revolution we are now witnessing, especially with regard to the reception of texts. There will also be plenty of opportunity for attendees to interact with the speakers. Finally, I would like to turn to the Jaarboek itself. Following an animated meeting, the executive committee and the editorial board came to the conclusion that the Jaar- bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 13

Preface 13

boek needed a new impulse. The proposed innovations were partly driven by a desire to secure a steady flow of high-quality articles and reach as wide an audience as possible. However, a number of changes introduced in the other Dutch-language book-historical periodicals, Quærendo, De Gulden Passer and De Boekenwereld, have also challenged us to review our existing policy with regard to the Jaarboek. We have therefore decided to welcome English-language contributions (accompanied by an extensive Dutch summary) as of 2014, although the majority of the articles will continue to be published in Dutch. The distinction between special issues and ‘ordinary’ issues will be abolished: from now on, every Jaarboek will contain a thematic section in addition to separate articles. The book review section will also receive greater prominence. The editorial board will naturally see to it that the articles continue to be readable and accessible. These changes will ensure that the Jaarboek occupies a clear niche in between the completely English-language periodical Quærendo and the renewed and easily accessible Dutch-language magazine De Boekenwereld. This new approach would appear to be very similar to what Hoftijzer already proposed in the 1993 paper referred to above: ‘In my opinion, the recently established Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte, with its shorter and longer articles, Forschungsberichte, documentary contributions, notes and reviews, is a model worth emulating.’ In the twenty years of its existence, the nbv has undertaken a great deal to reach all those interested in the history of the book in the Dutch-language areas, a feat that fills us with pride. It is at the same time very clear that we would never have been able to achieve any of this without all those bibliophiles out there who have sacrificed much of their time to make it all work. ‘Sacrifice’ is perhaps not a good word to use in this context, as I am sure nobody has ever experienced it as such. It’s simply wonderful work to do! I hope and indeed expect that we will be able to continue along this new road for many more years and will succeed in keeping the nbv a lively, to-the-point, up-to-date and absolutely riveting place to be.

Hans Mulder Chairman, Dutch Book Historical Society bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 14 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 15

Introduction

Founded in 1993, the Dutch Book Historical Society (Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging, nbv) is a society for those who enjoy books both old and new, and in every shape and form. The nbv is a society with about 650 members, ranging from prominent academics to amateur researchers and from journalists to antiquarians. It publishes the Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis (Dutch book history yearbook), providing an overview of new research in the field of Dutch and Flemish book history. At the tenth anniversary of the nbv the yearbook was dedicated to developments in the publishing business, especially the book trade and publishing houses in the Nether- lands in the second half of the twentieth century. In 2010 the yearbook was devoted to the state of book historical research in the Netherlands. On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the nbv in 2013 the editors wanted to look beyond the Low Countries, to see what happens in the field of book research and book history in the rest of the world. What are the international developments and evolutions in the field and what are the challenges for the future? We imagined an attractive yearbook that expresses an internationally shared (academic) passion for books and puts the various national book historical societies on the world map. In an invitation letter we wrote that we were looking for ‘high-quality authors, local and renowned specialists, who would be able and willing to write a his- toriographical overview of book-historical activities’ in their countries. We asked explicitly for a state of affairs in the field of book science, current insights and results in the field of book science and the future vision of the book-historical society. We received as many as thirteen enthusiastic contributions from around the world. In random order: China (Frederik Nesta); Japan (Peter Kornicki); Spain (Benito Rial Costas); South America (Cesar Manrique); Great Britain (David McKitterick); Belgium (Stijn van Rossem); Germany (Christine Haug, Slávka Rude-Porubská and Wolfgang Schmitz); Austria (Peter Frank, Johannes Frimmel and Murray Hall); South Africa (Archie Dick); Australia (Roger Osborne), Norway (Aina Nøding), Sweden (Rikard Wingård) and Denmark (Anders Toftgaard). bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 16

16 jaarboek voor nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20 (2013)

The articles appeared to be quite different, both in content and form. All authors have taken the request very seriously, but they have also answered it in their very own way. Browsing this yearbook, the reader will encounter no uniformity in the structure of the articles. The articles can of course be read independently from each other, but we also hope that comparing the approaches and views expressed in them will yield new insights. A few things can be said about the content of the articles. In some contributions, the current state of affairs is explained from the general history of the book in a particular country. The study of the Chinese book, for example, has a long history, dating back to the ninth century when woodblock printing first appeared. Until fairly recently, Chinese book history was primarily the domain of scholars in China and the adjacent regions that used Chinese characters for their own literature. In Japan, studies of the history of the book concentrate on the Edo period (1603-1868), when commercial publishing came of age and when in a short period books became common goods to be bought or borrowed by almost everyone. In South America in the nineteenth century, the study of the book was all about the process of consolidation of national identities and therefore in the creation of national bibliographical repositories and national libraries. The biggest surprise was that ‘book science’ and ‘book history’ have a different meaning in almost every country. In the Netherlands book science includes all cultural-historical, economic, social-cultural, sociological and professional research in the book, and archiving, preservation and distribution of relevant documents and data. Swedish book research spans even more areas connected to book history: author studies, history of graphic design, textual criticism etcetera. In Norway reception studies are also considered to be part of book science. Research areas range from core topics such as the history of reading, the book market and libraries, to areas such as censorship, editing or media history, where book history provides one of several perspectives. In Spain, on the other hand, book science is almost exclusively the domain of analytical bibliographers. The different views of what does and does not belong to ‘book science’ are related to research traditions in the different countries, the status of the discipline and its institutional infrastructure. In the Netherlands, the study of the book has a long tradition and in the twentieth century the history of the book became an academic discipline. In a survey of the history of the book in the Low Countries,1 Marieke van Delft described the development of book science from the appointment of the first extraordinary professor of Book History and Bibliography at the University of Amsterdam in 1954 up to the state of affairs in the twenty-first century. This first chair was founded by the Dr. P.A. Tielestichting, a key organisation promoting the study of the book. Since 2003, the Tielestichting has taken the form of a joint venture for book science in which almost all scientific and other organisations and institutions in this field are represented. Currently there are three Tiele-chairs in Dutch universities: one at the University of Amsterdam (paleography and codicology), and two at the University of Leiden (Dutch history of the book in the early modern peri-

1 M. van Delft [et al.] (eds.), New perspectives in book history. Contributions from the Low Countries. Leiden 2006, 7-15. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 17

Introduction 17

od and Dutch history of the book in the modern period). The Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden have ma courses in book science and codicology. And then there is of course the Dutch Book Historical Society (nbv), specific to the field of the book. Although Belgian book historians have broadened their horizon internationally in terms of methodology, topic and the dissemination of their research, book science in Flanders has still not found an institutional port. There is only the Flemish Book His- torical Society (vwb), founded in 1996. This society has increased its activities and membership over the years but according to Stijn Van Rossem, there is less and less place for research within the academic libraries. Also, there are no book history courses in the Flemish universities, and certainly no research group or book science programme. Archie Dick writes that by comparison with many countries, book history in South Africa represents a growing but modest body of work and there is still no institutional home for research and tuition programmes of book and print culture. Plans for a research-driven Centre for the Book at the National Library of South Africa even evaporated when it became presentist and development-oriented in the 1990s. In Germany, on the other hand, book science has become a significant academic discipline with various institutions and facilities both inside and outside universities, special and research libraries, scholarly societies and associations. In contrast to the situation in Germany, book science in Austria has not yet established itself as a field of study at universities, although, in order to create a common forum for book historians in Aus- tria, the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich was founded in 1998. The main goal of the association is to initiate and promote book historical research projects and to encourage links with international research.

Although the existence of the leading international scholary association for historians of print culture, sharp (The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Pub- lishing), suggests otherwise, the developments in several countries in book research turn out to be especially nationally oriented. However, there are various signs of a growing awareness of the need to seek international connections rather than to construct national histories. Between the Scandinavian countries, there are long-standing traditions of cooperation in the field of book history. An example of an interscandinavian network is The Nordic forum for book history. On an infrastructural level digitisation and database projects are flourishing. The Swedish ProBok, a database for information on bookbindings and provenance from the hand press period, is a case in point. For the United Kingdom, David McKitterick signals a growing interest in the history of information that suggests a new stress on the relationship between print and other forms of communication. He believes that such research requires international outlooks. Also in Australia en New-Zealand the first wave of national foundational studies laid the groundwork for a reassessment of the national in the context of international or transnational studies. In his contribution, Roger Osborne describes two case studies, which combined suggest future directions and possibilities for book history that examine much broader inter-cultural relations, transfers and exchanges in projects that will need to embrace collaboration and group authorship. The answer to the question ‘what bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 18

18 jaarboek voor nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20 (2013)

are the challenges in the future?’ that emerges in most of the contributions, therefore, is that book research must get a trans- and international dimension. This yearbook contributes to this by offering an initial overview of the state of affairs in the field of book research and book history worldwide and the international developments and evolutions in the field. We hope that it will be an incentive for a more global perspective on book science and that it will lead to new discussions, insights and results and, above all, more international cooperation. The authors of the various contributions have made a start. We are very grateful to them.

Sandra van Voorst Editor-in-chief of the Dutch book history yearbook – Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 19

David McKitterick

The United Kingdom: a national history of the book

National histories

To dare to embark on a national history of the book demands a certain boldness. Over- all concepts may be clear, but the details of how topics will relate to each other can emerge only by experience. Some contributors will prove more willing than others to work in a team. Editors must try to ensure that there is some continuity. More contro- versially, there is always the question of what exactly is the nation with which the project is concerned. Where are its linguistic, geographical or political boundaries? What has been the relationship between national ambitions and national imperialism? How have they affected, and how have they been affected by, the history of books in the broadest sense? How have all these questions changed over the centuries, and to what extent can they be accommodated? At a practical level, what bibliographical sources are available? Most of all, every national history of the book carries with it a question. How does it fit into the international world? So far, and perhaps understandably given the resources available, no history, in any country, has attempted an adequate answer to this question. Opinions differ even as to what we mean by the subject, the history of the book. It is therefore not surprising that in recent years Britain has produced not only a national history of the book, but also two multi-authored general compilations both of which have sought to take a world view: one published by Blackwell and consisting of a series of short essays, and the other, with many more dictionary-like entries, by Oxford University Press.1 In the world-wide application of book history, so much remains only partially explored, and so many connections have still to be made. Over the last few years, secondary literature on domestic topics has been dominated in Britain by two projects published by Cambridge University Press: the seven-volume History of the book in Britain (1999-, six volumes published so far), and the accompanying three-volume History of libraries in Britain and Ireland (2006).

1 S. Eliot, J. Rose (eds.), A companion to the history of the book. Oxford 2007; M.F. Suarez, H.R. Woudhuysen (eds.), The Oxford companion to the book. Oxford 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 20

20 jaarboek voor nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20 (2013)

Figure 1. The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Volume 6. Cambridge 2009

Both acknowledge their considerable debt to the inspiration of L’histoire de l’édition française (1982-1986), and L’histoire des bibliothèques françaises (1988-1992), works whose own boundaries – thematic, political and geographical – themselves offered a challenge to anyone following in their footsteps. But these date from some years ago, and the inter- vening time has brought new perspectives. Other countries including the United States, Canada, and Australia have worked on their own national histories, while nearer home there have developed projects concerning Wales, Scotland and Ireland.2 The existence of these other projects are reminders of how the British book trade has been international ever since early times. The further and related series for Ireland, Scotland and Wales provide not only for different perspectives, but also for fuller accounts of topics that had either to be set aside in the larger plan, or for which there was too little space. From the beginning, the project was conceived as a history of the book in Britain. In other words, the indefinite article was a reminder that such a history could never be conclusive; and secondly, that this was not a history of the British book, but of books as they were traded and used in Britain, the extent to which British printing, publishing and reading have always depended on imports and exports. Each volume contains sev-

2 P.H. Jones, E. Rees (eds.), A nation and its books. Aberystwyth 1998; B. Bell (ed.), The Edinburgh history of the book in Scotland. Edinburgh 2007- (three volumes of a planned four published so far); R. Welch, B. Walker (eds.), The Oxford history of the Irish book. Oxford 2006 - (three volumes of a planned five published so far). bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 21

The United Kingdom: a national history of the book 21

eral studies in more detail (not singled out in the present survey) beside chapters of more general application. This apart, the long time-span for the History of the book in Britain, from Roman times to the present, inevitably meant a considerable divergence of approach. Not only did most contributors prefer not to be led by theory. More importantly, evidence for each period exists on very different scales. It was this, for example, that led to the decision to include a full account of the processes of printing and type- founding not in the volume that included Caxton, England’s first printer, but that for the eighteenth century, where the evidence of printers’ manuals, archives such as those of the Bowyers3 or Cambridge University Press, and surviving equipment such as that at Oxford University Press, could be marshalled into a coherent and authoritative survey. The volume covering 1400 to 1557 was largely concerned with readership, that for 1557 to 1695 with the book trade, and that for 1830 to 1914 with the increasing ubiquity of print as well as with the many mechanical innovations. The concluding volume for the period since 1914 is expected in the next two or three years. In general, the History of the book in Britain has not been concerned with the world of print as a whole. The appearance in 2011 of the first volume, entitled Cheap print in Britain and Ireland to 1660, edited by Joad Raymond, of a planned nine-volume Oxford history of popular print culture, was a timely reminder of some of the wider issues concerning what it meant to live in a world that was increasingly managed by, and dependent on, print. This examined not only popular literature of the cheapest kind, but also newspapers and the world of ephemera. If the last few years have been dominated in Britain by the Cambridge project, it has also aired a host of further questions. In the following, I offer an account of some of the work that has been done in Britain concerning the history of the book. Occasionally I have alluded to work by scholars based in other countries, where this seemed to be particularly helpful in setting a context. All of it, without exception, airs needs for further investigations and sometimes new kinds of questions, whether about different approaches, different kinds of evidence, different groups of people, or different genres of publication. Sometimes the questions are explicit. More often they are implied challenges. In general, the twentieth century has so far attracted less in-depth consideration than earlier ones.

Infrastructures: people

If we search for a date to which we may attach the beginning of institutional interest in the history of the book, then we can do no better than look to the foundation of the Bib- liographical Society in 1892. This has been followed since by other bibliographical societies, including those at Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge. With an eye to slightly different emphases, the Printing Historical Society was founded in 1964. The still predominantly Anglo-American Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and

3 K. Maslen, J. Lancaster (eds.), The Bowyer ledgers. London/New York 1991. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 22

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Publishing (sharp) is a more recent arrival, founded in 1991. The principal annual specialist lecture series are the Sandars lectures, founded at Cambridge in 1895, the Lyell lectures (Oxford, founded 1952) and the Panizzi lectures (British Library, founded 1985). In university teaching, where the vagaries and changing demands of academic programmes and funding mean that there is no guarantee of longevity, the School of Advanced Study at the University of London offers an ma in the history of the book, as well as annual summer schools. At Oxford, the Bodleian Library has recently established a Centre for the Study of the Book, and at Oxford Brookes University there is an Inter- national Centre for Publishing Studies. The University of Edinburgh established a Cen- tre for the History of the Book in 1995. At Cambridge, graduate seminars on the history of material texts draw their membership from departments including English, history, modern languages, the history of art and architecture, music and the history of science. At Reading, the Department of Typography has a strong historical element, reflected in its periodic series of Typography papers. The Open University offers a Book History Research Group. This list is far from exhaustive, but it indicates the range of approaches taken in teaching, managing and encouraging the subject.

Infrastructures: bibliographical resources

For the two Cambridge histories, it was possible to tackle a subject stretching over so long a period thanks not only to sufficient contributors, but also to a bibliographical infrastructure. For the period from the mid-fifteenth century to the nineteenth century, there are reliable, if varyingly complete, retrospective bibliographies. The English Short-Title Catalogue, based partly on older works including stc and Wing and covering 1475 to 1800, is not quite comprehensive, but it provides a sufficiently detailed account of what has survived.4 The Nineteenth-Century STC is less advanced,5 but again it offers a broader conspectus than is available in what is otherwise the most comprehensive record, in the British Library’s catalogue. Neither of these, of course, is entirely complete; and neither lists what has not survived, not only of books but also of newspapers, pamphlets and all kinds of miscellaneous ephemeral material. To that extent, it remains difficult to judge with complete accuracy what is meant by a society dependent on print. As in some other countries, much effort has been given over the last few years to compiling essential retrospective databases. Apart from the now well-established cerl,6 efforts are being made in St Andrews and in Dublin to compile a Universal short- title catalogue, initially to 1600 but now to be extended into the seventeenth century.7 Allied to them is the manuscript archival record. A sustained campaign to identify and preserve the archives of printers, publishers and other parts of the book trade has enabled new and fresh work. The archives of the eighteenth-century London printers

4 See estc.bl.uk. 5 See nstc.chadwyck.com. 6 See www.cerl.org/web. 7 See www.ustc.ac.uk. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 23

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William Bowyer father and son have been published in facsimile, with an accompanying catalogue of the work recorded in the ledgers. Those of Cambridge University Press, published in part some years ago and now readily available in the University Library, have made possible a comprehensive re-evaluation of the history of the oldest press in the world (founded 1583).8 The Longman archives, housed in Reading University Library with those of several other publishers, were the basis of a substantial history of the firm, with a history dating from 1724.9 The papers of the firm of the publishers John Murray (founded at Edinburgh in the late eighteenth century) were bought by the National Library of Scotland, and are being steadily exploited.10 Many of the Macmillan papers are now in the British Library, and have been used for work on authors including ‘Lewis Carroll’, Tennyson, and Yeats.11 A major history of Oxford University Press, again based largely on archives that were only partly accessible until recently, will be published in the next few years. In London, the Faber archives are gradually becoming available online, and will cast a great deal of light on the publishing of twentieth-century poets including T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes and others.12 So far, most of these publishers’ and printers’ papers have been little analysed by economic historians. The third crucial part is access. The existence of eebo (Early English Books online) and ecco (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online), with their full-length images of thousands of books published between 1475 and 1800 has in the last few years transformed the study of British history generally, not only the history of the book. But they are only one aspect. Projects such as the digitisation of the Burney collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century newspapers in the British Library, of the state papers held at the National Archives and in some private collections, and of numerous nineteenth-century periodicals and newspapers, have made progress in research possible with a speed and on a scale never before imaginable. Other extensive resources that have become available online, including the Old Bailey records (criminal trials), 1674-1913,13 and various Parliamentary and other state papers,14 have so far been explored only a little. Meanwhile there have been major on-line projects to record members of the book trade. The British Book Trade Index, based at Birmingham, takes matters to c.1850,15 and there is a separate one for Scotland.16 The London Book Trades Database deals with the trade in printed books to c.1830.17 Two recent local directories of the Suffolk trade, pub-

8 D. McKitterick, A history of Cambridge University Press. 3 vols., Cambridge 1992-2004. 9 A. Briggs, A history of Longmans and their books, 1724-1990. Longevity in publishing. London 2008. 10 See digital.nls.uk/jma. For an example of work on the firm, see W. Zachs, The first John Murray and the late eighteenth- century London book trade. Oxford 1998. 11 E. James (ed.), Macmillan. A publishing tradition. Basingstoke 2002. For Yeats and others, see the contributions by War- wick Gould concerning the Macmillan archives in C. Hutton, P. Walsh (eds.), The Irish book in English, 1891-2000. Oxford 2011, 481-510, 650-56. 12 See www.faber.co.uk/archive. 13 See www.oldbaileyonline.org. 14 For example the state papers online, 1509-1714: gale.cengage.co.uk/state-papers-online. 15 See www.bbti.bham.ac.uk. 16 See www.nls.uk/catalogues/scottish-book-trade-index. 17 See www.oxbibsoc.org.uk/resources/london-book-trades-database. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 24

24 jaarboek voor nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20 (2013)

lished in conventional format, may serve as examples of their kind.18 So far, the twentieth century has been little explored, perhaps because so much appears to be readily available in contemporary directories. Like their equivalents for books from continental Europe, projects such as eebo and ecco bring immense benefits. They also all come at a price. As is being increasingly recognised, they focus attention on some survivals – which have been digitised and made easily available – at the expense of others which have not; and they distract from the further question that attends all kinds of evidence: what has not survived. The existence of a single digitised copy of a book is made to serve for many. I return to the importance of multiple pieces of evidence, and questions of provenance and copy-specific evidence, later on. Secondly, digital copies are surrogates. Reproductions, and especially reproductions on film or digitised for screen presentation, cannot provide the physical immediacy of originals. Three dimensions are reduced to two, often distorted by the screen. Colour is unreliable. Paper quality and weight cannot be judged. Even the size of originals cannot be adequately represented. Variety is reduced to uniformity. These are not new issues. When in 1985 D.F. McKenzie reminded his audience at the British Library that ‘forms effect meaning’,19 he could not have predicted how rapidly electronic access to texts would develop in the coming years: in all manner of devices both small and large, and by all manner of software programmes. McKenzie’s words, which have since been widely quoted, drew on long-standing bibliographical and critical observation. Forms of presentation not only affect meaning; they also help to create it, effect it. The maxim embodies a point that is central to the history of the book: the importance of artefactu- al evidence. Notwithstanding the lip service widely paid to McKenzie, one feature of recent work is an increasing divergence between historians who write about the history of the book from the evidence of primary materials – physical books whose format, weight, colour and materials are visible and tangible in all their glory, expense, cheapness, beauty or ugliness, pristine and barely touched or grubby from use – and those for whom secondary records or accounts are sufficient.

Varieties of book history

We may now turn to more particular aspects of book history. The fifteenth century has been exceptionally well served, with two major catalogues and one on-going project that has produced a number of unexpected results. The long-awaited publication of bmc xi, the catalogue of fifteenth-century English printed books in the British Library, was based on work dating from the first years of the twentieth century and continued by successive members of the staff of the British Museum (from 1973 the British

18 T. Copsey, Ipswich book trades. A biographical dictionary of persons connected with the book & periodical trades in Ipswich. Ipswich 2011; T. Copsey, Suffolk book trades. A biographical dictionary. Ipswich 2012. 19 D.F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the sociology of texts. London 1986, 4. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 25

The United Kingdom: a national history of the book 25

Library).20 But it was brought to completion by Lotte Hellinga, with crucial help (especially concerning paper evidence as a means of dating books) from Paul Needham. Much more than a catalogue, this volume also offered an introduction cast on a far greater scale than its predecessors, work that in itself provided an account of English fifteenth- century printing fuller than anything published, anywhere. It addressed not just issues of canon, dating, manufacture, authorship, the careers of printers and other topics that were to be expected, but also of survival and of the history of taste. It was pioneering not only in the detail of the contents of volumes, and the copy-specific information about provenance, type-setting, binding etc., but also in the substantial introduction including such matters as details of production and of survival, besides the traditional attention to type-faces. Dr Hellinga followed this with two further projects; an updated edition of Duff’s standard bibliography of all English fifteenth-century printing,21 and a study of William Caxton and early printing in England (2010). In the latter, and in an article in the Bulletin du bibliophile,22 she put forward a powerful argument that Caxton’s press in the Low Countries was not at Bruges, but at Ghent.

Figure 2. Lotte Hellinga, William Caxton and Early Printing in England. London 2010

20 Catalogue of books printed in the XVth century now in the British Library. BMC Part XI. England. ’t Goy-Houten 2007. 21 Printing in England in the fifteenth century. E. Gordon Duff’s bibliography with supplementary descriptions, chronologies and a census of copies by Lotte Hellinga. London 2009. 22 L. Hellinga, ‘William Caxton, Colard Mansion and the printer in Type 1’, in: Bulletin du bibliophile (2011), 86-114. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 26

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Two other catalogues of incunables set new standards. The six-volume catalogue of those in the Bodleian Library at Oxford paid especial attention to the multiple authori- al responsibilities for books that have, traditionally, generally been credited to single individuals.23 In doing so, the catalogue made plain some of the ways in which ideas of authorship and attribution were to change quite dramatically during the following century as medieval traditions were gradually displaced. At Cambridge, where a printed catalogue of the incunabula in the University Library was published in 1954 and was then thought to be a model of its kind, a new computer-based catalogue was begun. Instead of simply transferring existing data, each book has been examined anew, resulting not only in the recording of more data, but also in the discovery of new features such as forgotten provenance details or evidence of use in annotations by (occasionally) well- known individuals. The project has been accompanied by an informative blog.24 With the Incunabula Short-Title Catalogue (istc), hosted in the British Library,25 the existence of this new generation of catalogues (supplemented by others abroad, especially in Germany) lends a fresh impetus to incunable studies. Meanwhile, subsequent periods have been approached from various viewpoints. My own Print, manuscript and the search for order (Cambridge, 2003) examined aspects of what was meant by a printing revolution, showing that this was much more protracted than is sometimes assumed: the period spanned 1450 to the 1830s, from the complicated transition from manuscript to print to the work of Charles Babbage. While work such as Harold Love’s Scribal publication in seventeenth-century England (Oxford, 1993)26 had demonstrated the continuing importance of the written word not just for letters but also for publication, the interplay of print and manuscript is becoming ever clearer with respect to its complexity. In the seventeenth century, the royal printers have attracted particular attention, notably in the work of Graham Rees and Maria Wakely on the century’s early years.27 The anniversaries of the publication of the King James Bible in 1611, and of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, produced disappointingly little serious bibliographical analysis. Much more attention has been paid to questions of censorship in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example in a trio of works by Cyndia Susan Clegg.28 The business of bookselling and publishing was the subject of James Raven’s The business of books, a study that, by taking a long period, showed how these changed not only in themselves but also in their relationship to each other.29 As international activities, they were also reflected in the national histories of the book in Australia, America and Canada, all chiefly (but by no means exclusively) anglophone markets. More detail of the eighteenth-century North American markets was offered in Raven’s account of

23 A. Coates [et al.], A catalogue of books printed in the xvth century and now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 6 vols., Oxford 2005. 24 See www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/rarebooks/incblog. 25 See www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc. 26 Republished as The culture and commerce of texts. Amherst, ma, 1998. See also the work of Brian Richardson on Italy (note 37 below). 27 G. Rees, M. Wakely, Publishing, politics and culture. The King’s printers in the reign of James I and James VI. Oxford 2009. 28 C.S. Clegg, Press censorship in Elizabethan England. Cambridge 1997; Press censorship in Jacobean England. Cambridge 2001; Press censorship in Caroline England. Cambridge 2008. 29 J. Raven, The business of books. Booksellers and the English book trade, 1450-1850. New Haven 2007. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 27

The United Kingdom: a national history of the book 27

the Charleston Literary Society,30 and in my own study of a Barbados bookseller, import- ing from London for re-export to the eastern seaboard.31 Such studies, complementing work done in the United States, serve as reminders of international trade, readership and personal and financial dependence, and of how much more needs to be done in exploring the mechanics and effects of the trade both internationally and nationally. Some of this emerged in a collection of essays on the twentieth-century antiquarian trade, edited by Giles Mandelbrote.32 This book reflected a gradual – and long overdue – growth in interest in the ordinary second-hand trade as well. For the seventeenth century, Matthew Yeo explored the use made of second-hand booksellers by the infant Chetham’s library in Manchester.33 For the new books trade, Sue Bradley edited a collection of interviews by mostly British booksellers and publishers.34 Two series of annual conferences, one on the provincial trade and one designed more generally, have produced many useful and well-focussed studies of both individuals and themes.35 There is a pressing need for the international nature of the whole subject of production and trade to be more fully understood. It was explored in Andrew Pettegree’s The book in the renaissance (Yale up, 2010), and in several more particular studies. Ian Maclean’s work is also notable for assuming an international viewpoint.36 More locally, Brian Richardson’s several books on Italian renaissance books have frequently been concerned with the relationship between manuscript and print.37 Conor Fahy (d. 2009) left a body of work that helped to transform sixteenth-century bibliographical study both in Italy and concerning Italian books.38 Taking a different palette, the publication of T.F. Earle’s account of early modern Portuguese writers in some British libraries offered a welcome perspective on the ways in which interests developed, albeit within a strictly defined community.39 For older books, Kristian Jensen’s Revolution and the antiquarian book employed catalogues, surviving copies and both home and overseas (chiefly French) archives to explore some of the largest of all changes in international emphases: a lega-

30 J. Raven, London booksellers and American customers. Transatlantic literary community and the Charleston Library Society, 1748- 1811. Columbia, sc, 2002. 31 D. McKitterick, ‘Books for Barbados and the British Atlantic colonies in the early eighteenth century’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 118 (2009), 407-65. 32 G. Mandelbrote (ed.), Out of print and into profit. A history of the rare and secondhand book trade in Britain in the twentieth century. London 2006. 33 M. Yeo, The acquisition of books by Chetham’s Library, 1655-1700. Leiden 2011. 34 S. Bradley (ed.), The British book trade. An oral history. London 2008. 35 Papers from the series of Print Networks conferences have been edited by John Hinks and others. Those of the Publish- ing Pathways series have been edited by Robin Myers and others: the volume Owners, annotators and the signs of reading (Lon- don 2005) includes a list of the contents of previous volumes. 36 I. Maclean, Learning and the market place. Essays in the history of the early modern book. Leiden 2009; Scholarship, commerce, religion. The learned book in the age of confessions, 1560-1630. Cambridge, ma, 2012. 37 B. Richardson, Print culture in renaissance Italy. The editor and the vernacular text, 1470-1600. Cambridge 1994; Printing, writers and readers in renaissance Italy. Cambridge 1999; Manuscript culture in renaissance Italy. Cambridge 2009. 38 N. Harris, ‘Bibliografia delle publicazioni di Conor Fahy, 1999-2008’ (with references also to earlier work), in: La bibliofilia 111 (2009), 75-89. 39 T.F. Earle, Portuguese writers and English readers. Books by Portuguese writers printed before 1640 in the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford 2009. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 28

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cy that is still very much alive in the ways in which older western European books are viewed in Britain.40

Ownership and reading

Interest in mentalités, expounded years ago by Robert Mandrou and others,41 has led to a burgeoning industry concerning copy-specific information about books of all kinds. This has taken various forms. Two detailed surveys of surviving copies of the First Folio of Shakespeare considerably expanded as well as updated the work of Sidney Lee at the beginning of the twentieth century,42 and in their methods bear comparison with the work of Owen Gingerich on the earliest editions of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus.43 A similar approach was taken with surviving copies of Samuel Purchas’s accounts of Eng- lish voyages.44 While these have focussed on particular books, questions of provenance have been much more widely pursued for individuals. Accounts of National Trust libraries have brought much to light from shelves not easily available to ordinary country-house visitors.45 Contents of other individual collections have been summarised in the two series Libri Pertinentes and Private Libraries in Renaissance England (plre). David Pearson’s Provenance research in book history. A handbook (1994, revised reprint 1998) has proved to be especially influential in an area of study that has attracted considerable interest internationally. His account of a group of copies of a work by Francis Bacon, in his more general study Books as history,46 offered a further example of the ranges of readership and taste, readily apparent in the kinds of bookbindings distributed amongst early owners. Besides this, he has also made available an on-line index to English book owners in the seventeenth century.47 For bookbinding studies, the completion of Mir- jam Foot’s magisterial three-volume catalogue of the Henry Davis gift in the British Library offers an exceptional, and international, range of examples, not just in the history of decoration but also frequently suggestive for the history of taste – and use.48 The continuing work of Anthony Hobson, especially on bookbinding in the renaissance, has further demonstrated the extent to which the study of bindings can enable a better understanding of circles of scholarship and friendship.49 As for ownership in Britain, in his Inventory of sale catalogues the late Robin Alston was concerned more with owners than with the book trade, and turned to newspaper advertisements to record sales of

40 K. Jensen, Revolution and the antiquarian book. Reshaping the past, 1780-1815. Cambridge 2011. 41 R. Mandrou, Introduction à la France moderne. Essai de psychologie historique, 1500-1640. Paris 1961. 42 The more recent of these is E. Rasmussen, A.J. West (eds.), The Shakespeare first folio. A descriptive catalogue. Basingstoke 2012. 43 O. Gingerich, An annotated census of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus (Nuremberg 1543 and Basel 1566). Leiden 2002. 44 P. Neville-Sington, ‘The primary Purchas bibliography’, in: L.E. Pennington (ed.), The Purchas handbook. Studies of the life, times and writings of Samuel Purchas, 1577-1626. 2 vols., London 1997. 45 For example M. Purcell, The big house library in Ireland. Books in Ulster country houses. London 2011. 46 D. Pearson, Books as history. The importance of books beyond their texts. London 2008. 47 See www.bibsoc.org.uk/electronic-publications.htm. 48 M.M. Foot, The Henry Davis gift. A collection of bookbindings [now in the British Library]. London 1978-2007. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 29

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which no catalogue survives.50 Unfortunately, his focus meant that he omitted hundreds of catalogues recording anonymous sales. While the nineteenth century remains under-explored, the bicentennial history of the Roxburghe Club by Nicolas Barker (2012) was as much a reminder of major collectors as a challenge to further work among those not at the centre of bibliographical fashion. The history of reading, drawing on bibliographical and archival evidence, has attracted especial attention, exemplified in work on the early modern period, from different viewpoints, by Eamon Duffy, Kevin Sharpe and William Sherman.51 The study of provenance can often be closely related to the study of reading as it is manifest in personal annotation. So far, this kind of evidence has been less discussed for later periods,

Figure 3. William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Cambridge 2004

49 See for example A.R.A. Hobson, Renaissance book collecting. Jean Grolier and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, their books and bindings. Cambridge 1999. 50 R. Alston, Inventory of sale catalogues of named and attributed owners of books sold by retail or auction, 1676-1800. An inventory of sales in the British Isles, America, the United States, Canada, India. 2 vols., Yeadon 2011. 51 E. Duffy, Marking the hours. English people and their prayers, 1240-1570. New Haven 2006; K. Sharpe, Reading revolution. The politics of reading in early modern England. New Haven 2000; W. Sherman, John Dee. The politics of reading and writing in the Eng- lish renaissance. Amherst 1997; W. Sherman, Used books. Marking readers in renaissance England. Philadelphia 2007. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 30

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but meanwhile the history of reading is attracting very considerable interest among literary historians as well. William St Clair’s The reading nation in the romantic period (2004) was based on an examination of production statistics for different formats of books. It showed how the end- ing of perpetual copyright in the 1770s affected publication in sometimes unexpected ways, and it demonstrated amongst much else the practice followed by publishers of new titles exploiting each part of the market in turn, offering more expensive formats (quarto, large octavo) before the smaller and cheaper ones (small octavo, duodecimo etc.). While his study was widely welcomed, it remains that a great deal more remains to be explored about the reading nation at this time, as reflected in the growing periodical market and among the individual choices recorded in innumerable personal manuscript anthologies. In The Enlightenment and the Scots, Richard Sher tackled some of the same issues, not always agreeing with St Clair.52 Illustration has aroused detailed interest only in some areas. While in my Print, manuscript and the search for order I addressed the phenomenon of manuscript and printed illustration appearing side by side in some early books, Sachiko Kusukawa has addressed the rather wider question of sixteenth-century scientific book illustration in her Pictur- ing the book of nature (2012).53 In the seventeenth century, engraved illustration has recently attracted especial attention, particularly in the project led by Michael Hunter to compile a fully indexed digital library of British prints to 1700, including indexes to subject-matter.54 Unfortunately there is no archive in Britain comparable to that of the Plantin press, on which Bowen and Imhof drew for their pioneering investigation of the relationship between letterpress and intaglio.55 Among studies of later periods, the appearance of Nigel Tattersfield’s immense bibliography of the wood engraver Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) set new standards in its attention to archival sources and questions of attribution.56 In the twentieth century, interest in the design of dust-wrappers and other covers was reflected in Joseph Connolly on those of Faber (dominated for many years by Berthold Wolpe, as the firm’s typographer)57 and in Phil Baines on those of Pen- guin.58 The whole subject calls for extended analysis, but so far the only person to have written more generally and at length about the history of book-jackets is the American scholar G.Thomas Tanselle.59

52 R.B. Sher, The Enlightenment and the Scots. Scottish authors and their publishers in eighteenth-century Britain, Ireland and Amer- ica. Chicago 2006. 53 S. Kusukawa, Picturing the book of nature. Image, text and argument in sixteenth-century human anatomy and medical botany. Chicago 2012. 54 See www.bpi1700.org.uk. See also M. Hunter (ed.), Printed images in early modern Britain. Essays in interpretation. Farnham 2010. 55 K.L. Bowen, D. Imhof, Christopher Plantin and engraved book illustrations in sixteenth-century Europe. Cambridge 2008. 56 N. Tattersfield, Thomas Bewick. The complete illustrative work. 3 vols., London 2011. 57 J. Connolly, Eighty years of book cover design. London 2009. 58 Ph. Baines, Penguin by design. A cover story, 1935-2005. London 2005. See also Seven hundred Penguins. London 2007. 59 G.Th. Tanselle, Book-jackets. Their history, forms and use. Charlottesville 2011. 60 Most of it was sold in twelve sales at Sotheby’s, 2004-8, after part had been retained by the family. Further books have since been offered by the booksellers Maggs Bros. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 31

The United Kingdom: a national history of the book 31

The dispersal of libraries

In the last few years, the management, and the dispersal, of some major libraries of early printed books has become a cause for concern. Partly, it reflects the crisis in library funding that is common through much of the western world. Partly it reflects various crises in institutional funding more generally, whether in universities, the churches, or in societies. Partly also it reflects an increasing belief in the sufficiency of scanned versions of books as being adequate both for immediate use and for long-term preservation. So-called rationalisation of book stocks may help library budgets, but it always obscures the history of books. These are all long-term issues, and the effect of decisions taken now will affect public understanding of books for all time. So, for example, Keele University sold a substantial collection of books on the history of science and mathematics, including books annotated by Sir Isaac Newton. Scandalously, in 2006 the diocese of Truro sold a major library of early printed books including not only a copy of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible but also a copy of Macklin’s monumental edition of the Bible (1800) extra- illustrated on a unique scale, the inserted pictures bulking the original to no fewer than sixty-three volumes. The set was dismantled, and the illustrations dispersed in the print trade. The rest of the library, mostly sent to a bookseller, was sold for very considerably less than its true value, and the sale seems to have been done by the diocese without taking any serious professional advice. More cheerfully, when in 2008 the city of Cardiff decided to sell its historic collection from the public library, a campaign successfully saw the books bought by the University of Cardiff, helped substantially with a grant from the Welsh Assembly. The books, including a quantity of incunabula and a collection of seventeenth-century English drama of exceptional importance, had been collected in the late nineteenth century on a scale that was intended to form the core of a new National Library of Wales, and continued for a generation even after that Library was established on an entirely fresh site at Aberystwyth. Early reports suggest also that the provenances of many of the books, from early Welsh libraries, will substantially extend knowledge of the history of the use of books among Welsh families. The gradual attrition of historic libraries, and with them the evidence of book ownership and use, shows no sign of halt- ing, and the tale is a mixed one. Many of the books from the Benedictine abbey of Fort Augustus, for example, are now in the National Library of Scotland. The early books from Ushaw College, a Roman Catholic seminary with its roots in the sixteenth-century Eng- lish College at Douai, are now under the umbrella of Durham University Library. But much of the library of Cheshunt College, Cambridge, originally a nonconformist training college, was sold in 2012. Easily the most spectacular sale of this kind was that of the seventh-century manuscript of the Gospel of St John, from Stonyhurst, sold by the Jesuit order in 2012 to the British Library for £9 million. Private libraries are a separate matter, but many people lamented the dispersal of the library of the Earls of Macclesfield, one of the greatest of all private libraries formed mostly in the first half of the eighteenth century.60 An exceptional record of how New- tonianism and other traditions of natural philosophy were sustained, developed and shared, it can now never be studied in its entirety. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 32

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A further look ahead

Looking ahead, what further work is needed, and where can we expect interests to develop? Computer-based projects such as cerl, the istc and the Universal Short-Title Cata- logue being developed at St Andrew’s University draw daily attention to the international nature of the subject. In the last few pages, some lines of enquiry – both international and insular – have already been suggested. Most importantly, the prima- cy of the printed artefact as evidence stands as a reminder to librarians and scholars alike of the importance of its maintenance, preservation and study. How much can we afford to throw away? As our world grows ever more dependent on the Web and other kinds of non-print environments, so it becomes ever more urgent to understand a medium that in the course of over five hundred years became dominant, but that was never a monop- oly. How has print related to speech, the word to image, verbal language to the language of signs? First, we need to develop our knowledge of the extent to which print pene- trated many aspects of society in ways of which we are so far largely ignorant. While great strides have been made in searching family, ecclesiastical, legal and business archives, the largest relevant question remains. What has been lost? What kinds of documents (not simply what books) have been lost? How many copies were printed, of books, and of more ephemeral publications such as notices, advertisements, licences, catalogues? Quantification is taking a more central role, and it has the potential to inform present-day challenges concerning preservation as well as our understanding of the past, and what was meant by the power of print. Second, and related to the first: for some scholars, this is a question that is centered on books. William St Clair (a former civil servant in the Treasury) has suggested that estc records could be linked to archival records so as to produce the beginning of a census of production: such a project would require considerable care in its detail, if false trails and false links are to be avoided. These same archival records provide some of our best evidence of what has either completely, or almost, disappeared. Third, how do new books relate to old ones, and how does this relationship change? Fourth, how has the book trade worked – locally, nationally, internationally – and how has it changed over more than five centuries? Fifth, what is print for? Here, a growing interest in the history of information by Asa Briggs, Peter Burke and others suggests a new stress on the relationship between print and other forms of communication.61 Most of these and other questions addressed above require international outlooks.

61 A. Briggs, P. Burke, A social history of the media from Gutenberg to the Internet. 3rd ed., Cambridge 2009; P. Burke, A social history of knowledge. 2 vols., Cambridge 2000-12. For work in a key part of the British Empire, see C. Bayly, Empire and information. Intelligence gathering and social communication in India, 1780-1870. Cambridge 1996. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 33

Roger Osborne

Taking turns in Australasia Histories of the book in Australia and New Zealand

With the rise of book history elsewhere, the last two decades in Australia and New Zealand has seen a sharp increase in studies of books and other printed forms as significant mediums of cultural transmission. This is reflected most clearly in a series of book-length studies that established the foundations of the field in Australia and New Zealand, directing attention to the work that needs to be done in order to develop a better understanding of print culture, more broadly. So far, the bulk of this understanding has been built on analyses of extant archival evidence which focus on the construction of histories bounded by national and, perhaps, nationalistic discourses. Such discourses have attracted criticism in recent years from advocates of trans-national histories that position Australian and New Zealand cultural production in a global frame. This has occurred in step with the development of national bibliographical databases and other digitisation initiatives, energising the study of book history in Australia and New Zealand with a computational turn that promises to challenge and extend the field by presenting large-scale alternatives to the micro-studies that have dominated the field to date. To suggest how this might influence the way book history is done in Australia and New Zealand in the next decade, this essay reflects on the major volumes devoted to the history of the book in Australia and New Zealand, it summarises a selection of essays that respond to the national and empirical foundations of the field, and it con- siders the methodological and theoretical challenges posed by new studies that draw on trans-national themes and computational methods. As a discipline, the history of the book in Australia and New Zealand has been served by a series of publications that began in the 1990s and continue to this day. The first broad summary came from New Zealand in 1997 with the volume, Book and print in New Zealand. A guide to print culture in Aotearoa,1 an ‘extended bibliographical essay’ that ‘sketched an outline of local book trades, reading habits, institutional practices, and cognate activities in New Zealand, at the same time as it gave an overview of existing

1 P. Griffith [et al.] (eds.), Book and print in New Zealand. A guide to print culture in Aotearoa. Wellington 1997; nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-GriBook.html. See also: P. Griffith [et al.] (eds.), A book in the hand: essays on the history of the book in New Zealand. Wellington 2000; nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-GriHand.html. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 34

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research and gestured towards important gaps.’2 Studies such as these are currently being reassessed with plans for an updated multi-volume history of the book in New Zealand at the Centre for the Book at the University of Otago. Australia soon followed with several volumes in its national series. The first volume, A history of the book in Australia, 1891-1945. A national culture in a colonised market, appeared in 2000, and the second, Paper empires. A history of the book in Australia: 1946-2005, was published in 2006. Making books. Contemporary Australian publishing, complements these volumes by con- centrating on the years since 1990.3 This first wave of research activity and publishing established the field of book history in the region, and directed attention to untouched archival records that contribute significantly to our understanding of Australian and New Zealand culture.

Figure 1. Book and Print in New Zealand, 1997

2 S.J. Shep, ‘Books without borders. The transnational turn in book history’, in: R. Fraser, M. Hammond (eds.), Books without borders. The cross-national dimension in print culture. Basingstoke 2008, 21-22. 3 M. Lyons, J. Arnold (eds.), A history of the book in Australia, 1891-1945. A national culture in a colonised market. St Lucia 2001; C. Munro, R. Sheahan-Bright (eds.), Paper empires. A history of the book in Australia, 1946-2005. St Lucia 2006; D. Carter, A. Galligan (eds.), Making books. Contemporary Australian publishing. St Lucia 2007. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 35

Taking turns in Australasia 35

Figure 2. A history of the book in Australia, 1891-1945, 2000

These publications were made possible by a strong network of researchers who have gathered regularly at conferences devoted to the history of the book since 1994. Taking over from earlier seminars held in conjunction with events such as the annual Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand conference, the first History of the Book in Australia conference was held at the State Library of New South Wales in August 1996. This continued annually until 1999, providing a venue for researchers to present early versions of work that would eventually appear in the published volumes mentioned above.4 The ‘Australia’ in the title of these conferences was always flexible. The proximity of New Zealand and the close connections between the print cultures of both countries provided opportunities for New Zealand researchers to test out the histories they were writing at the time. The Books and Empire conference hosted by the University of Sydney in 2003 was followed by similarly themed conferences at Wellington (2005), Kolkata (2006), and Cape Town (2007). These were organised as regional conferences under the auspices of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (sharp), a practice that most recently saw a conference devoted to ‘The Long Twentieth Century’ hosted in Brisbane in April 2012. Presenters at these foundational conferences

4 The programs, abstracts and, sometimes, full papers from these conferences have been collected on the Australian Scholarly Editions Centre website: hass.unsw.adfa.edu.au/ASEC/HOBA.html. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 36

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have come from diverse backgrounds, providing a variety of perspectives on book history and the main fields of authorship, reading and publishing. Academics from English, media studies, cultural studies, economics and history departments have regularly mixed with professional librarians, archivists, booksellers, publisher’s editors, and others from the publishing industry. The following pages provide a brief survey of the major themes that have emerged from these foundational studies. This will demonstrate where the first wave of book history in Australia and New Zealand is currently positioned, and support my sugges- tions for the new directions that should follow in the near future.

Authorship

Government intervention in the form of grants and subsidies has relieved the lives of some authors, but the fact remains that, like most places in the world, making a living from writing in Australia and New Zealand has never been easy. Because of the limited opportunities for Australian and New Zealand authors to see their work published in book form, many have looked to overseas publication first, or they have published their work in local magazines and newspapers. But none of these methods guaranteed an enduring success in a fickle marketplace, and for many years the royalty rates for colonial authors published in Britain was half the going rate for English writers at home. Our understanding of the conditions of authorship has been largely based on evidence from the papers of prominent authors and their associated publishers, but this has been tempered by recent studies of popular authors from outside the canon. Significant numbers of authors travelled overseas to further their writing careers, creating large expatriate communities, particularly in London.5 Since the first half of the twentieth century there have been many attempts to establish organisations that represent the rights of authors on a regional and national scale, but the last fifty years has seen an increased professionalism in the business of writing with the formation of groups such as the Australian Society of Authors (1963) and the New Zealand Writer’s Guild (1975). Even still, the average annual income of Australian writers continues to hover around $12,000, and the vast majority of writers rely on income from other sources such as teaching in order to continue writing. As recent research has shown, the idea of Australian and New Zealand authorship necessarily extends beyond national boundaries to intersect most strikingly with the print culture of Great Britain and the United States of America. Indeed, writers such as Tim Winton have openly declared the importance to their livelihood of these separate markets.6 The cultural and professional intersections that Australian and New Zealand authorship

5 For example, see D. Adelaide, ‘How did authors make a living?’, in: Lyons, Arnold, A history of the book in Australia; and R. Somerville, ‘Author and publisher’, in: Griffith, Harvey, Maslen, Book and print in New Zealand, 88-91. 6 T. Winton, ‘Productivity commission parallel importation of books: a submission by Tim Winton’, 2009; www.pc.gov.au/_data/assets/pdf-file/0006/85731/sub204.pdf (accessed 29 September 2012); also at www.docstoc.com/ docs/43969777/Productivity-Commission-Parallel-Importation-of-Books. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 37

Taking turns in Australasia 37

has had with other national book histories complicates the idea of what an Australian or a New Zealand book is.

Publishing

The history of publishing in Australia and New Zealand is dominated by themes that foreground the tension between the influence of imperial connections and concerted attempts to shape a national literary culture within and against those connections.7 Australia and New Zealand have been Britain’s largest export market for books and other cultural material and this has had a significant effect on the local industry at every level. Local publishers are often deservedly regarded as saviours of a national literature that is either unacceptable to dominant, imperial competitors, or is under threat of dilution through publication and delivery to a more general overseas market. Publishers who have prevailed under such conditions are described in case studies in many of the publications listed above.8

These case studies range from short sketches based on limited external evidence to larger case studies such as one on Angus and Robertson that has since supported a book- length study.9 In New Zealand, long-lived publishers such as Whitcombe and Tombs and Reed, both established in the nineteenth century, have had book-length studies devoted to them.10 Editors and other prominent figures in publishing are given short biographical notices, and, in the most recent volume of Australian book history, Paper empires, short memoirs from such figures are included, building up an encyclopedic network of reference points for future study.11 As we come to know more about the place of Australian and New Zealand culture in multi-national networks of publication and distribution, it will be important to reflect on the ways in which we have recorded the history of Australian authorship and publishing. Despite attempts to limit the movement of books into Australia with tariffs and other restrictions, Australia and New Zealand have always been subject to much more than a national culture.

Readers and reading

The position of Australia and New Zealand as consumers of culture beyond their own national products is clearly seen in the studies of reading that have been conducted

7 In particular, see M. Lyons, ‘Britain’s largest export market’, in: Lyons, Arnold, A history of the book in Australia, 19-26. 8 For example, see C. Munro, ‘P.R. Stephensen’, in: Lyons, Arnold, A history of the book in Australia, 60-63; the case-studies in: Munro, Sheahan-Bright, Paper empires, 31-52; and R. Somerville, ‘The publishers’, in: Griffith [et. al.], Book and print in New Zealand, 104-11. 9 J. Alison, Doing something for Australia. George Robertson and the early years of Angus and Robertson, publishers 1888-1900. Melbourne 2009. 10 See A. Preston, ‘Bookselling’, in: Griffith [et. al.], Book and print in New Zealand, 157-67. 11 See F. Thompson, ‘Sixties larrikins’, in: Munro, Sheahan-Bright, Paper empires, 31-52. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 38

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since the 1990s. The pioneering studies of Martyn Lyons and Lucy Taksa have made way for more nuanced studies of reading groups and the analysis of library holdings.12 Our understanding of Australian and New Zealand readers and their reading practices has often been inferred from the records of libraries and bookshops, but direct attention to readers has been limited. Martyn Lyons’ interviews have partially filled that gap by adding the memories and opinions of elderly Australians about family reading and borrowing habits. This has been supplemented by many other analyses of individual libraries or examinations of literary societies and organised reading communities. Initiatives to gather data on a large scale have been conducted by several scholars. The Australian Common Reader database gathers borrowing records of a number of schools of arts and mechanic’s institutes, supporting at least one article that attempts to look at this from a distance.13 Australia and New Zealand are also working towards their own versions of the Reading Experience Database,14 an initiative that will gather more first hand knowledge of direct reading experiences.

Bookshops and libraries

With great distances between towns and cities, the efficient distribution of books in Australia and New Zealand has required highly organised institutional and personal networks. Study of bookshops and libraries has been limited by a dearth of archives, but the fragments that survive in collections across Australia and New Zealand provide a good idea of the reading material that was available in small towns and in cities.15 For many Australians, the local school of arts or mechanic’s institute library was the primary source of reading material. While the improvement of the local population was at the centre of a library committee’s motivations, surviving records clearly show that library patrons demanded popular fiction. Other institutions such as the many Workers Educational Associations or the New South Wales Railway Institute mixed a strong collection of material aimed at improving members, but even in this context British and American popular fiction was a steady diet. Personal libraries have also attracted attention, providing further insight into the reading habits of individual families and small communities.16 The histories and archives of bookshops provide contexts into which different types of readers and reading can be placed. An understanding of bookshops and booksellers in

12 M. Lyons, L. Taksa, Australian readers remember: an oral history of reading, 1890-1930. Melbourne 1992. 13 See www.australiancommonreader.com (accessed 26 September 2012). For an analysis of this database, see J. Lamond, M. Reid, ‘Squinting at a sea of dots: visualising Australian readerships using statistical machine learning’, in: K. Bode, R. Dixon (eds.), Resourceful reading: the new empiricism, eResearch and Australian literary culture. Sydney 2009, 223-239. 14 See: www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/. 15 For example, see A. Bremer and M. Lyons, ‘Mechanics’ institute libraries – the readers demand fiction’, in: Lyons, Arnold, A history of the book in Australia, 209-225; and B. McKeon, ‘Libraries’, in: Griffith [et al.],Book and print in New Zealand, 168-96. 16 For an accessible record of the contents and borrowing of such libraries see The Australian Common Reader database: www.australiancommonreader.com/. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 39

Taking turns in Australasia 39

the region is greatly assisted by publications such as the Booksellers stationers and fancy goods journal of Australia and New Zealand, Australasian bookseller and publisher, and All about books.17 With advice about how to display books and what sort of books to stock for particular readers, these publications are an understudied resource.18 Histories of radical bookshops have demonstrated the types of reading material available to members of radical sub-cultures. More salubrious institutions like Dymock’s Bookshop in Sydney and E.W. Coles in Melbourne provided a space to meet socially just as much to purchase or borrow books.19 The examination of the history and partial archives of such bookshops provide a useful portrait, but evidence of sales and effectiveness often have to be taken with a grain of salt. Since 2002, however, students of bookselling in Australia have been assisted by data provided by Bookscan, a more reliable counter of book movements, but not open to everybody for analysis.20

Perspectives on book history in Australia and New Zealand

The histories briefly described above have completed the first wave of book history research in Australia and New Zealand. This research has been influenced by extant material evidence that ultimately reflects the collection policies of local, regional and national archives. Now that the groundwork has been laid and the first maps of the field are available for scrutiny and critique, the absences, inaccuracies, and lop-sided concentrations have become evident. Recent years have seen an increase in stocktaking activities and reassessments of the role book history plays in contributions to our knowledge of national cultures. The following pages take account of several positions in this period of reassessment in order to best account for the many ‘turns’ that are currently affecting the field of book history and print culture in Australia and New Zealand. David Carter, professor of Australian literature and cultural history at the University of Queensland, sounded one of the first significant reassessments, influenced by the ongoing transition from theory-driven analyses, and the rise of a so-called new empiricism with its exploration of digital methods of enquiry.21 For Carter, this shift encourages researchers to look beyond histories based on monolithic works of literature and towards the institutions that make the production and consumption of

17 Established in Melbourne and edited by D.W. Thorpe, these publications included Booksellers stationers and fancy goods journal of Australia and New Zealand, Australasian bookseller and publisher, All about books, ideas and Australian bookseller and publisher, ranging from 1921 to the present day. 18 David Carter has demonstrated the benefits of this approach in his ‘“Some means of learning of the best new books”: All About Books and the modern reader’, in: Australian literary studies 22 (2006) 3, 329-341. 19 For New Zealand, see A. Preston, ‘Bookselling’, in: Griffith [et al.], Book and print in New Zealand, 157-167. 20 Nevertheless, some studies have drawn on Book Scan data, including Jan Zwar’s report from her PhD thesis, ‘Conceptualising Australian Nonfiction Publishers and Readers in the 2000s,’ paper delivered at ‘The Long Twentieth Century sharp Brisbane’ conference, 2011. 21 D. Carter, ‘Structures, networks, institutions: the new empiricism, book history and literary history’, in: Bode, Dixon, Resourceful reading, 31-52. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 40

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cultural objects possible. Accepting a broader view forces researchers to reconsider the object of study, and Carter asks, ‘Is the object of our research still literature or is it books, publishing or print culture. Is what we’re doing still literary history or is it book history, the history of reading, or something else again – the history of cultures or subjectiv- ities?’22 For Carter, the most productive way to proceed in a field that exists at the ‘intersections of literary studies, critical theory and more empirically inflected kinds of book or print culture studies’ is with a method that ‘can best be described as agnostic towards literature.’23 This enables the prolific author of pulp fiction to be compared with the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful author, each contributing to the positioning of forms and genres within a cultural field that tends to situate popular works at an opposite pole to literary works. Because of Australia’s participation in transnational culture, Carter argues for ‘a history that’s played across three intersecting scales – the history of Australian literature, the history of literature in Australia, and the history of book or print in (or ‘through’) Australian society.’24 Such a project necessarily looks beyond ideas of nation, requiring researchers in disciplines such as literary studies and cultural history to perform much more of the ‘boundary work’ advocated by Robert Dixon.25 The shift towards networks, institutions and structures has been counterbalanced by views that maintain an interest in the micro-study because of fears that important aesthetic questions will be displaced or silenced by broader cultural questions. In argu- ing for reengagement with the concept of the literary ‘work’, Paul Eggert, Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow, suggests that creating a dichotomy of overarching book-historical explanations and particularist case study ‘leaves the literary exactly where it was: that is, unattended to.’26 In contrast to Carter’s direction of energy towards contributions to cultural history, Eggert argues for the necessity to ‘configure a conjunction of bibliography and book history in the study of literature.’27 Using Henry Lawson’s short story collection While the Billy Boils as a case-study, Eggert demonstrates that the ‘textual versions, bibliographical formats, and biographical and book- historical positionings’ of Lawson’s collection of short stories ‘can be seen to have acted as a gauge of successive formations of Australian culture from the 1890s until the 1970s, sometimes indeed as a lightning rod of disputation.’28 The results of such an approach show the benefits of a close examination of a single work over time, particularly canon- ical works that continue to find a place in the culture of different periods. Far from being ‘agnostic towards literature’, this approach positions the frame of enquiry directly on the material of literary works and those people who bring the work to life through

22 Carter, ‘Structures’, 34. 23 Ibidem, 34-35. 24 Ibidem, 51. 25 R. Dixon, ‘Boundary work: Australian literary studies in the field of knowledge production’, in: Journal of the association for the study of Australian literature 3 (2004), 27-43. 26 P. Eggert, ‘Brought to book: bibliography, book history and the study of literature’, in: The library 13 (2012) 1, 14. 27 Ibidem, 17. 28 Ibidem, 27. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 41

Taking turns in Australasia 41

reading. Quoting D.F. McKenzie, Eggert reminds us that ‘no book was ever bound by its covers. The book, in all its forms, enters history only as evidence of human behavior, and it remains active only in the service of human needs’.29 The ‘shifting frames’ of enquiry advocated by Carter are also supported by Katherine Bode in the first book-length study of Australia’s literary history and book history using quantitative methods.30 Bode, Head of the Digital Humanities Hub at the Australian National University, agrees with those who argue that no amount of individual case studies will completely fill the field of enquiry with absolute statements of truth, but she also questions claims of complete knowledge produced by the ‘distant reading’ of large sets of data. In her study of publishing trends in nineteenth and twentieth centuries, her critiques of feminist arguments about the status of female authorship, and her revisions of literary history by expanding the field of enquiry to include works of popular fiction, Bode draws on the growing bibliographical dataset that is being compiled in the long-running AustLit project.31 Bode’s is not the only study that has used AustLit data to support distant reading of Australian literary history,32 but it is the first to adequately theorise the place of such methods in contemporary scholarship. Bode exercises caution in making statements about literary history extracted from the statistical analysis of AustLit data, pointing to the inevitable gaps in such large-scale projects and the subsequent partiality of the visualisations that such methods provide. Nevertheless, she follows Jonathan Zwicker’s argument that quantitative methods ‘make accessible – through patterns and series – solutions to problems that are virtually inaccessible through the methods of traditional literary history.’33 The results of quantitative analysis are indications rather than proof of literary historical trends and so scholars are encouraged to follow Willard McCarty’s advice to pursue research programs that facilitate ‘modelling’ rather than to pursue the unachievable end of an absolute ‘model.’ For Bode, modeling is explicitly contingent and speculative, but, she argues, so are traditional methods that are limited by the fragmentation and subjectivity of the archival record.34 The material archive is not rendered obsolete by digital methods, rather, it enhances its value by directing attention to those elements that have relevance from a quantitative point of view. In many cases, these elements will produce new knowledge rather than a critique of the old, providing new ways to answer old questions and fresh directions for future studies of Australian literary and book history. The use of book history in the service of cultural history or literary history as encouraged by those mentioned above introduces facets of book history that are further nuanced by the so-called trans-national turn in book history. The first wave of founda-

29 D.F. McKenzie, Oral culture, literacy and print in early New Zealand: the Treaty of Waitangi. Wellington 1985, 45; originally published in The library 6th series 6 (1984) 4, 333-365. 30 K. Bode, Reading by numbers: recalibrating the literary field. London 2012. 31 www.austlit.edu.au (accessed 29 September 2012). AustLit is a bibliographical database of Australian creative writing that aims to be the definitive virtual research environment and information resource for Australian literary, print, and narrative culture scholars, students, and the public. 32 For example see J. Ensor, ‘Is a picture worth 10,175 Australian novels’, in: Bode, Dixon, Resourceful reading, 240-273. 33 Zwicker, ‘Japan, 1850-1900’, in: F. Moretti (ed.), The novel. Volume 1: History, geography and culture. Princeton 2006, 514. 34 Bode, Reading by numbers, 8. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 42

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tional studies laid the groundwork for a reassessment of the national in the context of international or transnational studies. Acknowledging that the first wave of ‘national’ book history is partly influenced by the collection policies of the archives available to researchers and the funding incentives from governments that encourage detailed examinations of distinct national traits, Sydney Shep argues that the histories that have come out of such debates are frequently seen as closed ‘monumental’ products rather than ongoing modes of enquiry that open up debate. But, without a reassessment of the ‘imagined communities’ that have informed the construction of the ideas of nation and nationhood in recent book history, new knowledge will be stymied. To emphasise this point, Shep quotes Shef Rogers, who argues:

[W]e as print culture historians in commonwealth countries have an ethical obligation to avoid or at the very least question nationalistic structures for our discipline, and should actively pursue models that seek more to create international connections than to construct an apparent national history as a means of affirming a country’s cultural independence.35

If we are to embrace the nationalistic histories of the book that have emerged in the first wave of research activity and acknowledge the transnational nature of books, book historians of the near future will have to closely consider the ‘high mobility, ethnic diversity, and fragmented skill sets’ of settler societies like Australia and New Zealand.36 What follows is a discussion that aims to demonstrate the reach of transnational book history, using G.B. Lancaster’s Pageant as an example. This will reveal the transnational networks at play in the life and career of a migratory writer who relied on the transmission of literary property to earn a living from her work. The microhistory can be complemented by a much broader macrohistory that draws on data that is becoming more accessible and more manipulable in the computational turn of humanities research. Combined, these two case studies suggest future directions and possibilities for book history in Australia and New Zealand, histories that examine much broader inter-cultural relations, transfers and exchanges in projects that will need to embrace collaboration and group authorship.

35 S.J. Shep, ‘Imagining post-national book history’, in: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 104 (2010) 2, 34, quoting S. Rogers, ‘Colonising the field of book history in post-colonial Commonwealth countries,’ discussion paper presented to first [and last] meeting of cahl [Canadian Association of l’Histoire du Livre], Vancouver, 15 July 1998. 36 Shep, ‘Books without borders’, 265. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 43

Taking turns in Australasia 43

Case study 1: G.B. Lancaster’s Pageant and the limits of trans-national publication

G.B. Lancaster is the pseudonym of Edith Lyttleton (1873-1945), the Australian-born, New Zealand-raised international traveller and prolific author of magazine stories and novels. In October 1934, at a meeting of the Australian Literature Society, Lancaster’s best-selling novel, Pageant (1933), was awarded the Society’s Gold Medal for best Australian novel of the previous year. The novel had achieved outstanding success in Great Britain and the United States of America, enjoying selection by both the English Book Society and the American Literary Guild as their book of the month. Indeed, the first edition of this Australian novel was American. Selection by book clubs guaranteed significant sales and prompted a wide exposure that influenced sales in bookshops, pushing the American Century edition to fifteen thousand copies and the English Allen and Unwin edition towards bestseller status. An Australian edition, published by the Bulletin-backed Endeavour Press, sold six thousand copies. But the resounding critical and commercial success of the novel concealed strong divisions in the negotiations between the author and three publishers, divisions exacerbated firstly by the trade restrictions of international copyright laws and the Traditional Markets Agreement, and secondly by the income tax reporting require- ments of four countries. The American, English, and Australian editions of Pageant were produced for three separate book markets and reading cultures, but they are inexorably linked by the networks of a trans-national book trade, and the contractual agreements made between the author and her publishers. Any study of G.B. Lancaster’s fiction is indebted to the pioneering work of Terry Sturm whose account of the author’s career provides a unique insight into the life of a professional author in the first half of the twentieth century.37 Sturm has traced Lyttleton’s career from her success in the British and American magazine market through her accomplishments as a writer of fast-paced popular novels set in the colonial areas of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. At the height of her success in the early 1920s, Lyttleton earned as much as £50 for an eight thousand word short story, more than she could expect to receive for a novel that sold anything less than 12,000 copies. Her fiction was much in demand by the editors of England’s main magazines and she often had trouble meeting this demand. For English magazines, Lyttleton set her stories in Fiji, Hawai, New Guinea and elsewhere. But her success was rocked by the death of her mother and sister in quick succession in the mid 1920s, and her production of stories dried up during the late 1920s. But the hiatus from professional writing allowed her to revisit her family roots and reassess the type of fiction she wanted to write. Out of this period emerged plans for Pageant and thoughts for similar treatment of the New Zealand and Canadian past. But, starting again as an author in an uncertain and competitive market meant being subjected to the legal and institutional restrictions of the international book trade. As a publishing gamble, a book by a forgotten author set in Australia attracted long odds, and so the

37 T. Sturm, An unsettled spirit: the life and frontier fiction of Edith Lyttleton (G. B. Lancaster). Auckland 2003. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 44

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Century Company looked for the most satisfactory agreement for their bottom line. As the first publisher, world rights gave them more power in the negotiations in which the Traditional Markets Agreement (tma)38 was a factor. Existing as an agreement between gentlemen publishers, and formalised in 1947, the tma created two distinct markets: one for British publishers that included the major countries and cities of the Empire; and one for the United States of America that included the Americas and the Philippines in addition to the main national market. Exporting books directly to England was out of the question and so securing world rights gave the Century Company the bargaining power they needed to make the most of the literary property they had acquired from Edith Lyttleton. Tensions between Australian and New Zealand publishers and British publishers over Australasian rights further complicated the transaction, pushing the author further to the background of negotiations of the literary property. The contract for the publication of Pageant was signed on 29 July 1932, locking in a number of standard conditions, but also locking in conditions that gave the Century Company significant control of the literary property. Edith Lyttleton regretted this arrangement for the rest of her life, because it stripped her of any power to determine the fate of Pageant in the world market and it stripped her of a large proportion of the profit from the book’s publication. Lyttleton’s advance and royalties was boosted by income from the Literary Guild, which paid three thousand dollars for 33,000 copies, and the British rights were sold to Allen and Unwin. Allen and Unwin eventually nego- tiated to sell Australian rights to Sydney’s Endeavour Press with the stipulation that the British publisher retained all rights for publication in New Zealand. Following the contract for Pageant, this income was to be divided equally between the Century Company and the author. But, hidden behind these arrangements were the taxes each publisher was obligated to retain within their own jurisdictions. After English and American taxes, publishers’ fees and her agent’s commission, Edith Lyttleton received less than 30% of the royalties produced. This example provides a crude, economic model of the effects of a migratory author publishing the same work in several national markets. The real and imagined boundaries of national markets control the movements of books and extend the idea of authorship and the idea of the work into distinct events that are joined by a myriad of personal, cultural and institutional networks. Case-studies like this one that draw on the material archive to reveal the human agents involved in the production and distribution of books provide a preface to a much larger exploration of the dynamics of the networks that make up the book trades that intersect with Australian and New Zealand book history. But, to date, we have been unable to see how this dynamism exists. The following pages suggest ways in which this might be done.

38 The best account of this agreement is Mary Nell Bryant, ‘English language publication and the British Traditional Market Agreement’, in: Library quarterly 49 (1979) 4, 371-398. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 45

Taking turns in Australasia 45

Case study 2: American publishers and trans-national publishing networks

In contrast to the Lancaster case study which was driven by archival research in libraries in several countries that included first-hand retrieval, viewing and analysis of material documents, a more distant view of trans-national publishing networks can be visu- alised by exploiting bibliographical data created by databases such as AustLit. The structures and networks that emerged in the example of G.B. Lancaster show the human actions involved in the production, sale and consumption of literary works of art. The identification and description of these networks rely on the records and correspondence saved in the archive, a situation that, at best, only occurs with a few authors. Gaps in the record have to be filled with a scholar’s speculation or argument based on comparison with similar cases, but, in effect, the narrative that forms is never conclusive and awaits augmentation or correction by subsequent research and discovery. Zooming out from a micro-study to consider the broader field can provide some assistance, but, to date, the resources and methods to do this have not been available or exploited to their fullest extent. To demonstrate the potential for looking at structures and networks on a large scale, the following pages consider evidence drawn from AustLit data that supports the visualization of relationships between Australian authors and American publishers.

Figure 3. Detail of a visualisation of relationships between Australian authors and American publishers bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 46

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For a project that aims to explore the publication of Australian novels in the United States of America to the end of the twentieth century, a spreadsheet of authors, publications, publishers, dates, and other information provides information on more than 2,500 novels over more than one hundred and fifty years.39 This allows raw numbers to be graphed, but it also allows for an examination of the strength of relationships between authors and their publishers in the United States of America.40 For instance, the network visualisation in figure 3 displays a detailed view of the relationships between Australian authors and American publishers for the years 1840-2010. The major publishers emerge, and the size of St Martin’s Press reflects its status as a reprint publisher. The productivity of authors also emerges. Figure 4 shows the intense concentra- tion of activity around the New York-based publishers William Morrow and Doubleday, reflecting the long association of Morris West, Nevil Shute and Jon Cleary with the former and Arthur Upfield with the latter. Prolific writers of pulp fiction such as Maysie Greig and Carter Brown also display intense concentrations, leveling the field so that books and authors of all persuasions jostle for position. This then provides a backdrop against which fine-grained analyses of the material archive can be discussed. While not conclusive, it provides a temporary model of the larger field in order to support and encourage enquiry.

Figure 4. Detail of a visualisation of relationships between Australian authors and American publishers

39 Funded by the Australian Research Council, David Carter’s ‘America publishes Australia: Australian books and American publishers, 1840-2010’ will soon reach its conclusion in a book-length study. 40 The network visualisations discussed here were created using data extracted from AustLit and Gephi, an open source graph visualisation and manipulation software: gephi.org/. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 47

Taking turns in Australasia 47

Visualising how Australian books are positioned in relation to Australian authors, publishers and others is a new method of enquiry that will be supported by the continued development and openness of the AustLit database and other digital initiatives in Australia and New Zealand. Continuing digitisation of Australian and New Zealand newspapers is opening up the archive to questions and queries and supporting visualisations of trends over time. These digitisation projects are helping to uncover information about authorship, reading and publishing that until now has remained locked in the material archive. This openness will not only lead to new answers to old questions, but it will also lead to new questions.

Prospects

In the coming years, the results of several large-scale studies will emerge, but they will be augmented, and perhaps challenged by the results of analyses of the visualisation of data.41 It will be important to keep these competing models of enquiry in balance in order to get the best out of both methods, and it will be important to make sure that material and digital methods of enquiry contribute to the same discourses in order for constructive criticism to proceed. With short book histories, small populations, and digital initiatives that continue to open up the archives to analysis, Australia and New Zealand are poised to enter a second wave of book history that will be increasingly collaborative, trans-national and digital.

41 For example, ‘Australian literary publishing and its economies, 1965-1995,’ directed by Ivor Indyk at the University of Western Sydney. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 48

Figure 1. A bamboo book, the predecessor of the printed book in China bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 49

Frederick Nesta

The book in China and modern Western book history

Like the book in China, the study of the Chinese book has a long history of bibliography, analysis, and investigation. Until fairly recently, Chinese book history was primarily the domain of scholars in China, Japan, and the regions around China that used Chinese characters for their own literature. Although Western appreciation of Chinese book culture dates back at least to Matteo Ricci’s discovery at the end of the sixteenth century of the ease and efficiency of Chinese printing, full-fledged studies by Westerners did not begin until Carter’s study in the 1920s, followed by Needham in the 1950s.1 From the 1980s onwards and using the broader fields of study of book history developed by Bourdieu2 and others, Chinese book history in the West has moved beyond bibliography and textual analysis into the studies of the social, economic, cultural, and technical aspects that underlie the existence of books as objects. Modern book history methods and concepts are still not yet part of book culture studies in China itself. There, studies are still concerned with bibliographies, text analysis, catalogues, and recreations of ancient texts. Translations of some key modern Western works in Chinese book history are only just now appearing in China and these may help to encourage wider studies within China that will apply these new techniques and perspectives. Europeans may wonder why xylography lasted so long in China. Perhaps a better question is why xylography did not have any significant impact in Europe in the hundreds of years before Gutenberg’s press. In both cases I think the answer is in the differing markets and economies of China and Europe. China’s millennia-old bureaucracy with equalitarian access through examinations provided a market for books and helped to develop a book culture for classical and secular texts. The European universities that developed from the eleventh century could satisfy demand by the circulation of manuscripts. The European printing revolution of the fifteenth century was – like that of the Chinese of the nineteenth – dependent on having a market to sell to and the capital to purchase (or rent) the type and presses. Xylography allowed printing to be done in places like rural Jianyang where bamboo for paper was plentiful and roads and rivers

1 T.F. Carter, The invention of printing in China and its spread westward. 2nd ed., New York 1955; J. Needham, Science and civilisation in China. 7 vols., Cambridge 1954-1998. 2 P. Bourdieu, The field of cultural production: essays on art and literature. New York 1993. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 50

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gave access to the outside. Movable type printing required printers to be near capital and intellectual markets and in urban centres where the distribution of large numbers of newspapers and books would be economical. Xylography could satisfy an extensive market of hundreds of thousands. Wood blocks could print about 5,000 copies before they would need to be refurbished or recut. Xylography simply was not able to reach the millions that the Western missionaries wanted to reach or that the large commercial publishers of Shanghai did reach in the years after the introduction of new demand into China. The focus of this chapter will be on Western scholarship, since it is accessible to those who do not read Chinese and because its broader scope allows for some comparison to Western print culture.

Figure 2. Woodblock carving required simple tools

Scholars and woodblock printing

The cultural differences between China and the West are quite apparent in Chinese print culture. In Europe the watershed point for book history is the middle of the fifteenth century, when Gutenberg developed movable type, cheapening the costs of book production for publishers, book acquisition for readers, and giving authors a larger audience. China’s history is far older. Not only did China enjoy the advantages of low- cost printing centuries before Europe, but the Chinese also had a cheaper alternative to papyrus and vellum. Paper did not appear in the West until the thirteenth century, centuries after it had been invented in China. Attributed to Cai Lun in the second century, paper made from bamboo or other fibres replaced the earlier Chinese media writing on bamboo slips or silk fabric. Printing in China developed in the ninth century. Based on woodblock printing, eminently suitable for a character-based language, it relied on a technology that was far cheaper than European movable type printing. Movable type printing in China, using clay type in a wax frame, was invented in the middle of the eleventh century and attributed to Bi Sheng (990-1051). Because of the complexity and bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 51

The book in China and modern Western book history 51

Figure 3. A page from the Diamond Sutra, the earliest dated printed book, printed in 868

number of Chinese characters, movable type was too expensive for widespread adop- tion. Producing a woodblock text required little in the way of capital or even of skill: carvers need not be literate but had only to follow the outlines left on the block, and, like European stereotype plates, the blocks were reusable, tradable, and transportable. Although early woodblock printing was for short devotional texts and talismans, it was soon extended to longer texts in every field. China’s early and extensive bureaucracy and the examination system that screened candidates to fill it required a large and literate population that in turn needed affordable texts to prepare for the examinations. Begun in the early seventh century and lasting until it was abolished in 1905, the examination system was expanded during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) so that China was governed by cadres of scholars who came from every strata of society and every region of China. Candidates were tested on their knowledge of the Confucian classics, writing set essays for each exam and moving upward from county to provincial to imperial level exams. Those who passed the exams were rewarded with commensurate positions in the civil service. Scholars who failed in the examinations or literati who needed extra income also provided a skilled labour force that in its own turn produced histories, guides, almanacs, medical texts and other works that were affordable and that could be aimed at broader markets than similar publications in Europe. China’s rivers, canals, and extensive internal trading network disseminated publications over a wide range and bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 52

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the shared Chinese characters made texts readable to those who spoke different dialects or even different languages. Whether there was a ‘print revolution’ in China similar to Elizabeth Eisenstein’s ‘print revolution’ in Europe is a matter of debate, as is the extent of literacy and the affordability and availability of printed books. The first dated printed book in China is the Diamond Sutra of 868, but there is nothing that seems to have the impact in China that Gutenberg did in the West. Manuscript culture continued alongside print in China until very recent times, in part because of the scarcity or expense of texts and in part because of cultural preferences for copying as a way of learning and for the appreciation of calligraphy as an art. Joseph P. McDermott argues that there was a point at which printed text eclipsed manuscript, at least in terms of numbers if not status. He cites recent studies in China that show that the majority of surviving texts in medicine and drama are in manuscript rather than print. Other studies show that titles in history, philosophy, literature and the Confucian classics become dominant in printed editions only after the middle of the sixteenth century.3 Studies of texts that survived in libraries do not, of course, account for all of the more popular or ephemeral material that may have been printed, but whatever the case, woodblock technology worked well for producing text in Chinese characters, there was a commercial market, and the cheapness of woodblock printing did mean that printed texts were far more widely available in China than in the West. It seems incongruous that after several centuries of studying the book in China, Cynthia Brokaw could in 2007 still say that ‘The study of the Chinese book is still in its infancy’.4 I believe Brokaw says this because of the enormous area that must be covered: twelve centuries of printing, the physical scale of China itself, its ethnic diversity, its encounters with other cultures, and in the difficulties of reconstructing a history when so few traces remain. Wars, fires, floods, and the humidity and insects of south China have obliterated many more treasures, some of which we only know about because of citations from other ancient sources. Kai-wing Chow’s Publishing, culture, and power in early modern China (2004) has hundreds of footnotes for each chapter, each footnote ref- erencing the fragments that he had to assemble to reconstruct the history of publishing in a rather recent era of Chinese history.5 Chow notes, as do others, that commercial publishers were looked down upon in China. Trading for profit was not seen an hon- ourable activity, leaving little impetus for families to glory in their success or maintain the records of their houses. However, families did maintain genealogies, local governments produced gazetteers, and libraries preserved texts and produced catalogues, so not all is lost to us, although what may remain is only a citation or a name.

3 J.P. McDermott, A social history of the Chinese book. Books and literati culture in late imperial China. Hong Kong 2006 [Later reprinted as: Shu ji de she hui shi. Zhonghua di guo wan qi de shu ji yu shi ren wen hua. Beijing 2009]. 4 C.J. Brokaw, ‘Book history in premodern China: the state of the discipline’, in: Book history 10 (2007), 253-290, 279. 5 K. Chow, Publishing, culture, and power in early modern China. Stanford 2004. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 53

The book in China and modern Western book history 53

Current studies

The past ten years have seen several important studies published in the West and in China that have expanded our knowledge and pointed to new methods of investigation. Brokaw, cited above, provides a lengthier description of recent scholarship than this survey can attempt.6 What follows will provide a few examples that show the general direction Chinese book history has been taking and some of the fields it could explore in the future. Lucille Chia’s Printing for profit: the commercial publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th-17th centuries), issued in 2002, indicates in its title some of the scale that must be dealt with in China.7 Her important work covers only one small region of China and three families that maintained a printing and publishing tradition over 600 years. Chia’s study is a social history that is made possible in part because the productivity of her printing families meant that many examples of their work have survived, either in physical format or in descriptive format in catalogues of no longer extant collections. Chia also cautions that what has survived are mostly elite materials. Popular material, cheaply produced, found no elite private libraries to preserve it and few scholars to write about it. How much was published and what impact it had on society may never be known, but she believes that the publishers she studied did have a substantial popular market. Northern Fujian province is mountainous and isolated but rich in bamboo, thus allowing for the development of an extensive paper industry. Cheap paper made it a good location for publishing and the Fujian publishers soon became known for distributing cheap editions of everything from the Chinese classics to medical texts, popular collections of fiction and poetry, encyclopaedias, and school primers throughout China. Chia made use of the actual texts, examining over two thousand imprints or their catalogue surrogates. Genealogies provided her with another source, used in conjunction with generational names that could tie a name in an imprint to a family in a genealogy or linking a genealogy name to printers or writers in a text, although it was still frus- trating as the genealogies would refer only to a man’s scholarship or his community service or filial piety and never to his work as a printer or publisher. The genealogies did enable Chia to trace the kinship ties that bound these families together in their business and they provided information on social and economic conditions. Likewise, local gazetteers did not provide direct information on printing and publishing but did indicate the economic situation of the area, the number of schools and degree holders, but also showed some pride in the local publishing industry and the attention it gained from merchants outside the region. Although the region was known for its printing and paper, both were considered by contemporaries to be of low quality, with most government printers shunning the bamboo paper from the area as inferior for their enormous print projects. Without the pressures of external government demand, the local printers relied on developing strong family and commercial printing enterprises. The reputation for poor quality did not seem to affect the popular demand for Jianyang

6 Brokaw, ‘Book history in premodern China’. 7 L. Chia, Printing for profit. The commercial publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th-17th centuries). Cambridge, Mass., 2002. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 54

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imprints. Whatever their quality, they had the advantage of being available and affordable. Civil-service examination students, which could have been several hundred thousand by the thirteenth century, formed one of the largest markets and gave the Jianyang publishers a national market. Students had to master the Confucian classics, the various commentaries on them, history, and poetry.

Figure 4. Examination halls in Guangdong province, 1873. Each candidate would write his examination within the confines of the small cubicle assigned to him

Dictionaries, writing guides, and collections of successful examination essays might also be purchased to supplement the required texts. Medical texts, usually containing prescriptions, were also popular with a lay audience as well as for professionals. What Chia was able to reconstruct depicts a vibrant publishing industry that sought out and supplied a national readership across several markets, low to high. It accommodated itself to wars, natural disasters, dynastic changes, foreign occupation, and changing literary tastes. Technological changes also occurred in the manner in which woodblocks were carved. A variety of styles was used in carving text, with value placed on flowing calligraphic styles that resembled manuscript. By the middle of the sixteenth century the Jianyang publishers were adopting a style known as the workman style: straight and thin lines that were easier to cut and that allowed more characters to be put into each of the vertical columns of text. Less skilled labour could thus produce more pages of text. The mechanical appearance of the texts did not make them popular with readers who appreciated the aesthetics of the older texts but did make more texts affordable bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 55

The book in China and modern Western book history 55

to a growing market. Movable type was not unknown to the Jianyang publishers – Chia found about ten of the 1600 imprints she studied were printed with movable type – but it usually required government sponsorship to meet its high costs.8 Christopher A. Reed’s Gutenberg in Shanghai. Chinese print capitalism, 1876-1937 (2004) covers the modern period and a time when there is more surviving data.9 The selection and interpretation of that data still leaves room for debate, but scholars studying the book in China in the modern age have more evidence to work with. Western books and Western technology are also brought into the story, making this more familiar territory for Western readers. In his opening Reed discusses print culture, print commerce, and print capitalism in the context of Chinese book history. Non-commercial publications – official and literati – were extensive but the overall market for books was large enough for commercial publishers to profit from it. The size of the literate population can only be roughly estimated. The female population was almost entirely illiterate but it is possible that as much as 45% of the male population or from 20% to 25% of the entire population in the eighteenth century was literate. Between the high and low estimates there could have been a market of 90 to 200 million people (out of a population of 450 million) in the late nineteenth century, a literate population that at the high end would have exceeded that of the literate population of the English-speaking world. Towards the end of that century many new influences were changing the nature of Chinese publishing. The demand for the Chinese classics was still strong but the examination system, still focused on Confucian classics, was under attack and finally abolished in 1904. Christian missionaries from Europe and America began opening colleges and introducing Western science, technology, literature and philosophy to China. Those colleges, secu- larised in the 1920s, laid the foundations for China’s modern universities. There was now a demand for imported Western books and for translations of them into Chinese. Traditional xylography was unable to supply this large and multi-lingual market and its demand for modern graphics and photographic illustrations. Woodblock printing was basically a cottage industry that could draw on family resources for the purchase of blocks and family labour for carving, printing and distribution. Printing with movable type, stereotype, or lithography required substantial capital and expensive and highly skilled labour. The Protestant missionaries, who wanted to reach the millions of the Chinese population, found that woodblock printing was not adequate for printing tens or hundreds of thousands of Bibles or tracts. The missionaries not only had religious zeal, they also had the capital to produce or import Chinese type and to establish presses in China. By the end of the nineteenth century, China also had its own capital markets and a cadre of Chinese compositors and printers, many trained at the mission press, began to operate their own presses. The centres of printing had shifted from southern China, first to Beijing and then to Shanghai, where Western settlements had made it into a cosmopolitan city that had an insatiable demand for books, and perhaps more importantly, for newspapers and magazines. Shanghai was not far from Jianyang but it was not a rural province of small villages but a city that grew from 230,000 in 1842, when

8 C.J. Brokaw, Commerce in culture. The Sibao book trade in the Qing and Republican periods. Cambridge, Mass., 2007. 9 C.A. Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai. Chinese print capitalism, 1876-1937. Hong Kong 2004. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 56

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the Treaty of Nanjing forced China to accept foreign settlements in its major ports, to a city of one million by the end of the century. The Chinese government was leery of Christianity and had banned it in 1724. Until the Treaty, Christian missionaries worked secretly within China or worked more freely outside of China, primarily in Malaysia and Macau. There were many early discussions within the missionary community of the advantages and disadvantages and relative costs of xylography, lithography, and movable metal type. Walter Henry Medhurst (1796-1857) computed the costs of printing a two thousand copy run of a Chinese Bible. He estimated that printing it using xylography would take three years and cost £1,900 in labour and materials, lithography would take two years and cost £1,262 and metal type would take one year and cost £1,515. Despite its higher cost, type was preferred because at the end of the print run the Chinese woodblocks or stone lithography blocks would be worn out while the type could be reused or recast. With the greater freedom allowed to the missionaries after the Treaty of Nanjing, missionary presses expanded rapidly. In 1844, when the Treaty of Wangxia forced China to grant concessions to the Americans, the American Presbyterian Mission Press (apmp) began work in Macau using Chinese workmen and a French type by Marcellin LeGrand that combined the 214 Chinese radi- cals, the roots of many characters, with another 1,100 characters, thereby allowing for the printing of compound characters. Enlarged to 3,000 characters cut by Chinese students in France, the LeGrand font could produce almost 23,000 characters. The apmp soon moved to Ningbo on the mainland and enlarged its activities, adding a type-casting fur- nace in 1846. In 1858 William Gamble arrived at the apmp in Ningbo and revolutionised the type process by creating new Chinese matrices by electrotyping and improved composition by designing a new and more efficient arrangement of type cases. By 1876 the apmp had moved to Shanghai, employed up to eighty Chinese workmen, and was using and selling to others typefaces in Chinese, Japanese, Manchu, and English. In the 1890s the apmp hired three graduates of one of its mission schools, Xia Ruifang, and the broth- ers Bao Xian’en and BaXianchang. In 1897 these three would leave apmp and found Commercial Press, one of the three presses that would dominate Chinese publishing. The impact of foreign missionaries on the development of the book in China cannot be underestimated. The missionaries began distributing Chinese translations of the Bible in the 1820s but it was the introduction of Western printing presses and Western science and concepts of government, spread through the journals published by the missionaries in Shanghai and Canton that would revolutionise China. The spread of the mission colleges provided opportunities for young and often poor Chinese boys, and even for Chinese girls, to get an education, learn new Western technologies Western medicine, and Western philosophies. Their teachers could also learn from the Chinese: one among them was James Legge, the Scottish missionary who translated the Chinese classics for the West. One of the students was Sun Yat-Sen (1866-1925), who would become the father of the new Chinese republic. Sun was financed in part by Charlie Song, also educated by missionaries. Song made the start on his fortune by printing Bibles for the missionaries and used part of his fortune to support Sun Yat-Sen and his revolution.10 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 57

The book in China and modern Western book history 57

The nineteenth century was a period of turmoil and humiliation for China. The Tai Ping uprising (1850-1864), instigated by a small Christian cult that grew rapidly in southern China, seized Nanjing, threatened Beijing and the Empire, and cost tens of millions of lives in warfare and starvation. Defeated by England in the Opium War (1839- 1842), China lost Hong Kong and was forced to open its ports to foreign trade and settle- ment. An aggressive Japan seized Taiwan in 1894 and further pressure from England, France, Germany, America, and Russia threatened China with division into areas under foreign control. Chinese students began to travel to Japan to study the reasons behind the rise of Japanese power and to Europe and America to learn new technologies to mod- ernise the Chinese military. Jonathan Spence, in his history of modern China, outlines the importance of translation in the building of a new China. Spence focuses on Europe as the source of much of this activity, but, as Westad notes, Japan was also a key bridge between old and new.11 China’s modernisation began in the 1860s as Chinese students began to return from study abroad. Among them was Yung Wing, the first Chinese to graduate with an American university degree, a ba from Yale in 1854.12 Yung was commissioned to obtain machine tools from Europe and America, forming the basis of new arsenals in China. The arsenals, at Shanghai and Fuzhou, became technical schools and necessitated the translation of technical books for their students and faculty. In 1863 a translation of Henry Wheaton’s Elements of international law (1836) was translated into Chinese and was successfully used by the Chinese in their dealings with Western diplo- mats. Three hundred copies of the translation were printed by the Imperial court and distributed to provincial officials. The Chinese government also began opening language schools and in 1867 were able to expand one of the schools into a college that taught science and International law.13 Another translator was Yan Fu, who went to England in 1877 to study naval technology at Portsmouth and Greenwich and who produced translations of Huxley, Mill, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith.14 Marxism first appeared in print in China in 1899, but the Communist manifesto was not published in a Chinese translation until 1906 and then only as a summary.15 Translations of Marx also came from Japan by 1910. The Chinese revolution of 1911 was driven in large part by print, just as the ideology of the Communist Party and Mao Tse-Tung would use the dominance of their state-run presses to flood the nation with the Little Red Book. Developments in China since the 1980s have seen some many small independent publishing houses develop, but there are still almost 600 state-owned publishing houses and state control still remains. The literacy rate in China has risen to over 92% and visitors to China are usually amazed by the numbers who throng to China’s super-sized book shops and book fairs. The annual book fair in Hong Kong, with publishers from Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan, has been attracting over 900,000 visitors annually for the past two years.

10 J.D. Spence, The search for modern China. New York 1991, 227. 11 O.A. Westad, Restless empire. China and the world since 1750. London 2012. 12 Spence, The search for modern China, 197. 13 Ibidem, 200. 14 Ibidem, 237. 15 Ibidem, 256. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 58

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Future directions

The history of the book in China presents scholars with opportunities to study centuries of printing and publishing that was satisfied by a stable and appropriate technology followed by a period of revolution and change. Much remains to be done in studying the publishing and bookselling industries in the many regions of China, in the importation and translation of texts from outside of China, on the impact of Chinese texts on Southeast Asia, Japan, and Korea, and on the impact of texts from those countries on China. Many of the titles in English-language collections built up by nineteenth-century British residents in Shanghai and Hong Kong were published by Longman: a study of the export of texts from Longman and of scientific and other works from European publishers into China help us understand the transmission of ideas and technology from West to East. It would also help Western book historians to see what impact trade to Asia had on their own publishing industries. Besides studies of the first translations of Western texts into Chinese, some valuable insights could be gained by studying translations from Chinese into European languages. If the history of the book in China is not in its infancy, as Brokaw said, it is certainly a broad and fertile field for scholarship that would reward both East and West in its study. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 59

Christine Haug, Slávka Rude-Porubská & Wolfgang Schmitz

‘Buchwissenschaft’ in Germany An Overview

The book as a reflection of social change since the Age of Antiquity and on through the Middle Ages to the 20th and 21st centuries has a long history, but it only became the object of research and teaching at universities at a relatively late date. Buchwissenschaft1 as an academic discipline in Germany is a relative new-comer to the scene, and thus one would have to concede that it has a ‘short university history’.2 The current scholarly research in the field of Buchwissenschaft is marked by a pronounced ‘scientific plurali- ty of methodologies’, the origins of which can only be sketched here briefly. As for example Christine Haug emphasizes, the short history, whether at the institution or university level, is tantamount up to the present day to a ‘remarkable deficit when it comes to a discussion of methods guided by theory’.3 In recent years there has been a more intense discussion both of teaching and research in the field of Buchwissenschaft as individual disciplines as well as of its position with regard to other fields of scholarly research. These discussions about how Buchwissenschaft apprehends itself and what its true agenda is have taken place at numerous scholarly conferences4 and the proceedings have been widely publicized.5 At the same time, though, the process of creating a theoretical model for Buchwissenschaft

1 This article was translated by Murray G. Hall. Translator’s note: There is no generally accepted translation of the word Buchwissenschaft in English and for that reason I decided to use the original German term here. Equivalents in the English-speaking world which would seem to come close to the German term are, for example, ‘history of the book’, ‘book history and print culture’, or simply ‘print culture’. In addition, I also decided not to (attempt to) translate the names of the many German institutions, departments, societies and the like – as this would only confuse the reader. 2 U. Rautenberg, ‘Buchwissenschaft als Wissenschaft. Bestandsaufnahme und Erlanger Perspektiven’, in: D. Moser [et al.] (eds.), Neues vom Buch. Innsbruck 2011, 41-58, 45. 3 Ch. Haug, ‘Studiengänge Buchwissenschaft in München’, in: Moser, Neues vom Buch, 62-69, 63. 4 For example the conference ‘Buchwissenschaftliche Forschung: Bestandsaufnahme und Perspektiven’, staged in October 2006 by the Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Bibliotheks-, Buch- und Mediengeschichte, the conference ‘Konzepte buchwissenschaftlicher Forschung und Lehre’ held in May 2007 at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg or else the international conference ‘Neues vom Buch. Mediale und ökonomische Aspekte einer künftigen Buchforschung’, which took place in November 2009 at the Alpen-Adria-Universität in Klagenfurt, thus embracing Austrian research on the book. 5 U. Rautenberg (ed.), Buchwissenschaft in Deutschland. Ein Handbuch. 2 vols., Berlin/New York 2011; Moser, Neues vom Buch. These two works deal in detail with the early concepts behind and discussion of Buchwissenschaft in Germany (as well bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 60

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in Germany, one which would ensure the ‘subject a legitimate [and stable] place’ in the contemporary family of sciences, has yet to be concluded. The discussion as to the self- image of the field and the status of Buchwissenschaft as a subject? A discipline? An integrated science? An applied science?’6 is set to continue. Likewise a continuing discussion about the relationship between scientific and practice-oriented knowledge in the Buchwissenschaft curricula. In the university research landscape this certainly has to be seen as a deficiency. However, we can concur with Ernst Fischer that the fact that Buchwissenschaft has hitherto been unable to develop a clear identity – something which gives it, as an academic discipline, the character of a ‘project in permanence’ – does have its positive sides.7 In Fischer’s view, the world of the book in the modern media world and environment has been transformed into a ‘fascinating laboratory, [it has become] the venue for countless communications experiments’,8 something which has repeatedly prompted Buchwissenschaft to re-define its focus of study and continues to do so. In unison with other specialists in the field, Fischer has called for contemporary Buchwissenschaft to be regarded as an integrated science which he feels is able to master the central challenge in this field, namely to observe in real time the ‘forms of a far-reaching upheaval in human communications relationships and accompany them with a critical analysis’ and all the while devoting its energy to ‘the examination of the historical dimension of the book’ and ‘maintaining interest in the history of the book’.9 The (pre-academic) origins of Buchwissenschaft can be traced back to the 18th century. The two-volume work by Michael Denis, Einleitung in die Bücherkunde, published 1777/1778 and devoted to bibliography and literary history is an early example of a key study in the German language. In its early days, dealing with books from a scholarly point of view was very much focussed on the mainly physical aspects of the book and closely tied especially to fields of research related to the History of the Book such as Buchkunde, Buchwesen, bibliography, Library Science, writing the history of the book trade, study of the classics, editions as well as incunabula research and printing research. Later the perspective shifted from the physical to the medial aspects of the book; currently the media specifics and the position of book in a cross-medial compar- ism are at the forefront of the research interest. A further characteristic of the early phases of scholarly book research is that it joined the consensus in the book trade – which was also formulated around the end of the 18th century – that the book had a ‘special economic and legal status’.10 Accordingly, the book was seen both as a commercial object and as cultural property. In the course of the growing interest in contemporary legal, organizational, economic and technical aspects of book production and circulation, researchers reached out to the book trade, its organ-

as in Austria and Switzerland) as an academic discipline and also offer a concise overview of what is currently being offered in the field of scholarship and teaching. 6 U. Saxer, ‘Buchwissenschaft als Medienwissenschaft’, in: Rautenberg, Buchwissenschaft. Vol. 1, 65-104, 75. 7 E. Fischer, ‘Buchwissenschaft im 21. Jahrhundert. Probleme und Perspektiven’, in: Moser, Neues vom Buch, 26-38, 36. 8 Ibidem, 33. 9 Ibidem, 37. 10 Rautenberg, ‘Buchwissenschaft als Wissenschaft’, 46. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 61

‘Buchwissenschaft’ in Germany 61

izations and companies, such as publishing houses, bookstores or else wholesalers. Ursula Rautenberg sees the establishment of an extra-ordinary professorship at the Handelshochschule in Leipzig in 1925 for book trade management skills as being part of this development.11 Thomas Keiderling and Siegfried Lokatis emphasize that the new teaching post in Leipzig marked ‘a new focus or a change of focus in the field of Buchwissenschaft, away from topics pertaining more or less to libraries or the physical aspects of the book and in the direction of problems pertaining to the economics of the book, to the book market or business administration’.12 At present, the economic aspect of the book is also one of the key pillars of the Buchwissenschaft curricula at the University of Leipzig, alongside the history of the book and theory of the book. The unit there has existed since 1994/1995, at which time Dietrich Kerlen was appointed professor, and is part of the communications and media studies department. Scholars of Buchwissenschaft in Leipzig see this inclusion of Buchwissenschaft in media studies by all means as ‘a pilot project’,13 which attempts to do justice to the fact that it has become increasingly difficult to draw a fine line – as was one time possible – between the mass media and the individual media (such as a book). The media studies approach in Leipzig by no means precludes historical topics. Of importance is the research on publishing history, based on the company archives of the Leipzig-based firms such as Brockhaus or Reclam, as well as publishing history of the Nazi period and the German Democratic Republic (gdr). The scholarly traditions briefly described here also spawned the research programmes and courses taught at a number of other Buchwissenschaft institutions in Mainz (1947/1997), Erlangen (1998), Munich (1987) or Münster (1999), which, while competing with one another in terms of research work and location, have sharpened their profiles by using various theoretical and methodological approaches, be they cultural studies (Mainz), media studies (Erlangen) or the social history of literature (Munich). In addition, the current methodological repertoire of Buchwissenschaft is augmented by various branches of research such as systems theory, semiotics, business administration as well as media and cultural sociology. Buchwissenschaft has gradually emancipated itself from the study of books (Buchkunde), which tended to focus on objects. A parallel development at German universities saw the establishment of Buchwissenschaft as a subject in its own right in the second half of the twentieth century and a trend toward the book as it exists today and its trans-disciplinary opening. This process has manifested itself in the strategies sur- rounding the naming of the institutions and hiring policy at the academic locations where Buchwissenschaft is taught. The Johannes-Gutenberg-University at Mainz, for example, which is the oldest university location in Germany where Buchwissenschaft is taught, established a chair for the study of books, types and printing in 1947, a post which was taken up by the acknowledged Gutenberg specialist Aloys Ruppel. It was his field of specialization which left its mark on the original research profile in Mainz. His

11 Ibidem. 12 T. Keiderling, S. Lokatis, ‘Zur Geschichte, Ausprägung und Zukunft eines Leipziger Modells’, in: Rautenberg, Buchwissenschaft. Vol. 2, 819-828, 820. 13 Ibidem, 824. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 62

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main interest was focussed on ‘the materiality of communication and incunabula research.’14 The current focus of research at the Institut für Buchwissenschaft in Mainz (renamed in 1997), which is part of the faculty of Philosophy and Philology and has four full professorships, two honorary professorships and a junior professor post, is on media convergence, digitalization, reader research and popular book cultures. Buchwissenschaft in Mainz is mainly based on the historical cultural studies, which is inspired among other things by the French school of the Annales as well as Cultural Studies from the Anglo-American scholarly community.15 Buchwissenschaft and library and information studies has been a special focus of study at the Friedrich-Alexander- University Erlangen-Nürnberg since its inception in 1974. A professorship was added in 1983 and the historian Otto Mayer was appointed director. This provided the basis for Buchwissenschaft, which is part of the Department of Media Studies and Art History and acquired its current name in 1998. The Buchwissenschaft programme in Erlangen defines ‘the historical dimensions of topics related to Buchwissenschaft’ as ‘the most significant aspect of its profile in terms of research and teaching.’16 The two full professorships and one honorary professorship devote their time and energy to decidedly current fields such as media sociology, digitisation as well as media and publishing law. The junior professorship is devoted to the field of the economics of the book trade. Thus the approach in Erlangen (while the interest in research related to the history of the book remains strong) reflects the observation postulated by Ursula Rautenberg, namely ‘the current trend in research and teaching toward opening itself up to all facets of communication via the medium book and deep-rooted changes in such media.’17 The changing of the name of the institution in 1999 from Forschungsinstitut für Buchwissenschaft und Bibliographie (Institutum Erasmianum) – which, located at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster since the 1950s, mainly focussed on palaeography and the culture of mediaeval manuscripts – to Institut für Buchwissenschaft und Textforschung – and it must be noted that the English literature scholar, book and library historian Bernhard Fabian in Münster was instrumental in the renaming – can be regarded as an example of the consolidation and at the same time re-orientation of Buchwissenschaft as an academic discipline. The late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period continue to set the time frame in Münster for questions relating to book censorship and the phenomenon of book donations. Research in the field of reader socialisation also encompasses the nineteenth century and the present.18 In addition to these university locations with their established, independent insti-

14 S. Füssel, ‘Mit Gutenberg in die digitale Zukunft. Das Mainzer Institut für Buchwissenschaft zwischen historischer Kulturwissenschaft und Medienwissenschaft’, in: Rautenberg, Buchwissenschaft. Vol. 2, 829-838, 833. 15 Ibidem. 16 V. Titel, ‘Zwischen allen Stühlen? Das universitäre Fach Buchwissenschaft in Erlangen’, in: Rautenberg, Buchwissenschaft. Vol. 2, 801-818, 810. 17 Rautenberg, ‘Buchwissenschaft in Deutschland’, 48. 18 Cf. G. Müller-Oberhäuser, ‘Buchwissenschaft in Münster’, in: D. Kerlen, I. Kirste (eds.), Buchwissenschaft und Buchwirkungsforschung. VII. Leipziger Hochschultage für Medien und Kommunikation. Leipzig 2000, 57-66. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 63

‘Buchwissenschaft’ in Germany 63

tutes or departments for Buchwissenschaft, the subject is also taught in various ways in new Bachelor and Master programmes which were created through the Bologna process. One of these is the ma-programme in Angewandte Literaturwissenschaft at the Freie Universität Berlin which specialises in literary business and management. On top of that there are other learning institutions in Germany such as the Fachhochschulen, for example the Hochschule der Medien (ba in Mediapublishing) or the Hochschule für Wirtschaft, Technik und Kultur in Leipzig (ba in Booktrade and Publishing Management and ma in Publishing and Media Trade Management) which combine research into the history of the book with occupational training. The programmes at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig concentrate on book design and typography.19 A relevant aspect of the research and study programmes in Germany in the field of academic Buchwissenschaft is the firm commitment to a practice-oriented approach, that is cooperation with the book trade and the literary market. This has especially high priority within the framework of the Buchwissenschaft curricula at the Institut für Deutsche Philologie of the University of Munich. Credit for this has to be given to Herbert G. Göpfert who took on an honorary professorship of book and publishing history in Munich in 1964. Göpfert, himself an experienced publisher and long-standing editor for the Langen-Müller-Verlag and the Hanser Verlag, made ‘the productive integration of scholarly and practical orientation’ the ‘constitutive feature of Buchwissenschaft in Munich.’20 This principle has been followed up to the present day and the wide variety of job-oriented courses offered is indicative of this. The teaching profile is influenced by a trans-disciplinary understanding of the character of the book and integrates various knowledge components from the fields of business administration, law, technology and history.21 Thus the Buchwissenschaft department co-operates with other departments at the university, as, for example, business and media administration and business information technology. The theoretical foundation of the Munich model of Buchwissenschaft is based mainly on the social history of literature, which is interested in the productive connections between literary and social history. Buchwissenschaft at the four universities mentioned is also supported by the many special advisory boards, the societies of friends or associations of former teaching staff. Represented in the Verein der Freunde der Buchwissenschaft in Mainz, the Freundeskreis der Erlanger Buchwissenschaft, the Verein der Freunde der Münchner Buchwissenschaft – BuWi Phil. or else the Gesellschaft der Freunde und Förderer der Leipziger Buchwissenschaft are publishers, booksellers, media experts and people from the various trade organisations, among them many alumni. As a sort of intersection

19 There are also many other special societies, research libraries and book museums in Germany which make an indispensable contribution to research on the history oft he book. Information about most of the relevant institutions is available online through the platform lotse Buchwissenschaft: www.lotse.uni-muenster.de/buchwissenschaft. 20 Ch. Haug, F. Mayer, ‘Die Münchner Buchwissenschaft: Methoden-Modelle-Theorien’, in: Rautenberg, Buch- wissenschaft. Vol. 2, 839-856, 847. 21 Cf. G. Jäger, ‘Buchwissenschaft – das Münchner Modell’, in: Buchhandelsgeschichte. Beilage zum Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel 3 (1997), B. 94-B. 96. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 64

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point between theory and practice, these organisations also provide content input. The Verein der Freunde der Buchwissenschaft, for example, is also involved in the annual Mainz colloquium, at which – in January 2012 – eight representatives of the (illustrated) reference book publishing trade discussed the future of this segment of the book market. At the colloquium in January 2013 experts have gathered to discuss the topic of sustainable publishing. The Munich alumni association BuWi Phil. invited scholars in May 2012 to the traditional Network Day, which featured a panel discussion on the opportunities and challenges of the business with e-books. In Erlangen, the society of friends there handles the organisation of the so-called Studientag der Erlanger Buchwissenschaft, at which – for example in May, 2010 – the students, together with trade people, held numerous workshops to discuss the attractiveness of the book trade from the standpoint of the employer. Another mode of cooperation between the individual Buchwissenschaft institutes on the one hand and businesses and organisations from the book trade on the other is the awarding of prizes and/or stipends for student research projects and theses. In Munich, there is the annual Hugendubel-Preis given for the best final thesis. It is worth 5,000 euros and donated by the renowned Munich-based bookstore of the same name. The Buchwissenschaft department in Leipzig regularly awards the Förderpreis der Medienstiftung der Sparkasse Leipzig, with prize money totalling 2,500 Euros. The prize can also go to students other than those studying in Leipzig. In Mainz, students who base their final theses on the holdings in the Verlagsarchiv in Mainz, the publishing company archives, as for example the Europäische Verlagsanstalt, the Rotbuchverlag and the Syndikat-Verlag or else parts of the archive of Rowohlt Verlag which were donated to the Johannes-Gutenberg-University can receive a grant from the publisher couple Sabine and Kurt Groenewold. The Buchwissenschaft programme in Erlangen awards, together with the book concern Thalia, scholarships to doctoral students dealing in their theses with topics such as market structure, business strategy and con- sumer behaviour in the book trade. In Erlangen, top-notch graduate theses are awarded a Buwine-Preis (no prize money). Student research is also given recognition in another way. Students have the opportunity to publish their work in the online book series Alles Buch. Studien der Erlanger Buchwissenschaft.22 Research and teaching in the field of Buchwissenschaft at the university level is also dependent on external funding and project grants. With the financial assistance of research associations as well as from public and private foundations, it is especially possible to carry out long-term research projects and financially support the various specialised fields of scholarly endeavour. Such funding is also necessary to stage conferences, symposia or gatherings of specialists. In Munich, for example, they are in the throes of establishing a special focus on children’s literature from the perspective of Buchwissenschaft. The undertaking has received the support of the private Waldemar Bonsels-Foundation. The paradigm change in this segment of the book market is continuously tracked through working meetings among scholars and lecture series. In this process, the border between literature for young people and that for a general audience

22 www.alles-buch.uni-erlangen.de. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:44 Pagina 65

‘Buchwissenschaft’ in Germany 65

Figure 1. A volume from the Alles Buch- series: Rühr, Sandra (ed.), Verliert das Hörbuch seinen Körper? Die Auswirkungen des Downloads auf Bibliotheken, Buchbranche und Nutzer (2010)

is dissolved both thematically and formally and at the same time the internet is increasingly marginalising the classic stages of book distribution.23 The focus of the research project Abenteuer Buch. Konzepte und Strategien der Leseförderung bei Kindern und Jugendlichen which was established in 2006 by the Buchwissenschaft department in Erlangen as part of its media socialisation profile is on a discussion of the various approaches to reading socialisation. The aim is, in cooperation with various partners in the teaching field, to come up with strategies for the promotion of reading and speaking skills at the kindergarten and primary school level. Those promoting this project include, among others, the PwC-Stiftung Jugend- Kultur-Bildung and the Jugendamt Erlangen. Thanks to the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg, The German Research Council) the Buchwissenschaft department at Erlangen is involved in the development of the central Wissenschafts-

23 Things got underway with the lecture series ‘Quo vadis, Kinderbuch? Gegenwart und Zukunft der Literatur für junge Leser’ in the winter semester 2009/2010 and the subsequent annual meeting (under the same theme) of the Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (ibg) in Leipzig. These papers have since appeared in print in: Ch. Haug, A. Vogel (eds.), Quo vadis, Kinderbuch? Gegenwart und Zukunft der Literatur für junge Leser. Wiesbaden 2011. This lecture series was followed in the winter semester 2012/2013 by a second series entitled ‘Endlich erwachsen? Jugendliteratur im epochalen Wandel’. The lectures were held at the University of Munich and in the Hugendubel-Bookstore. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 66

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portal für die Bibliotheks-, Buch- und Informationswissenschaften b2i,24 an online resource for information in the library, book and information studies. The Buchwissenschaft programme in Leipzig has received funding from the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaft for the publishing history research project Leipziger Verlagsarchive als Erinnerungsspeicher und Labor. Das Reclam-Archiv. The participation of the Institut für Buchwissenschaft in Mainz in the interdisciplinary research project Media Convergence was made possible through the support of the Johannes- Gutenberg-University. The latter helps fund scholarly gatherings, as for example the international conference on semantics and the media in July 2011, and subsidises the publication of specialised works such as the book series Medienkonvergenz, which has been published by De Gruyter since 2012 and which attempts to analyse the effects of digitisation on the media, on forms of communications, on media markets and media usage.

Department of Buchwissenschaft in Munich and St. Galler Zentrum für das Buch – a productive liaison

The Buchwissenschaft department in Munich maintains very close ties to the Institute for Media and Communications Management (mcm)25 at the University of St. Gallen and there is a regular exchange of information between the two institutions. The cooperation with the University and the St. Galler Zentrum für das Buch, which is situated in the Kantonsbibliothek Vadiana, has to be seen in light of the fact that the Deutsches Bucharchiv, which was founded by Ludwig Delp, moved from Munich to new quarters in St. Gallen in 2006. The re-organisation and re-orientation of the former Deutsche Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (dbg) resulted from this cooperation. The new institution was renamed Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft in 2007 and then in 2008 the name was changed to Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (ibg) in order to take into account the close cooperation with the St. Galler Zentrum für das Buch. The main interests of the ibg include aspects of the contemporary book market, as for example the impact of digitisation on the book business (consequences of the transformation of the media and for copyright to mention only two prominent topics). What distinguishes the ibg from the other scholarly organisations mentioned earlier is that it makes a special effort to involve and engage trade professionals such as booksellers, publishers, book illustrators and printing experts. The ibg sees as one of its main tasks to position the book as a medium in the media system itself, to grasp and do research into the book in the context of the entire culture of the media.26 Christine Haug and Vincent Kaufmann have edited the journal Kodex. Jahrbuch der Internationalen Buchwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft since 2011.

24 www.b2i.de. 25 It was established in January 1998 with the support of the Bertelsmann Foundation and the Heinz Nixdorf Foundation and focuses on the research in the fields of Knowledge Management and Media, Computational Media, Electronic Commerce and Corporate Communications as well as Social Media and Mobile Communication. 26 W. Schmitz, ‘Die Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft’, in: Rautenberg, Buchwissenschaft. Vol. 1, 793-799, 795. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 67

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Figure 2. Cover of Kodex. Jahrbuch der Internationalen Buchwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft 1 (2011)

Society members receive a complimentary copy of the annual publication, and in the short period of its existence the journal has already made a name for itself in the international community. The ibg thus focuses on the period after 1945 and up to the present day. Thus it only sees itself to a limited extent as a special society for the history of the book and publishing trade. There is common ground, however, when it comes to the transformation processes in the book market in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (in this case at the international level).

Cooperation between non-institutionalised organisations and the Department of Buchwissenschaft in Munich at the trans-national level

As a relatively small department (in comparison with other centres for Buchwissen- schaft in Germany), the department in Munich is equally eager to cooperate with organisations which have no institutional base. Munich and the Applied German Studies section at the University of Klagenfurt are partners in the Erasmus student bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 68

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exchange programme and students from Munich are guests once a year at the Tage der deutschsprachigen Literatur. The cordial hospitality, the pleasant atmosphere and the unpretentious manner with which writers, publishers, jury members and literary agencies socialise with the students make it easy for the latter to strike up a conversa- tion with representatives of the German-language book trade. Because – as was mentioned earlier – Buchwissenschaft is not an established field of study in the curricula at universities in Austria, the department in Munich maintains close ties to individual scholars – and here special mention should be made of Prof. Dr. Murray G. Hall who teaches at the German Department of the University of Vienna – and institutions such as the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus. Common membership in the individual associations, as for example the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich, also serves to promote communication among like-minded scholars. The Buchwissenschaft Department in Munich is also planning to co-host seminars in the Buchstadt Horn in the Austrian province of Lower Austria, more specifically in the Centre for Book Restoration, which is run by Dr. Patricia Engel und Prof. Dr. Toni Kurz. Situated close together in the centre of the city there is the Kunsthaus, the Berger printing press museum, the museums of the City of Horn and the Horn Castle, not to mention the countless libraries, lending libraries and book stores in Horn. In the immediate vicinity there are archives and libraries in Altenburg, Rosenburg and Greillenstein. The Waldviertel region of Lower Austria can rightfully claim to be a major centre for the art of the book and book design. The workshops in Horn comprise a studio for the restoration of books and paper. The studio is renowned for the preservation and restoration of books, prints and other historical originals made out of paper, parchment and leather. Worth mentioning in this connection is the publishing firm Galerie Thurnhof, which was founded in 1975 by the designer, publisher and printer Toni Kurz, who organises book fairs, book exhibitions and literary events both at home and abroad. One of the main aims of the Buchwissenschaft curriculum in Munich is, on the one hand, to promote a close scholarly exchange with the institutions (some of which not are university-based) and on the other to foster wide-reaching cooperation with fellow specialists in Switzerland, Austria and England. The idea is to expand one’s own competence and horizon by working together to be able to offer students of Buchwissenschaft in Munich the best possible scientific and practical training. One example of this is the gradual expansion of the children’s literature segment in cooperation with children’s book publishers, with the Institut für Jugendbuchforschung in Frankfurt am Main and the working group Arbeitsstelle für Kinder- und Jugendmedienforschung (aleki) in Cologne. Munich is thus an ideal media location and the close links between scholarship and practical training in the courses offered, job training for ba-students which precedes study and the conscious effort to keep the Buchwissenschaft programme small and man- ageable have all contributed to a successful model which is now attracting students to Munich from all over Germany as well as from Austria. A responsible education policy – i.e. not allowing the programmes to be overrun – is a guarantee that Munich will continue to offer students the best possible chance to find a job right after they graduate. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 69

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Forums for scholarly communication: Publishing companies with a Buchwissenschaft programme

Two publishing companies are important for Buchwissenschaft research – the Harrassowitz Verlag in Wiesbaden and De Gruyter, which has offices in Munich and Berlin. The Buchwissenschaft focus in the Harrassowitz programme comprises a wide range of series devoted to the History of Publishing and Library Science. Another important focus is the publication of the catalogues and book series of individual reference libraries. The Wolfenbütteler Notizen zur Buchgeschichte (since 1976), the Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens (likewise since 1976) – which were conceived in cooperation with the Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Bibliotheks-, Buch- und Mediengeschichte and are published by the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel – or the Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte (since 1991), the official publication of the Leipziger Arbeitskreis zur Geschichte des Buchwesens, are all devoted to research in the field of the history of the book. Kodex, the yearbook of the ibg is published annually from 2011 on and concentrates mainly on the current structural changes in the book and media industry. De Gruyter’s Library & Information Science/Buchwissenschaft programme contains sub-sections such as Books and Publishing, Libraries, Information and Documentation as well as Press and Media. De Gruyter also publishes relevant reference books, bibliographies and lexicons. A current major project underway at De Gruyter is the multi- volume History of the German Book Trade in the 19th and 20th Century.27 The Bramann Verlag in Frankfurt focuses on text books for print culture historians with works related to their studies and training. Publications worth mentioning here are the series Edition Buchhandel and the series CAMPUSBasics – buch & medien, which was initiated in 2012. Scholarly research and teaching, communication among peers in the field and scholarly publishing are backed up by various working groups whose main aim it is to expand the network linking the individual locations for Buchwissenschaft and the research centres. These groups also seek to offer young scholars the opportunity to establish themselves in the peer group community and take an active part in innovative research discourses.

27 Reference here is to the successor to the comprehensive history of the book trade written by Friedrich Kapp and Johannes Goldfriedrich (around 1900), Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. The current project was commissioned by the Historische Kommission des Börsenvereins des Deutschen Buchhandels. Thus far the volumes Kaiserreich (1870-1918) have appeared in three parts, edited by Georg Jäger (and others) as well as Weimarer Republik (1918- 1933) in two parts, edited by Ernst Fischer and Stephan Füssel; the History of the Third Reich, which is scheduled to appear in two parts and is edited by Ernst Fischer and Reinhard Wittmann, is currently in progress. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 70

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Figure 3. Cover of the Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels im 19. und 20. Jahr- hundert. Bd. 1: Das Kaiserreich 1870-1918. Tl. 2. Frankfurt am Main 2003

Scholarly working groups, their networks and publications

The Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Geschichte des Buchwesens was founded on 27 May, 1975. The initiator was Herbert G. Göpfert who formulated the aims of the Arbeitskreis as follows: ‘Many questions pertaining to the history of book printing and the book trade, the publishing business and the library, that is: questions emanating from the communications field linking the author and the reader, have to be examined and answered today with a view to new methodological aspects.’28 Members of the board during the founding phase were the literary historians and scholars of Buchwissenschaft Otto Dann, Bernhard Fabian, Herbert G. Göpfert, Rainer Gruenter, Bertold Hack, Hans A. Halbey, Ernst L. Hauswedell, Paul Raabe and Bernhard Zeller.29 The board was also concerned with appointing foreign scholars to posts at German research centres. In order to relieve the board from day-to-day business, it was decided to delegate this activity to a working committee made up of Paul Raabe, Monika

28 H.G. Göpfert on 9 July, 1975; P. Vodosek, ‘Der Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Bibliotheks-, Buch- und Mediengeschichte’, in: Rautenberg, Buchwissenschaft. Vol. 1, 775-792, 777. 29 Ibidem, 778. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 71

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Estermann, Erdmann Weyrauch and Herbert G. Göpfert. The focus of work and interest was on research and the presentation of the latest research findings, in other words the aim was to stimulate innovative research.30 Once a year, the Arbeitskreis holds working meetings on topics which, at that time, had long been neglected and which had scarcely been given in-depth attention. These topics included the book trade in the eighteenth century as well as the book and book design in the Weimar Republic. The meetings were intended to encourage discussion by including young scholars.31 The first such meeting in 1976, prompted by Herbert G. Göpfert, was devoted to the topic Buch und Leser32 (The Book and the Reader). Although close cooperation between the two working groups – on the one hand for the history of the book, on the other hand for library history – was desirable from the very beginning, the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel proposed in the year 1998 that the two groups merge. One reason was the common interests, the other the organisation and financing of the meetings. In September 1998, the Arbeitskreis für Bibliotheks-, Buch- und Mediengeschichte began its work. In the years since its inception, the Arbeitskreis has succeeded in raising innovative questions, promoting discourse and re-visiting historical issues.33 One important aspect was and still is an interdisciplinary and international approach. Among the topics the Arbeitskreis in Wolfenbüttel has dealt with in recent times are libraries in the Age of Antiquity (2007), the clandestine book trade in the eighteenth century (2010) and more recently the school text book market around 1800. Since the merger of the two working groups, the scope has been expanded to include research on libraries, among other things during the Nazi period. This was, by the way, the subject of a conference held in 2009 by the Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis in cooperation with the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek.34 This topic has come in for considerable interest in the scholarly community and will be covered again at a future conference focusing on public lending libraries during the Nazi period. In addition to the above-mentioned book series Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens, which, as a rule, includes the contributions to the individual annual conferences, there is also the semi-annual publication called Wolfenbütteler Notizen, edited by Thomas Stäcker and Andrea Opitz. The Leipziger Arbeitskreis zur Geschichte des Buchwesens for its part was founded in 1990 at the initiative of the historian of the publishing trade (today he runs a publishing firm in Leipzig) Privatdozent Dr. Mark Lehmstedt in conjunction with the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Leipzig (formerly Deutsche Bücherei Leipzig). Its aim is,

30 Ibidem. 31 The board is currently made up of the following persons: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schmitz (University Library Cologne), Dr. Thomas Stäcker (hab Wolfenbüttel), Prof. Dr. Reinhart Siegert (University of Freiburg), Prof. Dr. Ursula Rautenberg (University of Erlangen), Prof. Dr. Christine Haug (University of Munich), Dr. Monika Estermann and (since 2012) Prof. Dr. Andrea Seidler (University of Vienna) and Dr. Sven Kuttner (University Library Munich). 32 H.G. Göpfert (ed.), Buch und Leser. Vorträge des ersten Jahrestreffens des Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreises für Geschichte des Buchwesens 13. und 14. Mai 1976. Stuttgart 1977. 33 Cf. Vodosek, ‘Der Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis’, 782-783. 34 M. Knoche, W. Schmitz (eds.), Wissenschaftliche Bibliothekare im Nationalsozialismus. Handlungsspielräume, Kontinuitäten, Deutungsmuster. Wiesbaden 2011. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 72

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following German reunification, to give the very active book and publishing research community in the former gdr a publication and communication forum on a par with those in the West. The Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte is published on behalf of the Leipziger Arbeitskreis. The first editors were Mark Lehmstedt and Lothar Poethe. Since 2011, the publication is edited by Thomas Fuchs, Detlev Döring and Christine Haug. In the meantime, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Leipzig is no longer a contract partner, and the Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte is now affiliated with the Leipzig University Library. The series Schriftenreihe des Leipziger Arbeitskreises zur Geschichte des Buchwesens is published parallel to the Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte. It contains monographs, collected contributions and conference proceedings. One of the first volumes was devoted to inner-German literary relations, based on the proceedings of a sensational conference entitled ‘Das Loch in der Mauer’ and held at the Haus des Buches in Leipzig.35 The many and varied special associations and societies – and in addition to the Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis and the Leipziger Arbeitskreis we could also mention the Gutenberg-Gesellschaft or else the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich (Society for Book Research in Austria) – focus their research on various topics and periods. After all, the main interest is in offering as wide a spectrum as possible of research into the history of the book, of no matter what period. This is not to foster competition in the search for research topics or to publish findings or recruit members. On the contrary, the lists of members of the various associations reveal that there are quite a few double and triple memberships.

Establishment of a network for a young generation of students of Buchwissenschaft and publishing people – ibg Young Scholars as a new scholar network of the Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft

What is special about the various institutions in the German-speaking countries offering studies in Buchwissenschaft is the fact that – whereas there is only a relatively small number of university locations – they are incredibly active, work closely with the publishing trade and train junior scholars for the book trade as well as academic careers. What has hitherto been lacking is the networking of young scholars and young people working in the book business. It must be said that countless junior scholars receive their qualifications through courses of study in other faculties, as for example Business Administration, Business Information Science or else Market and Advertising Psychology, to name but a few. In Austria and Switzerland – where Buchwissenschaft

35 M. Lehmstedt, S. Lokatis (eds.), Das Loch in der Mauer. Der innerdeutsche Literaturaustausch. Wiesbaden 1997; M. Westendickberg, Die Diktatur des anständigen Buches. Das Zensursystem der DDR für belletristische Prosaliteratur in den sechziger Jahren. Wiesbaden 2004; Ch. Haug, Reisen und Lesen im Zeitalter der Industrialisierung. Die Geschichte des Bahnhofs- und Verkehrsbuchhandels in Deutschland von seinen Anfängen um 1850 bis zum Ende der Weimarer Republik. Wiesbaden 2007; J. Hahn (ed.), ‘Ich möchte das Meine unter Dach und Fach bringen…’ Ernst Blochs Geschäftskorrespondenz mit dem Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1946-1961. Eine Dokumentation. Wiesbaden 2006. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 73

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per se is not part of any university curriculum – many young scholars carry out research within the framework of externally funded projects and are outside the scholarly communication loop. One of the main goals of the ibg has been to bring together young scholars and young employees in publishing companies at the international level and to create a junior scholar network with communications structures organised by the participants themselves. For exactly that reason, a Young Scholars Forum was established within the ibg in 2011 which offers young students a network and an exchange forum reaching beyond an individual university or one particular field of study and provides them with the opportunity to discuss their own projects with others.36 The forum was launched in April 2011 at the Department of Buchwissenschaft in Munich. During the two-day meeting, some 30 participants sat down to report on their individual research topics and their further planned activity and project ideas. In addition, the organisers invited experts from abroad to take part in in-depth discussions of methodological questions with the young scholars. Among those attending the first forum were Dr. Bill Bell, director of the Centre for the History of the Book at the University of Edinburgh, the Bourdieu specialist Prof. Dr. Joseph Jurt (Freiburg) as well as Prof. Dr. Georg Jäger, the book historian in Munich. A substantial grant from a special junior scholar promotion programme at the University of Munich made it possible to stage the working meeting. The ibg Young Scholars Forum has been meeting every year since 2011. The two-day gatherings consist of smaller workshops and discussions. Students present their research projects and final theses, and external speakers are also invited. In 2012, the ibg Young Scholar Forum was held in Klagenfurt at the invitation of the Applied German Studies section of the German Department. The hosts were Mag. Constanze Drumm, Dr. Doris Moser and Dr. Arno Rußegger. Prof. Dr. Murray G. Hall from the University of Vienna and Prof. Dr. Stefan Neuhaus from the University of Innsbruck were the guest speakers. After the forum, the hosts invited all the participants to take part in the literature festival known as the Tage der deutschsprachigen Literatur. In 2013, the ibg Young Scholars Forum will take place at the Institut für Buchwissenschaft in Erlangen.

Research on the history of the book done by research librarians in Germany

The relationship between the book and the librarian has undergone major changes over the course of time.37 The librarian of the late nineteenth century was seen as a learned authority on the book, nowadays not many would likely see themselves as such. That in turn would seem to mirror the change which has taken place among librarians. In the eighteenth century a good deal of thought was given to the profession of the librarian. The view taken by the university librarian Johann Matthias Gesner in

36 The ibg Young Scholars Forum is open to both young scholars and to young people in the publishing industry. 37 This section is based on W. Schmitz, ‘Buchwissenschaftliche Themen im Rahmen der Ausbildung der wis- senschaftlichen Bibliothekare in Deutschland’, in: Rautenberg, Buchwissenschaft. Vol. 2, 891-912. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 74

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Göttingen is famous.38 According to Gesner, in order to compile a good catalogue, the librarian needed – in the case of manuscripts – special knowledge of the subject, in the case of prints a knowledge of the history of printing and so on. After all, that was the time when intensive efforts were being made to examine incunabula. During the period of secularisation the picture changed. The ideal was no longer the expert on the history of knowledge, but instead the librarian who could fall back on a comprehensive education, had practical training on the job and was familiar with the ins and outs of running a library and knew about the working processes. The same applies to Martin Schrettinger’s Handbuch der Bibliothek-Wissenschaft39 published in 1807, and Friedrich Adolf Ebert’s Die Bildung des Bibliothekars,40 as diverse as the individual emphases may be.41 Knowledge of the history of the book is necessary as is that of the history of libraries in order to define the history of the library. To what extent knowledge of the history of the book was, in Ebert’s view, one of the tools of the trade for a librarian is evidenced by the fact that he described his work on palaeography as the second volume of his Die Bildung des Bibliothekars. He also collected material for a major history of the art of book printing, for which his article about the Coster-Gutenberg question (1823) was a pre- cursor. The dispute over what constitutes ‘true’ library science has accompanied the development of the image of the modern librarian until the present day. The various book history and library history disciplines have come to be recognised as of the essence within the field of Buchwissenschaft. It was in these two disciplines that the libraries in the nineteenth century (e.g. the contribution made by Andreas Schmeller at the Court Library in Munich) and especially at the end of the century could point to a wealth of significant results. One only need recall the progress made in the field of incunabula research, such as the establishment of Haebler’s Method which involved compiling a list of types used by each printer and making it easier to distinguish one from another with considerable accuracy. But this development is also characterised by research into print history with an eye to individual locations, the book trade and the compilation of noted catalogues of manuscripts (as e.g. the excellent manuscript catalogues compiled for the Royal Library in Berlin by Valentine Rose) and the index of old prints (see for example the complete catalogue of incunabula). Thus we stumble upon an odd discrepancy, namely that the daily chores of the libraries were determined even back then by the library administration, and the image the librarians had of themselves as library scientists was defined in the main by the his-

38 J. Franke, ‘Ein Gutachten Johann Matthias Gesners über die Anforderungen des bibliothekarischen Berufs’, in: Sammlung bibliothekswissenschaftlicher Arbeiten 8 (1895), 98-104. 39 M. Schrettinger, Handbuch der Bibliotheks-Wissenschaft (new printing of the Vienna 1834 edition). Ed. by H. Nitzschner [et al.]. Hildesheim 2003. In this work he expresses the conviction, ‘that not every literary-minded person is suitable for a position as a librarian; moreover, even the most learned scholar, indeed even a true polymath, would have to embark on a special course of study and gain practical experience in a both lengthy and necessary process …’ (150). He also cites the book by F.A. Ebert mentioned here. 40 F.A. Ebert, Die Bildung des Bibliothekars. Facsimile edition of the 2nd revised printing in 1820. Leipzig 1958. 41 F. Nestler, Friedrich Adolf Ebert und seine Stellung im nationalen Erbe der Bibliothekswissenschaft. Leipzig 1969. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 75

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torical disciplines. This ambivalence became even more entrenched because the scholarliness of their profession – in light of the growing number of administrative tasks which the overwhelming majority of librarians were faced with – was of utmost importance to them. In the end no really satisfying solution was found to the theoretical question as to whether the various practice-oriented disciplines of library science should be combined with the historical-philological subjects to come up with a uniform library science.42 Until, that is, a novel definition of the term library science emerged under foreign influence. The consequences for people dealing with books were clear, no matter whether new approaches from the communications sciences were brought into play (Klutz) or else the new focus of interest was on library management. In 1970 a highly- touted colloquium on library science was held in Cologne. As it turns out, it pushed the historical-philological school of thought which had dominated scholarly interest up until then to the periphery:

Naturally, research into the history of libraries will remain a legitimate task in future as well. Research into the history of the book is linked to that task in a natural way. The methods which are applied here come from the fields of historical, art-historical and philological studies. However, the history of the book and the history of libraries which, in earlier days, usually stood alone as the epitome of scholarliness will in future no longer be the focal point of library science.43

Paul Aegean’s approach to library science as a special form of information science which he used as the basis for the curriculum of his chair in Cologne did, of course, include the historical disciplines and the various forms of publication past and present.44 The search went out for a new approach to scholarliness which no longer concentrated on the book and its history, but instead on making day-to-day library practice into a kind of science in its own right. The new ideal was the reference library.45 This principle gradually found its way into the curriculum of library training schools such as the Bibliothekar-Lehrinstitut (bli) in Cologne and the institutes in Munich and Frankfurt and for a while in Hamburg. A wealth of different historically oriented questions about the book and the library were posed for a long time to come at the final written exams in the tradition of the Berlin training programme at the bli in Cologne and its successors (works from the bli

42 G. Leyh, Die Bildung des Bibliothekars. Kopenhagen 1952: ‘Because library science is lacking in its entirety a crystalized core from which it can unfold. In fact library science is, as becomes very clear in the “Handbuch”, a juxtaposition of individual disciplines which are related to one another not in terms of contents, but instead linked together more by chance through an external shell, the corpus of the book. Of course, this has to be undertaken by experts; otherwise, there would be a culture gap without their work, and this would have to be considered unworthy.’ (89-90). 43 W. Grunwald, W. Krieg, ‘Die Bibliothekswissenschaft in Forschung und Lehre’, in: W. Krieg (ed.), Bibliotheks- wissenschaft. Versuche einer Begriffsbestimmung Begriffsbestimmung in Referaten und Diskussionen bei dem Kölner Kolloquium (27.-29. Oktober 1969). Köln 1970, 155-162; Bibliotheksdienst 1970, 175-180. 44 See also P. Kaegbein (ed.), Bibliothekswissenschaft als spezielle Informationswissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main 1986. 45 Cf. The deliberations regarding the reform of library training for senior library staff (1973). bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 76

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Cologne).46 The historically-oriented questions, including those having to do with the printed book, came – in light of the demands posed by library practice – into increasingly close touch with the theoretical superstructure of library science. If and when the book as a physical object evokes the special interest of the librarian, then it is especially from the point of view of management – as for instance when someone is confronted with the urgent problem of preserving holdings as part of an alliance to preserve printed books.47 Nevertheless, research on the history of the book is still carried out today – mainly in the rare book departments of the major libraries. We can only mention a few of the projects here: the main focus is on cataloguing. One is the multi-volume Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände, which is published by the Olms Verlag and to which no small number of libraries contributed. It lists the holdings in publicly accessible collections which appeared prior to the year 1900 and classifies them according to subject. The comprehensive indices make it easy to find the information being sought.48 Whereas in this case we are looking at entire subjects, traditionally the cataloguing work at libraries focuses on individual titles. Accordingly, the Staatsbibliothek Berlin has had its own comprehensive catalogue of incunabula since 1904. It is a complete index spanning libraries around the globe, is a ‘work in progress’, and in the meantime the whole index is online.49 The indices of sixteenth-century prints (vd 16), seventeenth-century prints (vd 17) and eighteenth-century prints (vd 18) are of special interest to researchers in the German-speaking countries. The project is a cooperative venture among libraries and is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg). Cataloguing of individual collections (manuscripts, incunabula, prints) continues at individual libraries. One example is the catalogue of incunabula at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,50 which has the world’s largest such collection. Such indices of individual works in the above-mentioned comprehensive catalogues make note of variations from the original, that is provenances, hand-written notations and additions, bindings etc. Increasing attention has been devoted in recent years in particular to provenance research. The aim is to trace the ownership of manuscripts and prints and, if possible, to identify these persons and thus deal with questions pertaining to book ownership, reception and the reconstruction of old libraries.51 Useful in this connection are the traces of reader usage.52 Another thing which interests librarians are the book bindings. A number of librarians have published books on their most important book bindings. In addition, infor-

46 I. Konze, Verzeichnis der Kölner Hausarbeiten für die Laufbahnprüfung des höheren Bibliotheksdienstes am Bibliothekar- Lehrinstitut des Landes NRW/Fachhochschule für Bibliotheks- und Dokumentationswesen in Köln 1949-1986. Köln 1988. 47 www.allianz-kulturgut.de. 48 fabian.sub.uni-goettingen.de. 49 www.gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de. 50 Inkunabelkatalog der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. Vol. 1-7, Wiesbaden 1988-2009, in digital form as bsb-Ink. 51 Cf. the Provenance portal of the haab Weimar: www.klassik-stiftung.de/einrichtungen/herzogin-anna-amalia-bibliothek/projekte/provenienzportal.html. 52 H.P. Neuheuser (ed.), Überlieferungs- und Gebrauchsspuren in historischen Buchbeständen. Köln 2012. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 77

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mation on the cataloguing of bindings is stored both in a local and a central book binding data base located at the Staatsbibliothek Berlin.53 Aside from projects at the state libraries, a special major focus is on many joint projects involving for example the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, the Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach.54

Concluding remarks

Similar to libraries which tend to focus their attention on current issues involving the book trade, the teaching, study and research in the field of Buchwissenschaft in Germany has been increasingly devoting time and energy to the contemporary book as a medium in its manifold medial environment, its choice in publishing, manufactur- ing and distribution including electronic formats and E-books. Of key importance is the topic or paradigm of change, which is not solely regarded as a fast-paced technological structural upheaval in the book market. The implications of the socio-demographic changes for the book trade and the formats of age-dependent and generation-specific book usage are becoming increasingly important focuses in teaching and research. Aspects of a sustainable commercial trade in books by various participants in the book trade as well as the ecological and climate-neutral production of books and media products are fast becoming part of the Buchwissenschaft research agenda. However, the study of the history of the book in libraries and similar scientific institutions has by no means come to a halt, indeed corresponding courses are still being taught and students and graduates continue to write their doctoral theses and Habilitationsschriften. Having said that, the increased focus on a practical profession for the graduates demands a greater emphasis on practical preparation for jobs in the publishing industry and book trade.

53 www.hist-einband.de. See also R. Boeff, O. Flimm, ‘Von der traditionellen zur digitalen Einbandsammlung’, in: Bibliothek – Forschung und Praxis 30 (2006), 63-68. 54 See the collection of articles on the topic ‘Forschungsbibliotheken und Museen’, in: Rautenberg, Buchwissenschaft. Vol. 2, 945-1028. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 78 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 79

Peter R. Frank, Johannes Frimmel & Murray G. Hall

Book history in Austria

The history of the book in Austria has remained essentially uncharted territory even for scholars from neighbouring Germany. Therefore, this article begins with a brief historical introduction outlining the special conditions which influenced the course of Austrian book history. This is followed by a presentation of the characteristics of book production under the given influences. Finally, reference will be made to important publications and research projects as well as fields of future research.

Austrian book history as a transnational challenge

If one were to compare Austrian book history with the same discipline in its often over- powering neighbour Germany, one would soon become aware of the fundamental differences between the two. Up until 1871, German history was marked by a sort of terri- torial fragmentation and thus there was a corresponding array of imperial residences and centres of publishing. The population was, for all intents and purposes, German. On the other hand, the Habsburg Monarchy – administered from a central location – was one of the largest European empires, in which the capital Vienna played a pre- eminent role. It was a multi-ethnic entity, with, among others, Austrian Germans, Jews, Poles, Ruthenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Croats, Slovenes, Serbs, and Romanians. Some fourteen languages were spoken and written in the realm. A Europe in a nutshell. Vienna, where books were produced in almost all languages of the Habsburg Monarchy, demonstrates this as a focal point. Though censorship was very rigid, a good deal of Viennese literature consisted of translations and of books in foreign languages. Thus Austrian publishing houses contributed substantially to cultural transfer. The book trade in Vienna served as a type of hub for literary transfer within the Habsburg Monarchy. Writing the history of books of the Habsburg Monarchy always means asking how print made it possible ‘to communicate with one another within a complex system determined by multi-ethnicity and multi-culturality’.1 It is this aspect of the

1 M. Csáky, ‘Ambivalenz des kulturellen Erbes: Zentraleuropa’, in: M. Csáky, K. Zeyringer, Ambivalenz des kulturellen Erbes. Vielfachcodierung des historischen Gedächtnisses. Paradigma: Österreich. Innsbruck/Wien/München 2001, 27-49, here 30. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 80

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book history of the Habsburg Monarchy that seems of particular interest for the development of new perspectives in book historiography. It becomes more and more evident that the history of the book can only be written as a transnational history. Print culture did not only determine the way nations were defining themselves, it was also crucial for cultural transmission.

Book production in Austria

Following the humble beginnings of book production during the age of Humanism (with printers and publishers such as Alantsee, Winterburger, Singriener), the Austrian book trade was hampered in its development well on into the eighteenth century by the effects of the massive Counter Reformation. State regimentation in the form of exclusive printing rights or Privilegien and censorship dominated and inhibited the book trade. Printed books were mostly commissioned by local or court patrons. The at times oppressive censorship under the Catholic Habsburgs repeatedly impeded and interrupted the development of strictly literary publishing companies in Austria. The brief impetus given to literature and the book trade under Emperor Joseph ii (1780-1790) was cut short again during the repressive era that was to follow, and it was only during the liberal phase that there were greater freedoms. The major strength – and this pertains especially to the publishing landscape in the nineteenth century – was the publication of scholarly works and other non-fiction. Relatively early in the century, new publishing firms began to specialise, for example, in the fields of art and music (Artaria, Gerlach etc.), theatre literature (Wallishausser, L. Rosner), legal texts (Manz, Braumüller, Gerold etc.), medicine (Perles, Urban & Schwarzenberg etc.), cartography (Ed. Hölzel, Freytag & Berndt) and agriculture (Wilhelm Frick). Other notable publishers included Beck, A. Hartleben, Hölder, Deuticke, Pichler and Tempsky. Many of these firms produced a rich collection of works from the natural sciences, philosophy (Brentano, Bolzano), psychoanalysis (Freud, Adler) as well as texts dealing with history or economics (e.g. Alfred Arneth, Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Richard Mises) and functional literature. Another characteristic which made the Austrian publishing landscape different from the German one was the multitude of languages. In addition to the German immigrants, the French, the Dutch, the Italians, the Greek and the Czechs all came to leave their mark on the Austrian book trade. Texts in Latin and German were produced alongside those in Hebrew, Greek and in oriental tongues and, obviously, in all the languages of the Monarchy. The multi-ethnic aspect of the Austrian book trade is also mirrored in the history of its professionalisation. Indeed, it was a Polish bookseller from Lviv (Lemberg) by the name of Milikowski who called for the union of all booksellers in the Monarchy as early as 1846. Then, in the year 1859, the Verein der österre- ichischen Buchhändler (Association of Austrian book sellers) was established. It was an organisation modelled on the German Börsenverein and drew its members from all cor- ners of Habsburg empire. The official Austrian trade publication, the Österreichische bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 81

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(later: Österreichisch-Ungarische) Buchhändler-Correspondenz began to appear the following year.2 In 1840, Austria, which was by no means among the avant-garde in calling for better protection of intellectual property, signed the first international literary convention with Sardinia, thus paving the way for the long-awaited Imperial Patent of 1846 offering extended copyright protection.3 Despite repeated initiatives over the years on the part of the Austrian book trade, the parliament of the dual monarchy failed to pass legislation which would have anticipated Austria becoming a member of the Berne Convention. Resistance came – among other places – from the aspiring peoples of the vast Monarchy who did not want to pay royalties for translations in their efforts to catch up with other cultures. Copyright legislation was instead regulated by individual reciprocal agreements. Because Austria did not become a party to the Berne Convention, the works of Austrian writers and composers enjoyed less copyright protection at home and this led many of them to publish in Germany. In the words of one contemporary, Austrian writers were ‘free game’ for pirate publishers. It is not surprising then that this situation hampered the development of a strictly literary publishing industry in Austria-Hungary. It was not until 1920 that the young Republic of Austria was forced under the terms of the peace treaty of St. Germain to join the Berne Convention.4 At the beginning of the First Republic in 1918, when many successful publishing companies had lost their traditional markets in the vast Monarchy (legal texts, school books and the like) and were forced to re-invent themselves, there was a short-lived boom which led to the foundation of countless new literary publishing houses. Many of them, including ambitious share-holding companies such as wila or the Rikola Verlag, had gone under by the middle of the decade. However, others, such as Herbert Reichner, Paul Zsolnay or E.P. Tal, which had a foot on the German market, stayed in business until the annexation of Austria by Hitler Germany in March 1938. Of these three firms, only the Paul Zsolnay Verlag, which was subsequently ‘aryanised’ during the Nazi period survived until after the Second World War. Its successful programme was based on international bestsellers and contemporary German-language literature.5

2 As part of the project anno, Historische österreichische Zeitungen und Zeitschriften, the Austrian National Library is currently in the process of scanning and making accessible online its entire holdings of this trade publication from the year 1860. 3 For a detailed description see M.G. Hall, ‘Der Urheberrechtsvertrag zwischen Österreich und Sardinien (1840). Ein erster Versuch zur Regelung des internationalen literarischen Transfers’, in: N. Bachleitner, M.G. Hall (eds.), Die Bienen fremder Literaturen. Der literarische Transfer zwischen Großbritannien, Frankreich und dem deutschsprachigen Raum im Zeitalter der Weltliteratur (1770-1850). Wiesbaden 2012, 275-295. 4 S. Gerhartl, ‘Vogelfrei’. Die österreichische Lösung der Urheberrechtsfrage in der 2. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts oder Warum es Öster- reich unterließ, seine Autoren zu schützen. Unpublished dissertation. Wien 1995 (online at: www.wienbibliothek.at/doku- mente/gerhartl-sybille.pdf). 5 M.G. Hall, Österreichische Verlagsgeschichte, 1918-1938. Band I: Geschichte des österreichischen Verlagswesens; Band II: Belletristische Verlage der Ersten Republik. Wien 1985; available online: verlagsgeschichte.murrayhall.com. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 82

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The status of the discipline

In contrast to the situation past and present in Germany, Book History has never established itself as a field of study at Austrian institutions of higher learning. There is no ‘historical commission’ similar to the one established by the Börsenverein in Germany. Research on the book and publishing trade has generally been restricted to the private initiative of individual scholars. There are however a number of outstanding examples of Austrian scholarship from the nineteenth century worth noting. One is the comprehensive, two-volume history of book-printing in Vienna by Anton Mayer, Wiens Buchdrucker-Geschichte 1482-1882, as well as numerous important articles and brochures penned by Carl Junker.6 Roughly a hundred years later, Anton Durstmüller published a three-volume history of the printing trade in Austria under the title 500 Jahre Druck in Österreich.7 In the year 2000, N. Bachleitner, F.M. Eybl, and E. Fischer published a single volume history of the book trade in Austria, which, naturally, restricts its scope to the German-Austrian region.8 It is worth mentioning that Austria brought forth a number of prominent librarians, bibliographers and book historians, among them Josef Körner, Wilhelm Kosch, Hanns Bohatta, Gustav Gugitz, Max von Portheim, Gert A. Zischka and Karl F. Stock. Despite various initiatives, the complicated historical situation of the Habsburg Empire as a multi-ethnic and multi-national state was instrumental in the fact that Austria did not have a national bibliography until 1946. This makes Austria one of the few European states lacking a retrospective bibliography. During the days of the Monarchy, national bibliographies of Polish (Estreicher) and Hungarian literature (Petrik) appeared, but all attempts at compiling a joint Austrian national bibliography came to naught. The project of compiling an Austrian retrospective bibliography Österreichische retrospektive Bibliographie (orbi), which was begun at the Austrian National Library and is restricted to publications within the territory of present-day Austria, only comprises two series, edited by Helmut W. Lang, namely Series 2 (newspapers) and 3 (periodicals). A continuation of the project appears unlikely. The National Library also publishes the journal Biblos. Beiträge zu Buch, Bibliothek und Schrift as well as the series Biblos Schriften. Based on the donation of the library of Peter R. Frank, the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (Vienna City Library) has been endeavouring in recent years to establish a special Book History collection. It is hoped that the recent acquisition by the Austrian National Library of the archive of the Verein der österreichischen Buch-, Kunst- und Musikalienhändler (Association of Austrian Booksellers) will provide further impulses for research. In order to create a common forum for book historians in Austria, Peter R. Frank and Murray G. Hall founded the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich in 1998. The main goal of the association is to initiate and promote book history research projects and to

6 A. Mayer, Wiens Buchdrucker-Geschichte 1482-1882. Wien 1883-1887; C. Junker, ed. M.H. Hall, Zum Buchwesen in Österreich. Gesammelte Schriften 1896-1927. Wien 2001. 7 A. Durstmüller d.J., 500 Jahre Druck in Österreich. Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der graphischen Gewerbe von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. 3 volumes, Wien [1982-1989]. 8 N. Bachleitner [et al.], Geschichte des Buchhandels in Österreich. Wiesbaden 2000. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 83

Book history in Austria 83

encourage links with international research. Publications include the series Buchforschung. Beiträge zum Buchwesen in Österreich and the semi-annual journal Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich. The association also regards itself as a platform for research into the history of the book throughout the entire Habsburg Monarchy up until 1918. In other words, this covers not only the German- Austrian region, but also the Slavic, Hungarian, Romanian, etc. book trade and book production. The association’s website features, among other things, a current list of all relevant theses pertaining to book history in Austria.9 Its concept of book historical research is based on the communication cycle as developed by Herbert G. Göpfert and Robert Darnton. Robert Darnton defined book history in an article first published in 1982 as ‘the social and cultural history of communication by print’,10 whereas Göpfert declared the communication cycle ‘vom Autor zum Leser’ as the field of book history.11 The interests of the association encompass the entire spectrum of the book trade: from the author to the reader, institutions involved in the production and dissemination of books – paper, binding, printing, retail book sellers, publishers, libraries, censorship etc. – and the printed works – books, newspapers, journals, sheet music, maps, posters, lithographs and so on. With the exception of the many publications of journalist and historian Carl Junker (1864-1928), there was no real interest in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Austria in the history of the book trade – neither on the part of scholars, nor on the part of the trade association. Little changed in the decades after the Second World War. Publishing history was mostly restricted to the history of newspapers or publishers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was not until the mid-1980s that the focus of research finally turned to publishing history in Austria in the first half of the twentieth century. The publication in 1985 of a two-volume history of literary publishing in the inter-war years by Murray G. Hall proved a turning point.12 It deals with topics such as National Socialism in Austria, the looting of books and the ‘aryanisation’ of Jewish property, this belated interest has to be seen in the context of the country’s reluc- tance to deal with its Nazi past. This history gave rise to a large number of scholarly works at Austrian universities dealing with company histories and the book trade in general, a considerable number of which are available as free downloads at the website of the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus. Spurred on by the Art Restitution Law, passed in late 1998, the focus of research has also turned to library history especially during the Nazi period in Austria (1938-1945) and to provenance research. One of the first major publications in this field was a comprehensive history of the National Library in Vienna during the years 1938-1945.13 This

9 www.buchforschung.at. 10 R. Darnton, ‘What is the history of books?’, in: D. Finkelstein, A. McCleery (eds.), The book history reader. London/New York 2002, 9-26, here 9. 11 H.G. Göpfert, Vom Autor zum Leser. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Buchwesens. München/Wien 1977. 12 Hall, Österreichische Verlagsgeschichte, 1918-1938. 13 M.G. Hall, C. Köstner, ‘...allerlei für die Nationalbibliothek zu ergattern...’. Eine österreichische Institution in der NS-Zeit. Wien/Köln/Weimar 2006. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 84

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Figure 1. Cover of P.R. Frank, J. Frimmel, Buchwesen in Wien 1750-1850. Wiesbaden 2008

work also spawned provenance research projects at a variety of university, provincial and communal libraries throughout Austria (Vienna, Klagenfurt, Salzburg, Linz, Graz and Innsbruck). This increased focus on what is essentially the history of the book has brought forth numerous publications.14 Under the stewardship of Peter R. Frank, the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich initiated the project Topographie des Buchmarktes in der Habsburgermonarchie 1750-1850. Within the framework of the project, the aim is to offer, for the first time, an overview of the book trade in the entire Habsburg Monarchy. The project documents the individual firms, their owners and, in the case of larger companies, offers an overview of their production. The entries also include information on the history of each company, addresses and biographical details. A list of sources and archival material, catalogues and bibliographies as well as secondary literature serves to encourage further research. The compiled material is kept in a database and is also being published for selected regions in book form. The first volume,

14 For example S. Alker [et al.] (eds.), Bibliotheken in der NS-Zeit. Provenienzforschung und Bibliotheksgeschichte. Wien 2008; H. Bauer [et al.] (eds.), NS-Provenienzforschung an österreichischen Bibliotheken. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit. Wien 2011; K. Bergmann-Pfleger, Geschichte der Universitätsbibliothek Graz 1938-1945. Wiesbaden 2011; U. Schachl-Raber [et al.] (eds.), Buchraub in Salzburg. Bibliotheks- und NS-Provenienzforschung an der Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg. Salzburg 2012. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 85

Book history in Austria 85

Peter R. Frank and Johannes Frimmel’s Buchwesen in Wien, 1750-1850 was published in 2008 and other volumes are planned for Prague and Bohemia as well as Pressburg/Buda- Pest.15 As the first volume has demonstrated, this research opens up a fascinating perspective for the future by presenting the book history of the various lands of the Habsburg Monarchy in context. Whereas scholars, and book historians are no exception, have hitherto tended to focus on the history of nations, there is now increasing interest in examining the multi-ethnic realm as a common communication area. Furthermore, a history of the book in the Habsburg Monarchy could provide important impulses for a history of the European book trade. A joint repertory of relevant archival material, coordination of digitization projects and the retrospective bibliographical compilation of book production would be the necessary prerequisites.

Figure 2. Cover of S. Alker [et al.] (eds), Bibliotheken in der NS-Zeit. Göttingen 2008

15 P.R. Frank, J. Frimmel, Buchwesen in Wien 1750-1850. Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der Buchdrucker, Buchhändler und Verleger. Wiesbaden 2008. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 86

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Current trends and future perspectives

What would be desirable in the field of Austrian book research is a more vigorous methodological discussion, which should address the social and cultural ramifications of book printing in the larger context of media history. Book production figures for Austria up until 1918 are completely inadequate and at times misleading because they only list German-language book production and ignore the substantial amount of books printed in Slavic languages or in Hungarian. Among the projects which would be of major importance are a compilation of the data from the various retrospective national bibliographies (such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and a resumption of the Austrian Retrospective Bibliography orbi. Without the corresponding bibliographical data, definitive conclusions about the development of the Austrian book production and any comparisons with the German book market will rest on inse- cure foundations. More attention should be paid to linking bibliographical work to publishing and social history, as is common among scholars in English-speaking countries and France. Included among the issues to be addressed is the connection between the materiality of the book as an object and differing reading practices. An analysis of the massive piracy production in the Habsburg Monarchy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for example may prove highly enlightening for interactions with print in a transnational context. The practice of reprints should be studied in more detail under the aspect of how the reception of books and book design were connected. Paratexts, abridgements, adaptations, illustrations, format and typography could inform us about reading practices. Another aspect is the connection between printing and emerging national identities on the basis of the ethnic groups within the Habsburg Monarchy, whose book production experienced a renaissance from the eighteenth century onwards. Another issue to be addressed is the relationship between oral, hand-written and printed communication. From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, Vienna was an expanding multi- ethnic capital in which different social groups communicated by a variety of media within different communication spheres. Its inhabitants found themselves in a complex and polyphonic cultural situation of overlapping and rivalling spheres of communication. Various impulses for new methodological aspects are to be found, for example, in a recent publication edited by Samo Kobenter and Peter Plener under the title Seitenweise. Was das Buch ist.16 The topics dealt with in this collection of essays include the history of types and printing as factors influencing reading, the relationship between print and body as well as reading from a phenomenological perspective, the uses of books as well as library and bibliophile classification systems.

16 T. Eder [et al.] (eds.), Seitenweise. Was das Buch ist. Wien 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 87

Benito Rial Costas

Bibliography and the history of the printed book in Spain Some insights into an old and new field of study

In memory of professor José Simón Díaz (1920-2012)

Writing about the progress of bibliography and the history of the book in Spain is not an easy task. Only bibliography as a discipline or field of study has been frequently used and defined to any degree by Spanish scholars. The ‘history of the book’ as an expression denoting a discipline (hereafter book history) is still today, in international forums, far from having a coherent and unanimously accepted definition. Indeed, in Spain, the term is not even used to denote a discipline. Condensing in a few pages the complex history, internally interacting forces and current situation of both bibliography and the elusive field of book history in Spain is impossible without over-simplify- ing matters, deploying unacceptable generalisations, and overlooking important factors and events.1 In trying to avoid, or perhaps in spite of, these risks, I will concentrate in this paper on bibliography in Spain, showing its history, goals and approach to the history of the printed book – bibliography being the only discipline that, arbitrarily or not, has traditionally considered it. Bibliography, in Spain, has been the only discipline that, from its

1 According to Robert Darnton, book history studies ‘the social and cultural history of communication by print’; see R. Darnton, ‘What is the history of books?’, in: K. Carpenter (ed.), Books and society in history. New York 1983, 3. However, according to the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (sharp), book history studies ‘the composition, mediation, reception, survival, and transformation of written communication in material forms including marks on stone, script on parchment, printed books and periodicals, and new media’; see www.sharpweb.org/, accessed 29 October, 2012. See also T.R. Adams, N. Barker, ‘A new model for the study of the book’, in: N. Barker (ed.), A potencie of life. Books in society. London 1993, 5-43; D.D. Hall, ‘The history of the book. New questions? New answers?’, in: Journal of library history 21 (1986) 1, 27-38; G.T. Tanselle, ‘Printing history and other history’, in: Studies in bibliography 48 (1995), 269- 289; P.D. McDonald, ‘Implicit structures and explicit interactions. Pierre Bourdieu and the history of the book’, in: The library 19 (1997) 2, 105-121; J. Jenisch,‘The history of the book. Introduction, overview, apologia’, in: Portal: Libraries and the academy 3 (2003) 2, 229-239; D. Finkelstein, A. McCleery, An introduction to book history. New York/London 2005. François López and Mercedes Dexeus, among other Spanish scholars, use the term ‘book history’, but they identify it, to a certain extent, with bibliography. See F. López, ‘Estado actual de la historia del libro en España’, in: Revista de historia moderna 4 (1984), 9-22; M. Dexeus, ‘Diez años de historia del libro y las bibliotecas en España 1983-93’, in: Boletín ANABAD 44 (1994), 140-160. For a different Spanish perspective, see M.L. López-Vidriero, ‘Los estudios de historia del libro en España durante el siglo xx’, in: La bibliofilia 102 (2000) 1, 123-135. For an identification of the responsibilities of historical bibliography with those of book history, see R. Stokes, The function of bibliography. London 1969, 160-170. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 88

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origins, has made the history of printed books one of its main interests. Bibliography’s approach to the history of the printed book, however, is today facing important challenges from several scholarly initiatives that could be labeled as book history.

Bibliography, librarianship and literary studies: a little bit of history

From 1821 throughout the whole nineteenth century a bibliography course was part of the curricula of several studies. A Chair of Bibliography, as an auxiliary science, was created in studies such as medicine, pharmacy and law. Bibliography was mainly taught by librarians, but the meaning of the word was still far from the modern definition because the function of its practitioners was to teach the history and literature of those respective subjects.2 In 1856, the Escuela Superior de Diplomática was founded in Madrid for teaching and training future librarians, archivists and antiquarians. Its curricula included ‘Bibliography: Classification and Arrangement of Archives and Libraries.’ This course included the study of both the history of printing and the theoretical and practical notions for classifying and arranging archival and library holdings.3 In 1900, the School was closed, and the Chair of Bibliography and its teachers joined the Department of Literary Studies of the Faculty of Filosofía y Letras at the University of Madrid where they continued their activities.4 In 1953, the Escuela de Formación Técnica de Archiveros, Bibliotecarios y Arqueólogos, inheritor of the Escuela Superior de Diplomática’s objectives and curricula, opened in Madrid. In 1964, it was transformed into the Escuela de Documentalistas. In 1981, it was renamed Centro de Estudios Bibliográficos y Documentarios (cebid), ceasing its activities when university schools of library and information science started to be opened a few years later. None of the reforms that the Faculty of Filosofía y Letras made after the Escuela Superior de Diplomática was closed affected the Chair of Bibliography, but the Chair’s work, for various reasons, did not achieve great importance within the Faculty until 1971. Because of the poor activity of the Chair, the only one in Spain, the Faculty of Filosofía y Letras decided, in 1956, to establish a Bibliography of Spanish literature course within the Department of Romance Philology. José Simón Díaz taught this course from 1956 to 1970, when he became head of the Chair of Bibliography. At the same time, in the faculties of philosophy and arts of several Spanish provinces, the basic principles and applications of this new discipline started to be taught, albeit under dif-

2 M.T. Fernández Bajón, ‘La enseñanza de la bibliografía en el siglo xix’, in: Homenaje a Juan Antonio Sagredo Fernández. Estudios de bibliografía y fuentes de información. Madrid 2001, 177-195. 3 See J. Simón Díaz, La bibliografía. Conceptos y aplicaciones. Barcelona 1971, 40-41; Fernández Bajón, ‘La enseñanza de la bi - bliografía’, 188, 194-204, 212-213. See also F. de los Reyes Gómez, ‘La historia de la imprenta en los estudios de bibliografía: Toribio del Campillo’, in: Homenaje a Juan Antonio Sagredo Fernández, 477-517. 4 Simón Díaz, La bibliografía, 33, 42; Fernández Bajón, ‘La enseñanza de la bibliografía’, 193-215. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 89

Bibliography and the history of the printed book in Spain 89

ferent names, almost always by librarians.5 The connection between bibliography and the Department of Literary Studies of the Faculty of Filosofía y Letras at the University of Madrid resulted in the introduction and application in Spain (by Jaime Moll in 1979) of the bibliographic principles of Fredson Bowers and the contributions of Wallace Kirsop and Roger Laufer. These provided a new tool for literary studies and expanded the significance of bibliography.6 In 1857, one year after the Escuela Superior de Diplomática was created in Madrid, the National Library of Spain established an annual bibliographical award. This was another fundamental milestone in the history of Spanish bibliography, especially, in one of its most important tasks: collecting and cataloguing the printed production of a given place. This municipally or regionally-oriented approach would be later called, by Spanish bibliographers, ‘tipobibliografía’ (hereafter, typobibliography).7 In 1863, the award was given to Francisco Escudero y Perosso for his work on Seville (Tipografía hispalense) and, three years later, to Bonifacio María Riano for his work on Granada (Bibliografía granadina).8

Figure 1. Francisco Escudero y Perosso, Tipografía hispalense. Anales bibliográficos de la ciudad de Sevilla desde el establecimiento de la imprenta hasta fines del siglo XVIII. Madrid 1894

5 Simón Díaz, La bibliografía, 35, 37, 42. See also J. Simón Díaz, ‘El Departamento de Bibliografía de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid’, in: Documentación de las Ciencias de la Información 1 (1976), 17-21; ‘Bio-bibliografía de José Simón Díaz’, in: Documentación de las Ciencias de la Información 10 (1986), 11-42. 6 The turning point for this process was the publication of the article of J. Moll, ‘Problemas bibliográficos del libro del Siglo de Oro’, in: Boletín de la Real Academia Española 59 (1979), 49-107. 7 J. Delgado Casado, Un siglo de bibliografía en España. Los concursos bibliográficos de la Biblioteca Nacional (1857-1953). Madrid 2001, vol. 1, 41, 150. 8 F. Escudero y Perosso, Tipografía hispalense. Anales bibliográficos de la ciudad de Sevilla desde el establecimiento de la imprenta hasta fines del siglo XVIII. Madrid 1894; B. María Riano, Bibliografía granadina y noticias históricas de su imprenta e impresores hasta fines del siglo XVIII. Unpublished. National Library of Spain, manuscript number 21.464. See J. Delgado Casado, ‘Los comienzos de la tipobibliografía regional y local española’, in: Homenaje a Juan Antonio Sagredo Fernández, 128-129. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 90

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The enthusiasm produced by Riano’s work led the National Library to establish a special award for typobibliographies. Although this initiative did not get immediate results, these kinds of works remained a constant factor in all National Library’s annual bibliographical awards for nearly a century. The bibliographical award of the National Library of Spain was last granted in 1953, but the relation between bibliography and typobibliographies would be inherited by the project Tipobibliografía Española thirty years later.9 The project Tipobibliografía Española was born in the years 1983 and 1984. The first and second Reunión de Especialistas en Bibliografía Local were respectively held in 1983 and 1984, convened by the Confederación Española de Centros de Estudios Locales of the Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (csic) and by the Department of Bibliography of the Faculty of Filosofía y Letras of the University Complutense of Madrid. The initiative and ideas of Simón Díaz, the twentieth-century’s most respected theorist of bibliography in Spain, were instrumental. In both of those years, a decision was made to undertake the project of creating typobibliographies of the whole Spanish territory following a rigorous and systematic plan and a common methodology. It was made with an awareness of the enormous value that this information would have for several disciplines.10 The Asociación Española de Bibliografía was created few years later – in 1987 – on the initiative of a group of specialists of the National Library of Spain and the members of the project Tipobibliografía Española. Its creation was intended to remedy the lack of a society which brought together the experts in a field with more than two centuries of history and which, through Simón Díaz’s work and teaching, as head of the Chair of Bibliography at the Faculty of Filosofía y Letras of the University Complutense of Madrid, was the center of great interest among Spanish librarians and literary scholars. The Asociación Española de Bibliografía condensed and summarised the history of bibliography in Spain and its close relations with librarianship, literary studies and especially typobibliographies. In 1988, the society was formally constituted with a clear objective. Its main purpose would be promoting and studying Spanish hand-press printed production by finding, describing and analyzing libraries’ holdings and by creating catalogues, inventories and monographs on the subject.11 The Asociación Española de Bibliografía tried to promote the membership of the society among those national and foreign specialists, mainly librarians and literary scholars, who were willing to collaborate with it in accordance with its objective. This objective of finding, describing and analysing Spanish hand-press printed production, however, did not reflect the aims of many scholars interested in the history of the print-

9 D. Casado, ‘Los comienzos de la tipobibliografía’, 130, 132. 10 Although the project was initially conceived for the sixteenth century, it was later expanded to the whole hand-press period. See J. Simón Díaz, ‘Introducción a la “Tipobibliografía Española”’, in: J. Martín Abad, La imprenta en Alcalá de Henares (1502-1600). Madrid 1991, vol. 1, 7-15. 11 Trabajos de la Asociación Española de Bibliografía I. Madrid 1993, 9. Following Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine’s model and quoting Louise Noëlle Malclès, Simón Díaz wrote in 1971 that bibliography was an auxiliary science and that its main purpose was to collect, describe, classify and catalogue printed documents. See Simón Díaz, La bibliografía, 17-19. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 91

Bibliography and the history of the printed book in Spain 91

ed book. With this aim, many different interests and research lines which, in those years, were beginning to develop around the study of the book and print and written culture were explicitly excluded. The long relations between bibliography, librarianship and literary studies and their developments and exclusions have also been reflected in the publishing market.12 During the nineteenth century, the National Library of Spain’s bibliographic award and the work of the Escuela Superior de Diplomática had, especially from the second half of the century, a strong influence on the publishing development of these types of works. The works of Fermín Caballero on the printing press in Cuenca, Cristóbal Pérez Pastor on Toledo and Medina del Campo, Francisco Escudero on Seville, and José María Valdenebro on Córdoba are just a few examples.13 During the following century, the tendency of publishing typobibliographies continued. Two of the most representative works of Spanish bibliography were published, namely Konrad Haebler’s Bibliografía ibérica del siglo XV and Frederick J. Norton’s A descriptive catalogue of printing in Spain and Portugal.14 A number of scholarly journals started to appear sporadically: Papyrus in 1936, Revista de bibliografía nacional from 1940 to 1946, Bibliofilia from 1949 to 1957, Cuadernos de bibliofilia from 1979 to 1987, Esopo from 1990 to 1992, and Pliegos de bibliofilia from 1998 to 2004.15 In addition, iconic international works such as Ronald B. McKerrow’s An introduction to bibliography of 1928 and Philip Gaskell’s A new introduction to bibliography of 1972 were translated into Spanish, albeit only at the very end of the century.16 Fredson Bower’s Principles of bibliographical description of 1949 had to wait until 2001 to be published in Spanish.17 In the first half of the century, Juan Manuel Sánchez published a typobibliography of Aragon (1913), Ángel del Arco y Molinero one of Tarragona (1916), Mariano Alcocer y Martínez one of Valladolid (1926), Antonio Rodríguez Moñino one of Jerez (1942) and one

12 Several works on printed books and their catalogues had already been published at the end of the eighteenth century, such as N. Antonio, Biblioteca Hispana nova, sive Hispanorum scriptorum qui ab anno MD ad MDCLXXXIV fluere notitia. Matriti: apud Joachimum de Ibarra, 1738-1788; J. Villarroya, Disertación sobre el origen del nobilisimo arte tipográfico y su intro- ducción y uso en la ciudad de Valencia de los Edetanos. Valencia: Benito Monfort, 1796; and F. Méndez, Typographía española o historia de la introducción, propagación y progresos del arte de la imprenta en España. Madrid: Viuda de Joachin Ibarra, 1796. I am leaving aside printing manuals and historical works with short notices about the history of books such as A. Víctor de Paredes’ Institución y origen del arte de la imprenta of 1680 and H. Flórez’s España Sagrada of 1789. 13 F. Caballero, La imprenta en Cuenca. Datos para la historia del arte tipográfico en España. Cuenca 1869; C. Pérez Pastor, La imprenta en Toledo. Descripción bibliográfica de las obras impresas en la imperial ciudad desde 1483 hasta nuestros días. Madrid 1887; C. Pérez Pastor, La imprenta en Medina del Campo. Madrid 1895; F. Escudero y Perosso, Tipografía hispalense. Anales bibliográ- ficos de la ciudad de Sevilla desde el establecimiento de la imprenta hasta fines del siglo XVIII. Madrid 1894; J.M. de Valdenebro y Cisneros, La imprenta en Córdoba: ensayo bibliográfico. Madrid 1900. 14 K. Haebler, Bibliografía ibérica del siglo XV. Enumeración de todos los libros impresos en España y Portugal hasta el año de 1500. Leipzig/La Haya 1903; K. Haebler, Bibliografía Ibérica del siglo XV o hispánica. Segunda parte. Leipzig/La Haya 1917; F.J. Norton, A descriptive catalogue of printing in Spain and Portugal 1501-1520. Cambridge 1978. 15 For a short list of journals see M.J. Pedraza Gracia [et al.], El Libro antiguo. Madrid 2003, 399-400. 16 R.B. McKerrow, Introducción a la bibliografía material. Madrid 1998; Ph. Gaskell, Nueva introducción a la bibliografía material. Gijón 1999. 17 F. Bowers, Principios de descripción bibliográfica. Madrid 2001. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 92

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Figure 2. Pliegos de bibliofilia 23 (2003)

of Extremadura (1945), and Atanasio López one of Galicia (1953).18 At the end of the century, the project Tipobibliografía Española and the work and teaching of José Simón Díaz began to produce their first published results in works such as Julián Martín Abad’s La imprenta en Alcalá de Henares (1991), Lorenzo Ruiz Fidalgo’s La imprenta en Salamanca (1994) and Fermín de los Reyes’ La imprenta en Segovia (1996).19 However, many works published during the second half of the twentieth century, and especially at its end, started to be very challenging for bibliography’s objective since many different scholarly interests and research lines were beginning to develop around the study of the printed book beyond librarianship, literary studies and typobibliographies. For example, Juan Delgado Casado studied bookplates, José Bonifacio Martín Bermejo bookbindings, and authors such as Antonio Klaus Wagner, Clive Griffin and José Antonio

18 J. Manuel Sánchez, Bibliografía aragonesa del siglo XVI. 2 vols., Madrid 1913-1914; Á. del Arco y Molinero, La imprenta en Tarragona. Apuntes para su historia y bibliografía. Tarragona 1916; M. Alcocer y Martínez, Catálogo razonado de obras impresas en Valladolid 1481-1800. Valladolid 1826; A. Rodríguez Moñino, La imprenta xerezana en los siglos XVI y XVII (1564-1699). Madrid 1942; A. Rodríguez Moñino, La imprenta en Extremadura (1489-1800). Madrid 1945; A. López, La imprenta en Galicia. Siglos XV-XVIII. Madrid 1953. 19 J. Martín Abad, La imprenta en Alcalá de Henares (1502-1600). 3 vols., Madrid 1991; L. Ruiz Fidalgo, La imprenta en Salamanca (1501-1600). 3 vols., Madrid 1994; F. de los Reyes, La imprenta en Segovia (1472-1900). 2 vols., Madrid 1996. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 93

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Armendáriz studied the work of single printers.20 In the last decades of the century, works on the printing press, book selling and private libraries based on documental sources were frequently published, and the terms ‘culture’, ‘writing’, ‘reading’ and ‘readers’ began to be used.21 In 1976, Maxime Chevalier published his Lectura y lectores en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII; in 1980, the conference Livre et lecture en Espagne et en France sous l’Ancien Régime was held in Madrid and in 1986 El libro antiguo español; in 1987, Philippe Berger published his Libro y lectura en la Valencia del Renacimiento; in 1992 Fernando Bouza Álvarez published his Del escribano a la biblioteca; and in 1997 Antonio Castillo Gómez shared his Escrituras y escribientes with the scholarly world.22

Figure 3. Livre et lecture en Espagne et en France sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris 1981

20 J. Delgado Casado, Los ex libris españoles. Valencia 1996; J.B. Bermejo Martín (ed.), Enciclopedia de la encuadernación. Madrid 1998; K. Wagner, Martín de Montesdoca y su prensa. Contribución al estudio de la imprenta y de la bibliografía sevillanas del siglo XVI. Sevilla 1982; C. Griffin, The Crombergers of Sevilla. The history of a printing and merchant dynasty. Oxford 1988; J.A. Mosquera Armendáriz, Compendio de la vida y obra de A.G. Brocar. Pamplona 1989. 21 Juan Delgado Casado labels this trend ‘book culture’ although he does not define the term (J. Delgado Casado, Introducción a la Bibliografía. Los repertorios bibliográficos y su elaboración. Madrid 2005, 189). Some of these works are A. Rojo Vega, Ciencia y cultura en Valladolid. Estudio de las bibliotecas privadas de los siglos XVI y XVII. Valladolid 1985; M. del Carmen Álvarez Márquez, El mundo del libro en la Iglesia Catedral de Sevilla en el siglo XVI. Sevilla 1992; J. García Oro, Los Reyes y los libros. La política libraria de la Corona en el Siglo de Oro (1475-1598). Madrid 1995; M. Peña Díaz, El laberinto de los libros. Historia cultural de la Barcelona del Quinientos. Madrid 1997; M.J. Pedraza Gracia, La producción y distribución del libro en Zaragoza: 1501- 1521. Zaragoza 1997; M. de la Mano González, Mercaderes e impresores de libros en la Salamanca del siglo XVI. Salamanca 1998; V. Bécares Botas, Arias Montano y Plantino. El libro flamenco en la España de Felipe II. León 1999; J.M. Prieto Bernabé, La seduc- ción de papel. El libro y la lectura en la España del Siglo de Oro. Madrid 2000; F. de los Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América. Legislación y censura (siglos XV-XVIII). 2 vols., Madrid 2000. 22 M. Chevalier, Lectura y lectores en la España del siglo XVI y XVII. Madrid 1976; Livre et lecture en Espagne et en France sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris 1981; M.L. López-Vidriero, P.M. Cátedra (eds.), El libro antiguo español. Actas del primer coloquio internacional (Madrid 18 al 20 de diciembre de 1986). Salamanca/Madrid 1988; Ph. Berger, Libro y lectura en la Valencia del Renacimiento. 2 vols., Valencia 1987; F. Bouza Álvarez, Del escribano a la biblioteca. La civilización escrita europea en la Alta Edad Moderna (siglos XV-XVII). Madrid 1992; A. Castillo Gómez, Escrituras y escribientes: prácticas de la cultura escrita en una ciudad del Renacimiento. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 1997. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 94

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Some of these works had their genesis in bibliography’s interest in the history of the printed book among librarians and literary scholars. Others, however, were not related to this discipline, but were instead written by historians who viewed the printed (and written) book as an important element for the analysis of certain social, political, economic and cultural environments.

An old (and new) field of study

The current situation of Spanish bibliography and its interests are logical consequences of its history. The university faculties of library and information science are, today, the centers devoted to professional training and research in the field of librarianship and, therefore, the latest inheritors of the Escuela Superior de Diplomática and the close relation between bibliography and librarianship. The faculties of library and information sciences as well as university departments of literary studies remain two of bibliography’s major strongholds. The project of Tipobibliografía Española continues to add new works, although at a slower pace than in its early years, filling the lacunas in bibliography that François López pointed out in 1984.23 Francisco Rico is one of the main figures studying the relation between bibliography and textual criticism in literary studies.24 The Asociación Española de Bibliografía continues its activities and its annual conferences.25 The bibliographical award of the National Library of Spain has been re-established and the Asociación Española de Bibliografía plays an important role in it.26 Publishing houses such as Arco Libros, Calambur, Ollero y Ramos and Trea, among others, invest in works on the history of the book. But bibliography, today, is facing an important challenge. The lines of research and interests which were born at the end of the twentieth century continually offer new contributions to the study of printing, writing, reading and bookselling.27 Some contri-

23 F. López, ‘Estado actual de la historia del libro’, in: Revista de historia moderna 4 (1984), 9-22. Some of these works are P. Alfaro Torres, La imprenta en Cuenca, 1528-1679. Madrid 2002; M. Fernández Valladares, La imprenta en Burgos (1501-1600). 2 vols., Madrid 2005. 24 F. Rico (ed.), Imprenta y crítica textual en el Siglo de Oro. Valladolid 2000; F. Rico, En torno al error. Copistas, tipógrafos, filologías. Madrid 2004. 25 The Asociación Española de Bibliografía has organised thirteen annual conferences. Despite its initial objective of publishing the proceedings of all conferences, only three volumes have been published. The first volume of proceedings which included the comunications of the first and second conferences already explained the problems that the publication faced and the impossibility of guaranteeing their periodicity. See Trabajos de la Asociación Española de Bibliografía I, 8. 26 J. Delgado Casado, Un siglo de bibliografía, 152-153; id., ‘Los comienzos de la tipobibliografia regional y local española’, in: Homenaje a Juan Antonio Sagredo Fernández, 127. 27 Some examples are F. Bouza Álvarez, Corre manuscrito. Una historia cultural del Siglo de Oro. Madrid 2002; C.A. González Sánchez, N. Maillard Álvarez, Orbe tipográfico. El mercado del libro en la Sevilla de la segunda mitad del siglo XVI. Gijón 2003; P.M. Cátedra, A. Rojo Vega, Bibliotecas y lecturas de mujeres. Siglo XVI. Salamanca 2004; J.M. Prieto Bernabé, Lectura y lectores. La cultura del impreso en el Madrid del Siglo de Oro (1550-1650). 2 vols., Mérida 2004; V. Bécares Botas, Guía documental del mundo del libro salmantino del siglo XVI. Burgos 2006; A. Castillo Gómez, Entre la pluma y la pared. Una historia social de la escritura en los Siglos de Oro. Madrid 2006; J.L. Gonzalo Sánchez-Molero, El Cesar y los libros. Un viaje a través de las lecturas del emperador desde Gante a Yuste. Cáceres 2008; F. Bouza Álvarez, Papeles y opinión. Políticas de publicación en el Siglo de Oro. Madrid 2008. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 95

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butions on the printed book are presented as part of bibliography as a discipline when their authors are library science and literary scholars. Papers presented at the Asociación Española de Bibliografía conferences provide evidence of this.28 Many others, however, often written by historians, do not, even though their authors are also interested in the history of the printed book. One might note, for example, the works of García Oro, Fernando Bouza, Alberto González and Natalia Maillard.29 Two are the main causes of this phenomenon: bibliography’s tradition and the lack of a contemporary theoretical formulation of the discipline. As Simón Díaz noted in La bibliografía of 1971, the origins of bibliography have transmitted the message that the only function of the discipline is the training of future librarians, while its relation with the Faculty of Filosofía y Letras has shaped its development towards that of literary studies.30 Today it can be added that the bibliographical awards of the National Library of Spain, Simón Díaz’s work, the project of Tipobibliografía Española and the Asociación Española de Bibliografía’s objective have conveyed the idea that the main function of the discipline is to describe and catalogue printed books. Despite the fact that a myriad of new different interests and research trends have made inroads into the history of the printed book in recent years, bibliography has not given a theoretical response to the challenges the field is facing, nor has it clearly stated what the responsibilities of the discipline are and what they are not. Simón Díaz’s La bibliografía remains the most important reference for the definition of the term and its boundaries in Spain despite the fact that Simón Diaz’s interests and visions about the history of the printed book in 1971 were very different from those bibliography is facing today.31 As a consequence, on the one hand, bibliography and its practitioners increasingly show signs of being interested in many different aspects of the printed book, independently of the perspective that is used. In this sense, the boundaries between an old librarianship-literary studies paradigm and new interests about the printed book among librarians and literary scholars are, at least in practice, gradually fading within the discipline as the papers presented at the Asociación Española de Bibliografía conferences demonstrate.32 On the other hand, many historians see bibliography as a library and literary discipline where the printed book is only a tool to reach largely nineteenth-century goals, and they see the inroads of a historical nature that bibliographers have made as a kind of intrusion into their area of expertise. Bibliography stands, at this point, at a crossroads. Avoiding a choice of direction will enable bibliography to be open to many new interests about the history of the printed book far beyond collecting and cataloging printed books, but it will also lead most historians interested in those books to still perceive the discipline as a stronghold of librar-

28 See, for example, Trabajos de la VIII Reunión de la Asociación Española de Bibliografía (2003). Madrid 2004. 29 See footnote 27. 30 Simón Díaz, La bibliografía, 43. 31 See, for example, I. de Torres Ramírez, Bibliografía, la palabra y concepto. Granada 1990; J. López Yepes, ‘Introducción al concepto de Bibliografía’, in: Fundamentos de información y documentación. Madrid 1989, 87-98. 32 See footnote 28. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 96

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ian and literary principles and objectives which they do not share. If bibliography chooses, instead, the theoretical clarity akin in strength to that of Simón Díaz, its boundaries will be clearly defined, but many recent works on the history of the printed book written by librarians and literary scholars would not be considered part of the discipline as they are today. Being clearly open to new interests and coherently redefining what the new responsibilities of the discipline are concerning the history of the printed book and what they are not will also not be an easy path. Unity can be attractive, but the distance between bibliography and, for example, the current research conducted by some historians in reading and written culture is big, despite both the fact that those historians also consider the printed book part of their interests and the fact that their innovative work would be perceived in international forums as part of book history.33 Research in reading and written culture also has its own and independent history. In the last twenty years, historians interested in reading and written culture have had their own initiatives. In 1993, a series of international conferences about reading and written culture began to be organised, the journal Signo was born around the same time, and, in 2004, the Seminario Interdisciplinar de Estudios sobre Cultura Escrita of the University of Alcalá de Henares began its activities.34 The lack of unity and interrelations between different interests in the history of the book seemed to have been solved in 1987 with the creation of the Sociedad Española de Historia del Libro. In 1986, the National Library of Spain held an international confer-

Figure 4. El libro antiguo español. Actas del primer coloquio internacional. Salamanca/Madrid 1988

33 See footnote 1. 34 See www.siece.es/index.html, accessed 29 October 2012. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 97

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ence titled El libro antiguo español at which prominent historians, librarians and literary scholars took part. This conference led to the creation, one year later, of the Sociedad Española de Historia del Libro, which, with the turn of the century, became the Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura, directed by María Luisa López-Vidriero and Pedro M. Cátedra.35 In 2002, its first international conference was organised, the first issue of its annual journal, Syntagma, was published and a collection of publications centered on the history of the book, reading and writing was initiated.36 In spite of its ambitions, the Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura could never fully accomplish its plans.37 In 2006, it was absorbed into the Instituto Biblioteca Hispánica of the Centro Internacional de Investigación para la Lengua Española and the cohesion between scholars interested in the history of the book lost one of its most promising features. Whatever the road bibliography will take – changing or confirming Simón Díaz’s definition – it will not be an easy journey. Although bibliography chose the history of the printed book as one of its main interests in its early years, the history of bibliography and the teaching of this discipline have greatly determined both its approach to the topic and how the discipline has been perceived (as librarian and literary). Until a decision is made, the history of the printed book will continue to be an old and central field of study for bibliography, but a new history of the printed book will continue to circulate within and around the discipline.

35 See www.fds.es/es/contenido/?iddoc=1190, accessed 29 October 2012. 36 See, for example, M.L. López-Vidriero, P.M. Cátedra (eds.), El libro antiguo español IV. Coleccionismo y biblioteca (siglos XV- XVIII). Salamanca 1998, 11; M.L. López-Vidriero, P.M. Cátedra (eds.), El libro antiguo español VI. De libros, librerías, imprentas y lectores. Salamanca 2002, 11; ‘Reglamento de funcionamiento del Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura’, in: Syntagma: Revista del Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura 0 (2002), 14-16; P.M. Cátedra, M.L. López-Vidriero (eds.), La memoria de los libros. Estudios sobre la historia del escrito y de la lectura en Europa y América. Salamanca 2004, vol. 1, 13-14. 37 Only three issues of Syntagma were published and the two last books of the Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura were published in 2006 and 2009. See campus.usal.es/~semyr/publicaciones-ihll-central.htm, accessed 29 October 2012. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 98 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 99

Stijn van Rossem

Book history in Belgium Who harbours the harbourless?

On 28 November 2003 the Flanders Book Historical Society organised a conference entitled ‘Boekgeschiedenis in Vlaanderen. Nieuwe instrumenten en benaderingen’ (‘Book History in Flanders. New instruments and approaches’). The initiative for this conference was the completion of the first phase of the Flemish Short-Title Catalogue (stcv), the first online retrospective bibliography of the hand press book in Flanders.1 Even people who could not attend can still get a sense of the optimism that surrounded that day in the acts of the colloquium.2 The back cover of the publication humbly states that even though book history in Belgium has not yet taken a big leap forward compared to its neighbouring countries, this publication proved that the ‘boekgeschiedenis nieuwe stijl’ (‘new-style book history’) had arrived in Flanders. The first speaker was Pierre Delsaerdt, at the time head of the Historical collections of the University of Antwerp and president of the Flanders Book Historical Society. In his talk he gave an overview of book historical research in Flanders by using the ‘Kroniek van het gedrukte boek in de Nederlanden tot 2000’.3 The ‘Kroniek’ is a bibliography that was started in 1971 by Jeroom Machiels in Archief- en Bibliotheekwezen in België and that contains bibliographical references and a concise review of the most important book historical publications on Belgian topics.4 Using this unique tool, Delsaerdt painted a moderately positive image of book history in Flanders. Delsaerdt remarked that studies on book production in the fifteenth, sixteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries were quite well covered. However he found our knowledge of the other two angles of the book historical triangle, distribution and consumption, to be very limited. Furthermore, he stated that book history in Flanders needed to leave the safety of its own ideological living room and reach out to other disciplines. Too often, book historians wrote only in their own journals and the occasional festschrift, this way largely staying under the academic radar

1 Since the project was sponsored by the Flemish Research Council or fwo, the scope of the project was confined to the Flemish-speaking area of Belgium. 2 P. Delsaerdt, K. de Vlieger-De Wilde (eds.), Boekgeschiedenis in Vlaanderen: nieuwe instrumenten en benaderingen. Brussel 2004. 3 P. Delsaerdt, ‘Dertig jaar boekgeschiedenis in Vlaanderen. Enkele aantekeningen bij de “Kroniek van het gedrukte boek in de Nederlanden”’, in: Delsaerdt, De Vlieger-De Wilde, Boekgeschiedenis in Vlaanderen, 9-13. 4 Most recent ‘Kroniek’, in: Archief- en bibliotheekwezen in België 82 (2011) 1-4, 202-254. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:46 Pagina 100

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and denying visibility to the field. Finally, book history needed to be implemented in an institution to ensure its future. Delsaerdt saw possibilities in a yet-to-be-erected Institute for book history (following the example of the Institut d’histoire du livre) or a collaboration with a research library (such as the Herzog August Bibliothek), and dreamt of the creation of a Flemish Heritage Library. At the end of the colloquium, Paul Hoftijzer, professor of book history in Leiden, was asked to reflect on the theme of the conference and the presentations.5 Like Delsaerdt before him, he also pointed out the lack of an institutional anchor as a major sore point. He had positive things to say about the impressive libraries and archives and the potential they had for the field. A potential that was seldom used to its full extent, even in the case of the world-renowned Museum Plantin-Moretus, recognised as a unesco World Heritage site. He advised Flemish researchers to connect to the new international research topics, and in the organisation of international conferences he saw a great potential for Flemish book historians to break out of their shell. In this essay, in many ways a follow-up to the colloquium of 2003, I will try to look at what happened in the next decade. Did the twenty-first century initiate a ‘new book history’ in Belgium? How did the field respond to the challenges researchers were facing, as mentioned by Delsaerdt and Hoftijzer? Finally, I will address the challenges Belgian book history is facing at the end of 2012.6

Figure 1. P. Delsaerdt, K. de Vlieger-de Wilde (eds.), Boekgeschiedenis in Vlaanderen. Nieuwe instrumenten en benaderingen. Brussel 2004

5 P. Hoftijzer, ‘Slotbeschouwing’, in: Delsaerdt, De Vlieger-De Wilde, Boekgeschiedenis in Vlaanderen, 103-108. 6 Belgium is a federal state with three communities: the Flemish Community, the French Community and the German- speaking Community. Each community has its own scholary research program. I have tried to include as much as possible the relevant book historical research of each community, although it is only fair to say that this article focuses mainly on research in Flanders. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 101

Book history in Belgium 101 stcv

The aim of the stcv was to create an online retrospective bibliography of the printed book in Flanders until 1800. Because of the enormous scope of the project, a phased approach was necessary. Originally the Max Wildiersfonds and the Nederlandse Taalunie funded this project for four years (2000-2003).7 At the end of 2003, the database was up and running and contained 3,700 editions (based on 7,000 copies) of Dutch-language books printed in Flanders in the seventeenth century from six important collections.8 Since 2004, the funding for the stcv has come from the Flemish Government. In September 2009, more than 11,000 editions were to be found in the database, the language criterion was dropped, and for specific collections the temporal scope was widened to cover all printed books until 1800. Collections from other libraries were also included. After ten years of project funding, the stcv finally found a harbour. It was incorporated in the newly created Flemish Heritage Library, a network organisation established by six heritage libraries in Flanders at the end of 2008.9 The question remains whether this made the existence of the stcv less vulnerable. Indeed, the project is now part of a broader organisation and network, but the Flemish Heritage Library itself relies on funds from the government of Flanders that have to be renewed every five years. Furthermore, the stcv is but one of the tasks of the Flemish Heritage Library, meaning it has to compete with other projects within the organisation for the limited amount of money that can be spent. At the end of 2012, the stcv contained 30,000 copies, the majority of which are to be found in ten collections. The stcv was in many ways the catalyst of the revitalisation of book historical research in Belgium. In its thirteen years of existence the project has gained an international reputation and its modus operandi has become the best prac- tise in the bibliographical description of hand press books. The stcv manual Handleiding voor de Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen has been distributed and followed in Flanders and beyond.10 In 2010 and 2011, the bibliographers of the stcv also organised a workshop to teach librarians and scholars the tricks of the trade. Many of the bibliographers working on the project later took on important positions in the field of book history. With its 30,000 checked copies, the stcv is an excellent research tool, not only to find specific editions, but also for statistical analysis. So far, only a limited number of researchers, almost all of them directly connected to the project, have used the database as an important source (Steven Van Impe and Jan Bos, Diederik Lanoye, Goran Proot and

7 On the stcv project: S. Van Rossem [et al.], ‘The Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen (stcv): The Bibliography of Seventeenth-Century Books in Flanders’, in: Quærendo 33 (2003) 3-4, 336-354. More info at: www.vlaamse-erfgoedbibliotheek.be. 8 STCV-Nieuwsbrief 1 (2004), [1]. 9 P. Delsaerdt, ‘Ons papieren geheugen en hoe het te onderhouden. De start van de Vlaamse Erfgoedbibliotheek’, in: Ons erfdeel. Vlaams-Nederlands cultureel tijdschrift 53 (2010), 24-37. 10 S. van Impe [et al.], Handleiding voor de Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen. Antwerpen 2005. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 102

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myself).11 This is a pity because a more frequent use of this database in research projects could increase its visibility and stress its importance towards investors. Even though the stcv is now well-established, the database has always been running on a minimal budget. For the start-up period (2000-2003) two bibliographers were assigned to the project. After that the staffing was brought back to one full-time bibliographer. Recently, this has been further reduced to 0,70 fte, and due to the limited budget the Flemish Heritage Library has to work with in the next years, this all-time-low number of staff will most certainly be reduced even more. In comparison: at its peak (2003-2009) there were more than 20 bibliographers working for the Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands (stcn), and even today after the official closure of the stcn-project, two people for a total of 0,75 fte are still ‘maintaining’ the stcn. This means a finished bibliographical project in the Netherlands has more manpower than a running bibliographical project in Flanders. The stcv tries to circumvent this problem by training local librarians to become stcv bibliographers. This is necessary to maintain the scholary nature of bibliographical descriptions, based on the four-eyes principle. An advantage of this solution to the lack of staffing is that it increases awareness and bibliographical knowledge in local collections and standardises the descriptive model in Flanders. On the other hand, because a newly trained bibliographer can never reach the same level as an experienced one, it rais- es questions about the quality of the descriptions and overall makes the progress of the national bibliography for Flanders very slow.

Publishing History

One of the fields where book history has made progress in the last few years is publishing history. Current studies build on the groundbreaking works of two founding fathers: Leon Voet and Ludo Simons. For the ancien régime The Golden Compasses, written by Leon Voet, former director of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, gives a detailed overview of the activities and strategies of the Officina Plantiniana.12 More than forty years after its publication The Golden Compasses is still a quintessential reference for editorial practices in the ancien régime, not only for the Southern Netherlands, but for the whole of Europe. As one of the few Belgian monographs to be written in English, on the

11 S. van Impe, J. Bos, ‘Romein en gotisch in zeventiende-eeuws drukwerk. Een voorbeeldonderzoek voor het gebruik van de stcn en stcv’ in: De zeventiende eeuw 22 (2006) 2, 283-297; D. Lanoye, ‘De Mechelse drukpers voor 1800’, in: Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 16 (2009), 131-150; G. Proot, ‘Hoe volledig zijn de stcn en de stcv? Een bepaling van het werkelijk aantal boeken in folio, kwarto, octavo en duodecimo uit de periode 1601-1640 gedrukt in Nederland en Vlaanderen aan de hand van overgeleverde exemplaren’, in: E. Bloemsaat [et al.] (eds.), Janboel. Opstellen aangeboden aan Jan Bos bij de afronding van de Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands. Den Haag 2009, 123-132; G. Proot, ‘De opmars van de romein: het gebruik van romein en gotisch in Nederlandstalig drukwerk uit de zuidelijke Lage Landen, 1541-1700’, in: Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 19 (2012), 66-85; S. Van Rossem, ‘En Amberes: de Verdussens en de boekhandel met de Iberische wereld’, in: W. Thomas, E. Stols (eds.), Een wereld op papier. Zuid-Nederlandse boeken, prenten en kaarten in het Spaanse en Portugese wereldrijk (16de-18de eeuw). Leuven 2009, 89-108. 12 L. Voet, The golden compasses. A history and evaluation of the printing and publishing activities of the Oficina Plantiniana at Antwerp. 2 vols., Amsterdam 1969, 1972. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 103

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most important publishing firm of the period and based on the most complete business archive of the whole ancien regime period, it is still the best known and most cited ‘Belgian’ book-historical study.13 Contemporary research uses the work of Voet as a stepping stone and a mirror. On the one hand, it focuses on aspects of the history of the Officina Plantiniana not covered by Voet, such as the successors of Plantin, the Moretus family. Dirk Imhof has written on the Moretuses in the seventeenth century, e.g. in his dissertation on the publication strategies of Joannes I Moretus, Plantin’s successor.14 Together with Karen Bowen, he has studied the strategic use of intaglio printing to illustrate Plantin press books.15 Recently, scholars have emphasised the need to step away from the paradigm of Plantin and his successors. Even though the abundance of sources makes it impossible not to work on the Officina Plantiana, the need is felt to look at other printers and booksellers in order to discover general publishing practices. The large scale and specific output prohibit this firm from serving as a pars pro toto of the book trade in Antwerp, the Southern Netherlands or Europe. Based on the partially preserved business archives of the Verdussen family, the second most important Antwerp dynasty, I have analysed their editorial strategies. My research focuses on differences with the Officina Plantiniana, regarding for instance collaboration practices between publishers and the economic importance of popular prints in the publisher’s list.16 Even though we still have many lacunae to fill concerning the Antwerp book trade, notably in the eighteenth century, the city has received a lot more attention than other typographic centres in the Southern Netherlands. The increased attention devoted to other cities is therefore a useful development. After defending his thesis on the book trade in the (post-)incunabula period Renaud Adam has started a project on the book trade in Brussels in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.17 In 2009 a reference work was published on the book in the principauté de Liège by the Société des bibliophiles Liégeois with contributions from 37 authors.18 A 2010 exhibition project resulted in a fresh overview on the history of the book in Mechelen (Malines).19 The history of publishing houses in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is almost entirely monopolised by literary historians, contrary to the ancien régime period where publishing history is mostly carried out by historians. With his Geschiedenis

13 Leon Voet is the only Belgian scholar to be included as a lemma in Michael F. Suarez, H.R. Woudhuysen, The Oxford companion to the book. 2 vols., Oxford 2010. 14 D. Imhof, De Officina Plantiniana ratione recta: Jan I Moretus als uitgever te Antwerpen 1589-161. PhD dissertation, Universiteit Antwerpen 2008. 15 K. Bowen, D. Imhof, Christopher Plantin and engraved book illustrations in sixteenth-century Europe. Cambridge 2008. 16 S. Van Rossem, ‘The struggle for domination of the almanac market: Antwerp, 1626-1642’, in: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 106 (2012) 1, 63-98; S. Van Rossem, ‘In compagnie! Samenwerkingsverbanden rond de fa - milie Verdussen in de zeventiende eeuw’, in: S. Van Rossem, M. De Wilde (eds.), Boekgeschiedenis in het kwadraat: context, casus. Brussel 2006, 79-96. 17 R. Adam, Imprimeurs et société dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et en Principauté de Liège (1473-ca 1520). PhD dissertation, Université de Liège 2011. 18 P. Bruyère, A. Marchandisse (eds.), Florilège du livre en Principauté de Liège du IXe au XVIIIe siècle. Liège 2009. 19 D. Lanoye [et al.] (eds.), Gedrukte stad. Drukken in en voor Mechelen, 1581-1800. Brugge 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 104

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van de uitgeverij in Vlaanderen Ludo Simons wrote a groundbreaking study uncovering the history of the publishing industry in Flanders, a history that is strongly linked to the emerging cultural identity of Flanders (Vlaamse Beweging/the Flemish movement), to the ideological pillars such as catholicism and socialism, dividing social and cultural life in Flanders until the end of the twentieth century and last but not least the ambigu- ous relationship with the Netherlands.20 In 2013, a revised edition of this magnum opus will appear, incorporating the latest studies. Furthermore, the focus will shift from the publishing houses to the role of the book in Flanders, thereby producing an alternative cultural history of Flanders. A new generation of literary historians such as Kevin Absillis and Jan Pauwels will certainly be included in this new edition. Pauwels has written on the post-mortem editions of the work of Hendrik Conscience, Flanders’ best-known author of the nineteenth century, by the Amsterdam publisher Lambertus Jacobus Veen, emphasising the important role of the publisher in the creation of Conscience as a canonized author.21 Kevin Absillis wrote his doctoral dissertation on the publishing house of Angèle Manteau, using the history of this unique firm almost as a metaphor for the introduction of modernism in Flanders.22 Poorly studied periods have recently been researched, such as the period of the Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (United Kingdom of the Netherlands,1815-1830), when both the Northern and Southern Netherlands were reunited under king Willem i.23 In her dissertation on the political role of literature during this period, Janneke Weijermars also focused on the different publishing houses involved. In francophone Belgium Michel-Benoît Fincoeur carried out research into francophone publishing during the Second World War that resulted in a PhD in 2006.24

Literary Studies

The possibilities of book historical methodologies in literary studies have been clearly demonstrated since the 1970s and 1980s by the works of Werner Waterschoot, Piet Verkruijsse and Hubert Meeus, all of whom stressed the importance of materiality in the study of literary texts.25 Fairly few scholars have picked up on this to incorporate analytical bibliography into their methodology. An exception is the dissertation of

20 L. Simons, Geschiedenis van de uitgeverij in Vlaanderen. 2 vols., Tielt 1984, 1987. 21 J. Pauwels, ‘Méér dan een mode-koorts’: Guido Gezelle en zijn postume uitgever Lambertus Jacobus Veen, 1901-1919. Leuven 2005. 22 K. Absillis, Vechten tegen de bierkaai. Over het uitgevershuis van Angèle Manteau (1932-1970). Antwerpen/Amsterdam 2009. 23 J. Weijermars, Stiefbroeders. Zuid-Nederlandse letteren en natievorming onder Willem I, 1814-1834. Hilversum 2012. 24 M.-B. Fincoeur, L’histoire de l’édition francophone belge sous l’Occupation allemande (1940-1944). PhD dissertation, Université libre de Bruxelles 2006. 25 W. Waterschoot, De ‘Poeticsche werken’ van Jonker van der Noot. Analytische bibliografie en tekstuitgave met inleiding en ver - klarende aantekeningen. 3 vols., Gent 1975; P.J. Verkruijsse, Mattheus Smallegange (1624-1710). Zeeuws historicus, genealoog en vertaler. Descriptieve persoonsbibliografie. Met een verantwoording van de gevolgde methode van partiële interne collatie. Nieuwkoop 1983; H. Meeus, Zacharias Heyns: uitgever en toneelauteur. Bio-bibliografie met een uitgave en analyse van de Vriendts-Spieghel. 3 vols., PhD dissertation, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven 1990. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 105

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Figure 2. K. Absillis, Vechten tegen de bierkaai. Over het uitgevershuis van Angèle Manteau (1932-1970). Amsterdam/ Ant werpen 2009

Maartje De Wilde on vernacular secular song books in the seventeenth century.26 This work draws heavily on the material description of the printed sources and focuses less on a purely literary analysis of the text, in order to answer important book-historical questions about the materiality, distribution and reception of these books. Goran Proot left the official literary canon as well to work on theatre programmes for plays organised by the Jesuits in the provincia Flandro-Belgica.27 Analytical bibliography is an important part of this methodology as he meticulously describes formats, sizes, and typography, as well as the print runs and printing costs of the theatre programs. A fundamental result of this research is the development of a mathematical model which makes it possible to estimate loss rates in large corpora of editions.28

26 M. De Wilde, De lokroep van de nachtegaal. Wereldlijke liedboeken uit de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1628-1677). PhD dissertation, Universiteit Antwerpen 2011. 27 G. Proot, Het schooltoneel van de jezuïeten in de Provincia Flandro-Belgica tijdens het ancien régime (1575-1773). PhD dissertation, Universiteit Antwerpen 2008. 28 G. Proot, L. Egghe, ‘Estimating editions on the basis of survivals: printed programmes of Jesuit plays in the Provincia Flandro-Belgica before 1773, with a note on the “Book Historical Law”’, in: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 102 (2008) 2, 149-174. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 106

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Consumption

The reception or consumption of books has been only sparsely studied in a Belgian context. Book historians have focused mainly on libraries and the collection habits of scholars and the upper social classes. Pierre Delsaerdt’s dissertation (published in 2001) combined research of the Leuven book trade with an analysis of the book collections of the professors at the University of Leuven.29 Bart op de Beeck worked on the liquidation of the Jesuit libraries in the Low Countries.30 Lastly, Chris Coppens has been researching sixteenth-century sales catalogues in a European perspective.31 South of the language border, Céline van Hoorebeeck focuses on the history of libraries in the late Middle Ages and Claude Sorgeloos has written numerous articles and books on private and library collections in the early modern period.32 So far, the newest research questions, focusing on individual reading habits33 and based on ego-documents, often collected in large databases such as the Reading Experience Database, have not really materialised in Belgium.34

Books and globalisation

Since 2008, professor Werner Thomas of the University of Leuven has started a series of research projects on the role of the printing press in the Southern Netherlands in the creation of the Spanish colonial empire. Under the title ‘The infrastructure of globalisation’, several scholars are working on different regions of the Spanish Empire: New Spain, New Granada and Rio de la Plata, and Peru.35 All projects build on Serge Gruzinsky’s thesis of the role of the printing press in mondialisation or the creation of one big intellectual space, and in the creation of a ‘paper infrastructure’ at the service of the Spanish monarchy.36 The uniqueness of this new research topic lies in the fact that

29 P. Delsaerdt, Suam quisque bibliothecam. Boekhandel en particulier boekenbezit aan de oude Leuvense universiteit, 16de-18de eeuw. Leuven 2001. 30 B. op de Beeck, Jezuïetenbibliotheken in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. De liquidatie 1773-1828. PhD dissertation, University of Leuven 2008. 31 C. Coppens, ‘A census of printers’, booksellers’ catalogues up to 1600: some provisional conclusions’, in: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 102 (2008) 4, 557-565. 32 Some examples: C. Sorgeloos, ‘Pérennité ou dispersion: bibliothèques privées en Hainaut’, in: Le livre et l’estampe 56 (2010), 157-189; M.-T. Isaac, C. Sorgeloos, L’école centrale du département de Jemappes, 1797-1802. Enseignement, livres et Lumières à Mons. Brussels 2004. 33 J. Blaak, Dagelijks lezen en schrijven in de vroegmoderne tijd in Nederland 1624-1770. Hilversum 2004; A. Baggerman, R. Dekker, Child of the Enlightenment. Revolutionary Europe reflected in a boyhood diary. Leiden 2009. 34 Reading Experience Database: www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED. 35 C. Manrique, ‘From Antwerp to Veracruz. Looking for books from the Southern Netherlands in Mexican colonial libraries’, in: De gulden passer 87 (2009), 93-109; C. Manrique, Cultural trade between the Southern Netherlands and New Spain. Phd Dissertation, University of Leuven 2013; U. Fuss, ‘From Antwerp to Peru. Books from the Southern Netherlands in the sixteenth-century’s Viceroyalty’, in: Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis 18 (2011), 115-132. 36 S. Gruzinski, ‘Les mondes mêlés de la Monarchie catholique et autres “connected histories”’, in: Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales 56 (2001) 1, 85-117; S. Gruzinski, Les quatre parties du monde. Histoire d’une mondalisation. Paris 2004. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 107

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it combines book-historical methodologies on authorship and translation, commercial networks and distribution, and reception with the more general history of mentalities. It sheds light on the international position of the Southern Netherlands after the sepa- ration from the Northern Netherlands, and successfully categorises the Southern Netherlands as a cultural hub within the Spanish Empire.

Typography

For decades, typographic research in Belgium has been the area of Hendrik D.L. Vervliet, one of the most renowned scholars in this field worldwide.37 Even well after his retirement, he continues to publish in large numbers, although the focus of his latest research lies primarily on non-Belgian topics, such as French Renaissance printing types.38 From 2009 to 2012, the post-doctoral research project of Goran Proot aimed to shed light on the typographical evolutions of the hand press book in Flanders. In order to attain this end, he analysed the typography of a limited number of well-chosen genres. The leading hypothesis of this project is that typographical evolutions develop differ- ently, faster or slower, depending on the characteristics of the distinguished genres.39 The work of Alexandre Vanautgaerden also deserves attention. In 2008 he co-edited La page de titre à la Renaissance with Jean-François Gilmont, containing thirteen studies on title page design.40 In 2012 he published his dissertation on the active role of Desiderius Erasmus in the design and publication of his works.41

Societies and journals

Belgium has two book historical societies and four bibliophile societies. The book historical societies are divided by the language border: there is the Vlaamse Werkgroep Boekgeschiedenis (Flanders Book Historical Society) and the francophone Groupe de contact: Documents rares et précieux. The bibliophile societies are connected to cities: Mons (Société des Bibliophiles de Mons/Société des Bibliophiles Belges séant à Mons), Antwerp (Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibliofielen), Brussels (Koninklijke Vereniging van Bibliofielen en Iconofielen van België) and Liège (Société des Bibliophiles liégeois). I will briefly go into the most important evolutions.

37 In 2011 Hendrik D.L. Vervliet received the American Printing History Association Award for Distinguished Achievement. 38 H. Vervliet, The palaeotypography of the French Renaissance. Selected papers on sixteenth-century typefaces. 2 vols., Leiden 2008; id., French Renaissance printing types. A conspectus. Delaware/London 2010; id., Vine leaf ornaments in Renaissance typography. A survey. New Castle/Houten 2012. 39 G. Proot, ‘Designing the Word of God. Layout and typography of Flemish 16th-century folio bibles published in the vernacular’, in: De gulden passer 90 (2012) 2, 143-179. 40 J.-F. Gilmont, A. Vanautgaerden (eds.), La page de titre à la Renaissance. Treize études suivies de cinquante-quatre pages de titre commentées et d’un lexique des termes relatifs à la page de titre. Turnhout/Anderlecht 2008. 41 A. Vanautgaerden, Erasme typographe. Humanisme et imprimerie au début du XVIe siècle. Genève 2012. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 108

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The Flanders Book Historical Society (vwb) was founded in 1996 and has increased its activities and membership over the years. The board grew from two to seven members and the membership went from 40 in 1996 to 62 in 2012. Originally, the members of the Flanders Book Historical Society met once or twice a year. In 2003, the Society started to organise conferences and colloquia for non-members as well. Over the last decade, a book historical colloquium has been organised almost every year, often in collaboration with other organisations such as the Groupe de contact or the Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging.42 Furthermore the vwb started a new initiative in 2009, the Miræus lectures. This series, organised in collaboration with the City of Antwerp and the Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibliofielen, aimed at promoting scholary exchange between Flanders and the rest of the world. This proved to be a successful formula: as of the end of 2012, seventeen prominent speakers have spoken in the Nottebohmzaal and the Miræus Lectures are a well-established name. The international position of book history in Flanders will reach a peak in 2014, when the vwb will host the Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (sharp) in Antwerp on the theme ‘Religions of the book’. The two main book historical journals in Belgium are issued by bibliophile societies: Le livre et l’éstampe by the Koninklijke Vereniging van Bibliofielen en Iconofielen van België and De Gulden Passer by the Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibliofielen. The latter journal in particular underwent a facelift in recent years. Originally established as the yearbook of the Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibliofielen in 1923, it widened its scope in 2009. First, it changed its format from a yearbook to a scientific journal by introducing peer review and by appearing twice a year, and second, it changed its subtitle to Journal for Book History, this way officially serving as a journal for a scholary field, rather than being the medium of a society. Led by a rejuvenated board, De Gulden Passer has attracted a lot of new scholars from Belgium and abroad.

Rewind to 2003: Results and challenges

Looking back at 2003, how many of the challenges described by Delsaerdt and Hoftijzer have been addressed, or better, how far have the goals of these two professors of book history been realised ten years later? On the positive side, the international orientation of book history in Belgium has increased dramatically. New research topics, such as the economics of publishing, the form-content relationship, and a transnational approach, are now aligned with current international scholarship. On an institutional level, book

42 2003: Boekgeschiedenis in Vlaanderen: nieuwe instrumenten en benaderingen (together with stcv); 2004: Abdijbibliotheken: heden, verleden en toekomst (together with the Province of Antwerp); 2005: Boekgeschiedenis in het kwadraat: context en casus; 2008: Geschiedenis van het particulier boekenbezit in België, 1750-1850 (together with Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België); 2009: Urban networks and the printing trade in Early Modern Europe (15th-18th century) (together with Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België and Groupe de contact Documents rares et précieux); 2010: Aanstormend en gevestigd: Boekonderzoek in de Lage Landen (together with Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging); 2010: The letter of the law: regulation and censorship of the book trade in Early Modern Europe (together with Museum Plantin-Moretus); 2011: Book design from the Middle Ages to the future; 2012: Het geïllustreerde boek in België 1800-1865 (together with Koninklijke Bibliotheek België and Groupe de contact Documents rares et précieux). bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 109

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history in Belgium has widened its scope with internationally-oriented journals, lecture programmes and conferences. Nevertheless, there are still a number of challenges to be faced. In academic research, Belgium is still running behind on recent developments in the study of reading practices. The progress of successful projects such as the Short-Title Catalogue Flanders has slowed down as funds are diminishing long before the finish line is even in sight. New media, such as the internet, audiobooks and the e-book, are not studied in Belgium from a book-historical angle. Generally speaking, the field needs an all- embracing research program aimed at locating and consequently filling in the scholary blind spots. Institutionally, book historical and bibliophile societies in Belgium and the Netherlands have started work together occasionally, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. It might also be necessary to critically analyse the landscape of the different organisations and journals in order to avoid overlap. We should not be afraid to integrate existing societies if this creates interesting synergies. Furthermore, a clear demarcation of the scope and position of the different book historical journals in Belgium and the Netherlands is necessary to prevent an overkill of similar journals that will eventually lead to a lack of quality. Apart from these minor remarks, there is one big gaping hole in the expressway. Book history in Belgium is still an academic vagrant. Until now, most academic work has not been realised in universities, but in libraries. Librarians such as D.H.L. Vervliet, Pierre Delsaerdt, Leon Voet, Elly Cockx-Indestege, Chris Coppens and Ludo Simons are highly respected and are considered among the most important researchers in the field in- and outside Belgium. But by working as librarians, they have not had to incorporate their work in university programs, motivate their research in front of scholary com- mittees or publish their results in peer-reviewed journals. Book history has been able to flourish in its own small garden, but this independent status has also made it vulnerable and dependent on the few and shrinking number of part-time researchers, especially since the profile of the librarian-scholar seems to disappear from the library staffs to be replaced by the librarian-manager. In 2003, Delsaerdt and Hoftijzer stressed the institutional embedding of the field in a university program or research library as the most important challenge. Ten years later some things have changed, but not for the better. Indeed, a Flemish Heritage Library has arrived, but it is strictly organised as a network between libraries with collections of rare books and operates in no way as a scholary benefactor (e.g. by offering research travel grants or scholarships). Furthermore, no Belgian university offers a book history programme. Needless to say, Antwerp would be the perfect spot for such a programme. Many of the scholars in the history and literature departments work in the field, the city houses unique collections and archives (Museum Plantin-Moretus to name but one), and many editorial houses are located there. If we fail to give book history an academic institutional harbour, a lot of what has been built over the last years may collapse; the rich tradition of more than 50 years is threatened because it solely depends on the activities of individuals, however talented and motivated they might be. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 110 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 111

Rikard Wingård

Swedish book historical research 2006-2012 A survey

In an article published seven years ago, Per S. Ridderstad sketched a map of Swedish research in book history between the years 1990 and 2005.1 Although Ridderstad lamented the fact that book history had difficulties in gaining ground as an institutionalised academic discipline, it was obvious from his outline that book history as a research field was thriving and was supported by scholars in most Swedish universities. The purpose of the present article is to continue where Ridderstad left off, and provide an updated survey of the developments in Swedish book history in the past years.2 I will use the latter term to designate book historical studies written in Swedish or about Swedish culture and society, whether produced within Sweden or abroad. Book history has continued to gain interest, and it would be impossible to cover all areas and publications that fall within the scope of such a multidisciplinary and far reaching subject. They can be found in anything from university dissertations to design magazines and the yearbook of the local folk museum. I have generally tried to focus on the activities of the larger academic institutions, and to mention publications with scholarly ambitions. Rather than to give an extensive list of works or to restrict myself to the most groundbreaking research within the field, I have aimed to give a general blue- print of the different kinds of scholarship currently practiced. I am not a specialist in every subject covered, and I have usually refrained from making any critical comments, although I have, according to the space permitted, tried to say something substantial of most of the contributions presented. For practical reasons, articles and anthologies have, with a few exceptions, been left out – although many important results have been published in these forms as well. The selection is personal, but – I sincerely hope – not exclusive. To anyone who finds themselves wrongly treated I offer my apologies.

1 P.S. Ridderstad, ‘Swedish book history research 1990-2005’, in: Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria 86 (2002) 2, 317- 332. Other recent surveys, with differing points of view, have been made by W. Undorf, ‘Inkunabler och inku - nabelforskning i Sverige. En aktuell översikt’, in: Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria (2006), 117-141; M. Gram, ‘Bokhistoria som forskningsfält. Var står vi och vart går vi?’, in: Biblis 45 (2009), 32-38; W. Undorf, ‘Research in Scandinavian 15th-18th century book and library history 1950-2008’, in: F. Barbier, I. Monok (eds.), Cinquante ans d’histoire du livre: de l’Apparition du Livre (1958) à 2008. Bilan et projets. Budapest 2009, 127-150. 2 I would like to thank Mats Dahlström for his helpful comments on the article and Helena Strömquist Dal for kindly providing some of the illustrations. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 112

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The outline begins with a view of the institutional and infrastructural support book history has in Sweden. It then proceeds to consider publications within the field, and does so in a chronological manner as to the subject of the studies, i.e. it starts with research concerning the manuscript period, followed by the hand press period, and the machine press period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A section on a couple of methodological studies follows. I close with a concluding discussion and a gaze forward.

Organisation of book historical research in Sweden

For most of the twentieth century book historical research was mainly conducted by dedicated librarians at the university libraries, by some scholars in traditional departments, such as literary studies, history of ideas and art history, as well as by independent researchers such as private book collectors, publishers, printers etcetera. In 1965 book history was in some sense established as a university discipline through the foundation of Avdelningen för litteratursociologi (the section for sociology of literature) at the Department of literature of the University of Uppsala, but it was not until Einar Hansen donated a chair in book and library history to the University of Lund in 1987 that a specialised institution was formed: Avdelningen för abm och bokhistoria (the section of alm3 and book history).4 It is still the only one of its kind, although the departments of library and information science across the country5 as well as occasional endeavours by the larger university libraries are in part dedicated to the same goals. In addition, however, a professional initiative was taken as early as 1974 by Rolf E. DuRietz, who privately founded the Center for Bibliographical Studies in Uppsala. The center’s staff consists of DuRietz and his wife, Gun-Britt DuRietz, and has since its inception published works in bibliography and textual scholarship, and edited the bilingual journal Text. Svensk tidskrift för bibliografi (Text. Swedish journal of bibliography).6 Their largest undertaking is the open- ended Swedish imprints 1731-1833. A retrospective national bibliography (SWIM). Publication started in 1977 and is still continuing – the latest volumes were issued in 2011. Regarding textual scholarship and critical editions the driving force is Svenska vitterhetssamfundet (Swedish association of belles-lettres). Since 1907, the association has promoted the publication of scholarly editions of the works of Swedish authors and arranged conferences on current textual and bibliographical concerns.7 As to pre- Reformation works, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet (Swedish society of old texts), founded in 1843, serves the same function as Svenska vitterhetsamfundet, and other larger editorial projects are going on as well. The publication of the 72nd volume of the ‘national edi-

3 Abbrevation for Archives, Libraries, and Museums. 4 The first professor to be appointed, in 1991, was the aforementioned Per S. Ridderstad. Henrik Horstbøll succeeded him in 2009. 5 Especially at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science at the University of Borås. 6 The journal is published at irregular intervals. Many articles are in English. 7 For further information see the association’s homepage: www.svenskavitterhetssamfundet.se. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 113

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tion’ of August Strindberg’s collected works, for instance, is scheduled for 2013. It is estimated that the edition will be completed within three and a half years.8 To improve national and international cooperation a number of forums and networks have been formed during the years. Nordiskt nätverk för editionsfilologer (Nordic network for textual critics) was founded in 1995 and acts to strengthen the position of textual scholarship within the academy through newsletters, conferences, publications, and graduate education.9 Another interscandinavian network is Nordiskt forum för bokhistoria (Nordic forum for book history), which is a joint collaboration between the book history department in Lund and the research group for textual scholarship at University of Copenhagen. The forum comprises approximately 200 members and frequently hosts seminars and mini-conferences on various topics.10 The Nordic-Baltic-Russian Network on the History of Books, Libraries and Reading (hibolire) is a similar network that encourages research and education in its field and across national borders. They play an active role in realising projects, conferences, and publications.11 Naturally, on an infrastructural level digitisation and database projects of different kinds are also flourishing. Especially worth mentioning is ProBok, a database of bookbindings and provenances from the hand press period.12 It records information on bookbinding techniques in individual copies, the materials used and the decorations, and the history of ownership. While Swedish and Scandinavian book historical research has expanded its presence on the Internet it has unfortunately diminished in printed communication channels. A significant drawback was the discontinuation of Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria (originally published as Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och biblioteksväsen). The journal had been the major voice of Scandinavian book historical scholarship since its foundation in 1914. In 2006 the last issue was published, when the funding partners, the five Scandinavian national libraries, decided not to support the journal any longer.13 Up to 1997 Sweden had two other printed forums for book history, on the one hand the journal Bokvännen, issued by Sällskapet bokvännerna, and on the other the yearbook Biblis, issued by Föreningen för bokhantverk. In that year, however, the two societies merged, Bokvännen disappeared and Biblis was transformed into a quarterly journal. Next to Text, published by DuRietz, Biblis is at present the only Swedish journal solely dedicated to book history and related fields. Of course occasional book historical contributions can be found in other journals as well, such as those on history of ideas or literature. In the last years there has actually

8 On the society see: svenskafornskriftsallskapet.se. On Strindberg see: www.strind.su.se. 9 See the network’s homepage: www.nnedit.org. In the last seven years three publications from previous conferences have been issued by the network: O.E. Haugen [et al.] (eds.), Filologi og hermeneutikk. Oslo 2007; M. Malm [et al.] (eds.), Bokens materialitet. Bokhistoria och bibliografi. Stockholm 2009; P. Forssell, C. Herberts, Digitala och tryckta utgåvor. Erfarenheter, planering och teknik i förändring. Helsingfors 2011. 10 See the forum’s homepage, where papers from forum seminars can also be found: nffb.wordpress.com. 11 See the network’s homepage: www.helsinki.fi/historia/hibolire. 12 See: probok.alvin-portal.org and www.probok.se. 13 E. Eide [et al.], ‘Forord’, in: Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria (2006), 5. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 114

Figure 1. ProBok 608, example of binding and provenance from the ProBok database. Vellum binding with stamped inititals P[etr] W[ok] Z R[ozˇ mberka] W[ok] D[e] R[osis] 1606. Photo: Lund University Library, Bengt Melliander bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 115

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been an upsurge in thematic issues on book history, a reassuring sign of the status of and growing interest in the field.14

Manuscript period

As Ridderstad noted in his 2005 article, most Swedish manuscript research was concerned with Vadstena abbey and its remaining collections, to a large extent preserved in the so called C-collection in Uppsala university library. This has not changed. The well-funded project The production of texts and manuscripts in the Vadstena monastery. Production, tradition and reception has, for instance, yielded several interesting studies. In her dissertation on the production of prayer books, Ingela Bolton-Hedström showed, amongst other things, that book production was carefully planned in advance, and that reading and writing skills in the sisters’ convent were much better than has previously been assumed.15 Jonas Carlquist enhanced this view in a number of studies, and also demonstrated how different books were used, for instance in table reading at meal times.16 Nils Dverstorp took another perspective, evaluating and refining paleographic methodology for identifying scribes, dating manuscripts, and investigating manuscript production. Dverstorp also dismisses the earlier view of the so-called Vadstena script (or Vadstena cursive or style) as a significantly different script from other European scripts used at the time.17 These and other studies within the larger project were summarised, synthesised and further developed in a conference, the papers of which have been published.18 Under the manuscript heading I would also like to mention a work by Mats Malm, that starts off in the manuscript era – or more correctly, the era of runic stone inscription – and then gradually progresses into the nineteenth century. In a series of essays Malm discusses the ‘voices’ that have been and can still be heard in different historical texts depending on the mode of reading, the material carriers, and the typographical forms of the texts.19

Hand press period

During the last years a number of academic publications are to be noted that deal with early modern book historical topics. It is, for instance, satisfying that incunabula studies once more have been brought to life in Sweden. A century after the golden age of the

14 E.g. Lychnos. Årsbok för idé och lärdomshistoria (2010); LIR.journal, 1 (2011); Scandinavica. An international journal of Scandinavian studies 51 (2012) 2. 15 I. Hedström, Medeltidens svenska bönböcker. Kvinnligt skriftbruk i Vadstena kloster. Oslo 2009. 16 E.g.: J. Carlquist, Vadstenasystrarnas textvärld. Studier i systrarnas skriftbrukskompetens, lärdom och textförståelse. Uppsala 2007. 17 N. Dverstorp, Skrivaren och skriften. Om skrift- och handskriftsproduktion i Vadstena kloster. Oslo 2010. 18 C. Gejrot [et al.] (eds.), Saint Birgitta, Syon and Vadstena. Papers from a symposium in Stockholm 4-6 October 2007. Stockholm 2010. 19 M. Malm, Poesins röster. Avlyssningar av äldre litteratur. Stockholm 2011. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 116

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Figure 2. Rune types cut by Johannes Bureus (1568–1652), from his RVNA ABC Boken, Stockholm 1611. Photo: Kungliga biblioteket, Stockholm

internationally famous incunabulist Isak Collijn, Wolfgang Undorf defended his thesis, From Gutenberg to Luther. Transnational print cultures in Scandinavia 1450-1525. As the title suggests, Undorf focuses on the Nordic countries in relation to their European neigh- bors. Whereas the previous purely national research has regarded Scandinavia as a peripheral society, occasionally blessed with intellectual light from the continent, Undorf shows how the early book culture of Sweden and Denmark reveals much of the same patterns as that of other European countries at the same time, particularly England. At the end of the fifteenth century, Scandinavia was part of a larger integrated cultural environment and, although not heavily populated by printers and publishers, showed a high degree of book ownership and a developed book trade.20 Another scholar that has occupied himself with early Swedish book culture is Otfried Czaika. Czaika has primarily concentrated on the Reformation period and published on book-ownership and reading. One example is his treatise on Elisabet, daughter of King Gustav Vasa, and her library.21 On an individual level Czaika thus supplements Undorf’s study, as he demonstrates Elisabet Vasa’s reading as incorporated in a larger intellectual European context, although, naturally, with a protestant preponderance.

20 W. Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther. Transnational print cultures in Scandinavia 1450-1525. Berlin 2012. Available on the internet at edoc.hu-berlin.de/dissertationen/undorf-wolfgang-2012-01-05/PDF/undorf.pdf. 21 O. Czaika, Elisabet Vasa. En kvinna på 1500-talet och hennes böcker. Stockholm 2009. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 117

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The earliest period of print culture is also the topic of Thomas Götselius’ dissertation in literature. It is international in its scope and inspired by the theories of Foucault, Kittler, and Lacan. Götselius examines ‘how reading first became a practice of individu- alisation’ through, primarily, the discourse networks of northern humanism, i.e. how Erasmus, Luther and others used (or were used by) the print media to change the notion of literature into a subject transforming device.22 Furthermore, in my own work I have taken an interest in early modern reading practices. In my dissertation I discuss seventeenth-century Swedish and Danish Volksbücher as indicators of pre-modern forms of reading. By studying contextual material as well as intrinsic features of the Volksbücher, e.g. paratextual and typographical peculiarities, I develop two ideal types of readers, the assimilative and the expansive reader, who are at odds with each other during the period, and of whom only the latter pre- vails into the modern age.23 Scandinavian Volksbücher are the subject of yet another thesis. Anna Katharina Richter studies their ability to transform (in content, stylistics, and bibliographical appearance) and adapt to differing historical circumstances. She offers a fine example of the recent developments in the field of transmission and migration history.24 Two dissertations in library history are to be noted. The first, by Bertil Jansson, traces the development of the librarian’s profession, 1475-1780. Jansson studies a number of documents from various parts of Europe that describe and define librarianship. He shows how the librarian changes from being a person who routinely kept order among books to a profession in its own right, with its own set of ethical values.25 The second thesis concerns the manuscript collection Codices Reginenses Latini of Queen Christina of Sweden, kept in the Vatican library. Eva Nilsson Nylander examines the origin, order and subsequent development of the collection in what she calls, para- phrasing D.F. McKenzie, a sociology of collections. The formation of the collection is, for instance, seen as a conscious strategy of ‘branding’ Christina as an intellectual empress, and the different classification systems of the time are put into a larger epistemological perspective.26 Changing to another branch of manuscript studies, Annie Mattsson has presented a dissertation influenced by Harold Love’s concept of scribal publishing. It deals with libels against King Gustaf iii, circulated in manuscripts 1772-1792, and analyses them as to their distribution, rhetoric and ideas.27

22 T. Götselius, Själens medium. Skrift och subjekt i Nordeuropa omkring 1500. Göteborg 2010, 311. 23 R. Wingård, Att sluta från början. Tidigmodern läsning och folkbokens receptionsestetik. Bokenäset 2011. 24 A.K. Richter, Transmissionsgeschichten. Untersuchungen zur dänischen und schwedischen Erzählprosa in der frühen Neuzeit. Tübingen/Basel 2009; see also J. Glauser, A.K. Richter (eds.), Text – Reihe – Transmission. Unfestigkeit als Phänomen skandinavischer Erzählprosa 1500-1800. Tübingen 2012. 25 B. Jansson, Bibliotekarien. Om yrkets tidiga innehåll och utveckling. Borås 2010. 26 E. Nilsson Nylander, The mild boredom of order. A study in the history of the manuscript collection of queen Christina of Sweden. Lund 2011. 27 A. Mattsson, Komediant och riksförrädare. Handskriftscirkulerade smädeskrifter mot Gustaf III. Uppsala 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 118

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Little attention has so far been given to individual printing presses in Sweden during the early modern period, but two recent dissertations have been published that ameliorate the situation somewhat. Using Bourdieu’s social theories Lea Niskanen investigates the Frenckell press in Åbo and its accumulation of symbolic capital to consolidate the firm. Suitable typography, marriage, and location of the press were some of the ways to achieve this.28 Anna-Maria Rimm, on her part, examines the successful career of the female printer, publisher, and bookseller, Elsa Fougt. Rimm highlights, for instance, the importance of the household as the base of early modern firms. When her husband died, it enabled Fougt to take his place and compete on equal terms on the market, in spite of living in a very patriarchal society.29 The perspective of eighteenth-century women in cultural society has been adopted by Margareta Björkman as well. Her comprehensive biography of Catharina Ahlgren (1734-c.1800), one of the first female journalists in Sweden, is revealing in many areas of the period’s book history. Ahlgren ran her own magazine, translated novels and, among other things, published an account of her own reading of the novel La femme malheureuse ou Histoire d’Elise Windham. The account is very valuable in recovering past reading experiences, and Björkman finds a high degree of identificatory reading in Ahlgren.30

Machine press period

In 2005 Ridderstad could not present much research concerning bookbinding.31 He was, however, awaiting Helena Strömberg’s doctoral thesis, which was finally published in 2010. Strömberg places her sociological study in the intermediate stage between hand press and mechanised book production, describing the importance of commercial paper bindings in the development of the modern book market. Cheap and flexible, the paper binding managed to increase sales without devaluating the book as a commodity. In addition Strömberg conducts a bibliographical analysis of paper binding techniques and develops a terminology for describing paper wrappers.32 Apart from Strömberg’s, another dissertation in book binding history was published recently: Kristina Lundblad investigated the further development and importance of manufactured bindings during the nineteenth century in relationship to a modernising book market and society. Amongst other things, Lundblad discusses in an interesting way how the pictorial content of the bindings reflects and amplifies larger cultural trends.33

28 L. Niskanen, Boktryckarna i Åbo 1750-1828. En bokhistorisk studie genom ett yrke. Lund 2010. 29 A-M. Rimm, Elsa Fougt, Kungl. boktryckare. Aktör i det litterära systemet ca 1780-1810. Uppsala 2009. 30 M. Björkman, Catharina Ahlgren. Ett skrivande fruntimmer i 1700-talets Sverige. Stockholm 2006. 31 Although not within his definition of Swedish research he might have mentioned Staffan Fogelmark’s groundbreaking Flemish and related panel-stamped bindings. New York 1990. 32 H. Strömberg, ”Med coleurt omslag”. Färgade, dekorerade och tryckta pappersomslag på svensk bokmarknad, 1787-1846. Lund 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 119

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Figure 3. Paper bindings with publisher’s printed spine titles and labels, ca 1800. From H. Strömquist, ‘Med coleurt omslag’. Fargarde, dekoredade och tryckta pappersomslag på svensk bokmarknad, 1787-1846. Lund 2010. Photo: Helena Strömquist

From another perspective the Swedish book trade in the nineteenth century has been studied by Gunnel Furuland. In her dissertation serialised fiction from four competing publishing houses is discussed as well as 42 Swedish authors who had their works published in the series. While the serialisation of novels was a lucrative form of publishing that reached readers of lesser means, it was abandoned in the middle of the century due to rising postal fees. During their lifetime, however, the series allowed for a new type of author to emerge, the professional with writing as his or her sole occupation.34 In a subsequent study Furuland was able to continue her work on the birth of the modern author, studying the introduction of the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Carl Spindler, Thomasine Gyllembourg, and George Sand in Sweden.35

33 K. Lundblad, Om betydelsen av böckers utseende. Det svenska förlagsbandets framväxt och etablering under perioden 1840-1914 med särskild hänsyn till dekorerade klotband. En studie av bokbandens formgivning, teknik och relation till frågor om modernitet och materiell kultur. Malmö 2010. 34 G. Furuland, Romanen som vardagsvara. Förläggare, författare och skönlitterära häftesserier i Sverige 1833-1851 från Lars Johan Hierta till Albert Bonnier. Stockholm 2007. A dissertation in the same vein, but more on the history of ideas is G. Söderholm, Svea. En litterär kalender 1844-1907. Uppsala 2007. 35 G. Furuland, Från Banditen till Rosa och Blenda. Den gemensamma litterära marknaden och fem översatta författare i 1800- talets Sverige. Uppsala 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 120

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Continuing with the nineteenth century, Roger Jacobson’s dissertation on the spread of print culture in northern Sweden represents a multifaceted and wide ranging study, tracking printers, bookshops, peddlers, readers, and reading societies. Jacobson follows the emergence and increasing interlinking of these individuals and institutions in order to project a picture of how an oral communication culture turns into a one pro- pelled by the printed media.36 Moving into the first half of the next century, Mats Dolatkhah investigated reading practices through interviews made during the 1970s and 1980s with adults remember- ing their childhood. Dolatkhah stresses the inventiveness required of the children in finding reading material and suitable reading milieus; there were also social impediments to overcome, and reading had to be, as Chartier reminds us, insubordinate. In another perspective, Dolatkhah concludes, their reading was not very unlike present children’s, practiced within an interplay of different media and symbolic expressions.37 The book market in the late twentieth century was treated in the dissertations of Ann Steiner and Åsa Warnquist. Steiner focused on the development of Swedish book clubs and the strong position these obtained after the deregulation of the book trade in 1970. The club Månadens bok (Book of the month) was particularly successful and, Steiner states, contributed in a major way to the canonising of several of the authors promoted by the club, as well as to the domination of realistic fiction during the decade.38 By statistical method Warnquist, on her part, evaluated the Swedish publishing of poetry, inter alia confirming the assumption that publishers primarily engage in these activities for the cultural rather than the monetary capital.39 Individual authors have been studied from various points relating to book history. Petra Söderlund, for example, has shed light on the ‘bibliographical codes’ in editions of Selma Lagerlöf’s novels and the reciprocal labor between author, publisher, and other advisors to make the books saleable. Söderlund also presents bibliographical investigations into the relationship between different editions of some of the novels, providing an example of the critique against the concept of final intention in scholarly editing.40 Concerning publishing history and textual criticism, Pia Forssell’s dissertation on J.L. Runeberg should also be mentioned. Forssell shows how the material conditions of Runeberg’s authorship have been systematically neglected in favour of an ideal of the romantic poet, and how critical editions of Runeberg’s works have changed shape according to the present textual ideals.41

36 R. Jacobsson, Typographic man. Medielandskap i förändring. Studier i provinsens tryckkultur. Stockholm 2009. 37 M. Dolatkhah, Det läsande barnet. Minnen av läspraktiker, 1900-1940. Borås 2011. 38 A. Steiner, I litteraturens mittfåra. Månadens bok och svensk bokmarknad under 1970-talet. Göteborg/Stockholm 2006. 39 Å. Warnquist, Poesifloden. Utgivning av diktsamlingar i Sverige 1976-1995. Lund 2007. A similar study in method, but less comprehensive is S. Torgerson, Fiktionsprosa på svenska 1901-1940. En utgivningsstatistik. Göteborg 2007. 40 P. Söderlund, Selma Lagerlöf & Co. Litteratursociologiska och textkritiska analyser. Uppsala 2010. 41 P. Forssell, Författaren, förläggarna och forskarna. J.L. Runeberg och utgivningshistorien i Finland och Sverige. Helsingfors 2009. Some other studies focusing on the medial, material and social circumstances of single authors can be mentioned: A. Nyblom, Ryktbarhetens ansikte. Verner von Heidenstam, medierna och personkulten i sekelskiftets Sverige. Stockholm 2008; M. Gram, Viktor Rydberg. En läsande skald. Stockholm 2008; D. Hedman, Extravaganta eskapader. Gösta Palmcrantz’ liv och verk. Uppsala 2008; J. Svedjedal, Kärlek är. Carl Jonas Love Almqvists författarliv 1793-1833. Stockholm 2007; id., Rosor, törnen. Carl bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 121

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A work by the late Bo Bennich-Björkman is concerned with both author biography and library history. August Strindberg was for a while employed by the National Library in Stockholm and entrusted, among other things, with the cataloguing of a Japanese book collection bought by A.E. Nordenskiöld during his voyage through the Northeast Passage. Bennich-Björkman records Strindberg’s involvement in the work and the contextual circumstances regarding him, the collection, and the final publication of the catalogue by Léon de Rosny.42 Nordenskiöld’s son Otto and his voyages to Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic around 1900 are the subject of a short work in analytic bibliography by Rolf E. DuRietz. The printing of Nordenskjöld’s Från Eldslandet (1898) and Antarctic (1904), chronicling the expeditions, are studied as well as the related work Bland pingviner och sälar by S.A. Duse.43 DuRietz offers valuable insights into the bibliographical techniques that have to be employed when dealing with emissions in parts and commercially produced books. Finishing the historical section of the survey there remains a publication on the history of graphic design. Jan Jönsson’s dissertation revises the former view of Anders Billow as the leading figure of the ‘new typography’ movement in Sweden. Through discourse analysis, graphic design and typography are studied as dependent on the development in society at large, rather than of the autonomous hands of individuals. Billow is thus found to be more of a traditionalist, who only sparingly used radical typographical expressions.44

Methodological studies

In this category I have only two publications to note. The first is Mats Dahlstöm’s dissertation on the relationship between scholarly editing and bibliography. His point of departure is a statement by Ross Atkinson, that editing is just another way of doing bibliography, i.e. constructing a surrogate document representing other documents.45 Dahlström finds that Atkinson is too much of a reductionist – the critical edition has more functions than the purely bibliographical – but that the edition, nevertheless, has evident historical connections to, and shares a number of similarities and problems with, bibliography, particularly regarding the concepts clustering (the practice of order- ing documents in relation to a common denominator, e.g. a work) and transposition (the

Jonas Love Almqvists författarliv 1833-1840. Stockholm 2008; id., Frihetens rena sak. Carl Jonas Love Almqvists författarliv 1841- 1866. Stockholm 2009. Also to be noted is Johan Svedjedal’s Spektrum. Den svenska drömmmen. Tidskrift och förlag i 1930-talets kultur. Stockholm 2011. The journal Spektrum was a primary voice of Swedish modernism – in the words of Svedjedal, the equivalent to the Bloomsbury set. It was edited by Josef Riwkin and involved authors such as Karin Boye, Agnes von Krusenstjerna and Gunnar Ekelöf. 42 B. Bennich-Björkman, Strindberg och Nordenskiölds japanska bibliotek. Stockholm 2007. 43 R.E. DuRietz, Bibliografiska frågor och rön kring Otto Nordenskjölds expeditioner till södra halvklotet 1895-1903. Uppsala 2006; also published, without pictorial content, in Text 6 (2006) 4, 205-233. 44 J. Jönsson, Läsmaskinen. Aspekter på bild och bok med utgångspunkt i Anders Billows verksamhet 1923-1953. Lund 2008. 45 R. Atkinson, ‘An application of semiotics to the definition of bibliography’, in: Studies in bibliography 33 (1980), 54-73. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 122

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migration of the contents of the documents into new documents, e.g. bibliographies and critical editions).46 The second and final title is a polemic work by the aforementioned DuRietz. He follows in the footsteps of G. Thomas Tanselle, Nicholson Baker and others, in a critique of libraries, librarianship, and library education. Several solutions to identified problems within these sectors are presented. For instance, the first principle of libraries, DuRietz argues, should be to preserve books, not ‘literature’ or ‘information’, which librarians seem to believe. A compromise could in his view be reached by dividing libraries into two classes: those intended for the dissemination of information, and those for the preservation and cataloguing of books. Furthermore, new, audiovisual and digital media, ought not to be the responsibility of libraries but be entrusted to institutions especially founded to care for these kinds of materials.47

Concluding discussion and future development

The above outline bears witness to a prospering and inventive research in many areas of the field of book history. Nonetheless, there remains much to be studied and studied again with new theoretical and methodical perspectives. Several questions central to the field still await answers. Sten G. Lindberg pointed to some of these as early as 1988, but not many of his proposed projects have been fulfilled.48 Perhaps one of the most important, a general history of Swedish book history still awaits its author(s). In contrast to Undorf (2009) I am not of the opinion that the absence of general methodological and theoretical discussions is as pervading as he suggests. These discussions have, however, taken place in domains slightly removed from the strictly historical part (the Darnton definition, one might say) of book history, such as bibliography and textual scholarship. In the works of DuRietz they have, for instance, always been present, and Dahlström (2006 and subsequent articles) makes recent significant contributions. Other examples come from the conferences on methods in textual scholarship organised by Svenska vitterhetssamfundet and Nordiskt nätverk för editionsfilologer. In another vein Götselius’ (2010) and to some extent my own study (2011) offer quite theorised historical perspectives. In the past, the problem seems to have been an unwillingness by the larger book historical community to readily answer or ‘test’ such initiatives, due to locked institutional and traditional positions. With a younger generation of (hopefully) unprejudiced scholars more fruitful and free-minded discussions and debates regarding the identity and aims of Scandinavian book history may perhaps take place.

46 M. Dahlström, Under utgivning. Den vetenskapliga utgivningens bibliografiska funktion. Borås 2006. 47 R.E. DuRietz, Kulturarvshyckleriet. Bibliofobi, ignorans och info-fundamentalism bakom dagens bibliotekskatastrof? Uppsala 2010. 48 S.G. Lindberg, ‘Bokhistoria som vetenskap. Dess ställning och uppgift i vår tids bildningsliv’, in: Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och biblioteksväsen 75 (1988), 97-109. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 123

Figure 4. Botanical illustration from C. Lindman, Bilder ur Nordens flora. Stockholm 1917–1926. The lithographic technique facilitated a more reliable reproduction of colors and fine hairs and textures than the preceding method of coloring by hand, as discussed by Törnvall 2013. Image courtesy of Project Runeberg (runeberg.org) bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 124

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It is not a coincidence that doctoral dissertations are strongly present in this survey. It points to a strong interest in book history among younger researchers, and a healthy promise for the future. Several of them are already at work on new projects within the field. Just to mention a few: Anna-Maria Rimm is studying the import and export of books in Sweden during the eighteenth century; Thomas Götselius investigates how Swedish society and individuals were affected by the increasing literacy rates around 1700; Kristina Lundblad has recently acquired funds for a project on how literature operates through different media in the present world, and what implications this has for our understanding of the relation between books and literature, their value and functions in society. There are also dissertations in the making. In Lund, for instance, Gunilla Törnvall, Maria Simonsen, and Ragni Svensson are occupied with graduate projects on botanical illustrations, Scandinavian encyclopedias, and the publishing house of Bo Cavefors respectively.49 A fruitful way to enhance Swedish and generally Nordic research, and to better communicate it, would be to re-establish Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria or to found a new, peer-reviewed journal (paper or digital) for the Nordic countries.50 Biblis is valuable, but, at present, does not meet scholarly standards, and is partly addressed to the general public. DuRietz’s Text, scholarly enough, is unfortunately too much of a one man project, and will probably not survive its founder. In addition, the journal has never managed to be accepted within the larger scholarly community. While the research part of Swedish book history seems vigorous enough, the educational section could be better developed, not at least to better facilitate and utilise the apparently large interest in book history among undergraduate and graduate students. Beside courses given at the book history department in Lund and the ones taught sporadically in the curricula of library studies at various universities, there are few if any courses to meet this interest. Lindberg, in 1988, said that to become a book historian in Sweden you had to be an autodidact, and it is unfortunately still very much so.51 The lack of textbooks in Swedish and written from a Swedish viewpoint is another problem. I am myself currently writing one, which will hopefully somewhat amend the situation, but still modern broad-ranging overviews are missing.52 However, with a growing body of book historians there are incentives for courses to be taught in other places than Lund, and for synthesising projects of the desired kind. Research and education are intimately related, each enhancing the other. If the expansion of book history as a field of research is a desirable goal for the future, then we must pay more attention to the ways in which budding scholars may be brought to the subject.

49 Törnvall will have defended her dissertation when this article goes to print: Botaniska bilder till allmänheten. Om utgivningen av Carl Lindmans Bilder ur Nordens flora. Stockholm 2013. 50 Such plans have been discussed, but as yet without any substantial result. See Undorf, ‘Research in Scandinavian 15th- 18th century book and library history 1950-2008’. 51 Lindberg, ‘Bokhistoria som vetenskap’, 98. 52 R. Wingård, Bokhistoria. En introduktion. Lund [to be published]. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 125

Peter Kornicki

Recent work on the history of the book in Japan

Over the last ten years the monographs and journals devoted mainly or partially to the history of the book in Japan and to Japanese bibliography have inevitably been supplemented by internet resources, many of which have made themselves indispensable. One of the most important of these is an online catalogue and finding list of all Japanese books and manuscripts produced before 1868. The cut-off date is that of the so-called Meiji Restoration, which is commonly taken to mark the birth of ‘modern’ Japan, but it did not in fact mark the end of woodblock printing, so its relevance for bibliographic purposes is debatable. Be that as it may, this online database was initially based on previously-published catalogues but it is constantly being supplemented by new data; the books listed are, with a handful of exceptions, all to be found in libraries in Japan, but the contents of European libraries are covered in a parallel database, and both are available on the website of the National Institute of Japanese Literature.1 It should be noted that the definition of what constitutes a Japanese book is not the same in these two invaluable databases: in the former, texts written in China or Korea and (re)printed in Japan are excluded, while in the latter such texts are included, on the ground that they contain prefaces and explanatory glosses aimed at Japanese readers. There are, however, other databases which record, respectively, the locations of Chinese texts in Japanese libraries, irrespective of whether they were produced in Japan, Korea or China, and the locations of Chinese texts written by Japanese authors.2 So far, however, there are no similar databases for finding rare Japanese books held in North American, Chinese or Korean libraries, and even published catalogues are few.3 In addition to these

* Japanese names in this article are given in the usual Japanese order, family name first. 1 These databases, the Union Catalogue of Early Japanese Books (Nihon kotenseki so¯ go¯ mokuroku de¯ ta¯ be¯ su) and the Union Catalogue of Early Japanese Books in Europe, are accessible at www.nijl.ac.jp/pages/database/. The latter is search- able in roman script (base1.nijl.ac.jp/infolib/meta_pub/OSHDefault.exe?DB_ID=G0000302OSH&GRP_ID=G0000302 &DEF_XSL=eng&IS_TYPE=csv&IS_STYLE=eng) and includes Japanese editions of Chinese texts. I should declare an interest as the compiler of the latter. 2 These are accessible at kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/kanseki?detail and www.nishogakusha-kanbun.net/database/, but neither is exhaustive. 3 Catalogues of the collections of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the University of California at Berkeley and at Los bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 126

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databases, there is also a growing number of digitalised versions of rare books available on the internet, to be downloaded as pdfs or to be examined on screen, but there are far too many to be listed here. The development of reliable electronic archives and databases does not mean to say that monographic publishing is being replaced by digital. In the 1970s two series of volumes on bibliographic topics were launched, consisting either of monographs or of reprinted source materials: the series published by Yumani Shobo¯ , Shoshi shomoku shiri- izu [Bibliographic catalogue series], was launched in 1976 and now amounts to 98 titles in 616 volumes, while the other, Nihon shoshigaku taikei [Japanese bibliographic com- pendium], launched by Seisho¯ do¯ Shoten in 1978, now amounts to 100 titles in 168 volumes. The most recent volume in the latter series is a catalogue of calligraphic manuals published in Japan in the Edo period (1600-1868), compiled by the renowned bibliographer and historian of the book, Nakano Mitsutoshi. These books all come from his own collection and many are not recorded elsewhere: the accompanying volume of plates demonstrates the potential of xylography for reproducing calligraphic art and reveals that many of these books were printed with white text on a black background, in an attempt to approximate to the results when rubbings are made from stone engravings.4 In addition to these two massive series, the publication of several detailed bibliographies and a thorough encyclopaedia of bibliographical terminology testify to a growing interest in the history of the book in Japan.5 It remains largely true, however, that resources for the history of the book held in libraries outside Japan are neglected. For example, in 2011 a volume was published which attempted to identify all extant copies of all dated imprints produced between 1591 and 1658. This period is important because it was during those years that typography flourished, after its introduction both from Korea and, in the hands of the Jesuits, from Macau, and then waned as the ease of including glosses and illustrations gave xylography the edge, and this volume is the first attempt at a comprehensive bibliography year by year.6 However, it is regret- table that although it includes books printed in Japan during those years in Chinese and even Latin in addition to Japanese, it pays no attention to imprints in foreign libraries. Thus the 1595 edition of Hokke shiki engi, a commentary on the Lotus su¯ tra in Cambridge University Library, is ignored, for there is no copy in Japan; and the many dated imprints produced between 1591 and 1658 now preserved in the British Library, in the Nordenskiöld Collection in Stockholm and in other collections are overlooked alto- gether. This neglect is unnecessary in view of the fact that many foreign collections are fully described in catalogues written in Japanese and most collections in Europe are covered by the online database mentioned above.

Angeles have now been published: Oka Masahiko [et al.] (eds.), Ha¯ ba¯ do Enkyo¯ toshokan washo mokuroku. Tokyo 1994; id., Kariforunia Daigaku Ba¯ kure¯ ko¯ shozo¯ Mitsui Bunko kyu¯ zo¯ Edo hanpon shomoku. Tokyo 1990; Suzuki Jun [et al.] (eds.), Kariforunia Daigaku Rosanzerusuko¯ shozo¯ Nihon kotenseki mokuroku. Tokyo 2000. 4 Nakano Mitsutoshi, Wakoku ho¯ cho¯ . 2 vols., Tokyo 2012. 5 Suzuki Toshiyuki (ed.), Kinsei shoseki kenkyu¯ bunken mokuroku. Revised and enlarged edition, Tokyo 2007; Nunokawa Kakuzaemon [et al.] (eds.), Nihon shuppan kankei shomoku 1868-1996. Tokyo 2003; Inoue Muneo [et al.] (eds.), Nihon kotenseki shoshigaku jiten. Tokyo 1999. 6 Oka Masahiko [et al.] (eds.), Edo jidai shoki shuppan nenpyo¯ . Tokyo 2011. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 127

Figure 1. T0¯ s0¯ kaiso jijoj0¯ , a collection of prefaces supposedly in the hands of Buddhist monks of the Tang dynasty. This Japanese edition, printed with white text on black background like a rubbing of an inscription, was published in 1661. Author’s collection bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 128

128 jaarboek voor nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20 (2013)

Books and manuscripts in the Edo period

Like most of the databases and reference materials mentioned so far, studies of the history of the book in Japan concentrate on the Edo period, when commercial publishing came of age and when, in the space of a few decades, books – which had once been rare and precious objects – became familiar goods to be bought in shops or borrowed from circulating libraries. In research on that period, one of the principal developments over the last decade in Japan has been the extension of research from mainstream topics into areas that have largely been neglected hitherto.7 The first of these is manuscript publication and circulation, the second is the rural consumption of books, and the third is the flow of books from Korea and China. The most important recent contribution on manuscript traditions was made by Hashiguchi Ko¯ nosuke, who is the owner of an antiquarian bookshop in Tokyo and has published several volumes on the book trade in the Edo period. He has made a thorough assessment of the proportion of books in circulation in the Edo period that were manuscripts and his conclusion is that they amounted to around two-fifths of all books.8 Although the simultaneous presence in the book market of manuscripts and printed books in this period is not a new discovery, Hashiguchi has forced us to realise that we have long been underestimating the importance of manuscripts in the book trade. His figures are borne out by the preponderance of manuscripts in many rural collections that have survived intact. Many of these manuscripts were either copies of printed books or local histories that would be unlikely to have been commercial propo- sitions, but there was also a large number of illicit manuscripts in circulation. This is also indicated by edicts issued in the 1720s that sought in vain to restrict their circulation, and these illicit manuscripts have now begun to be studied as a genre of literary production, for many of them were fictionalised versions of contemporary scandals.9 The second area is book consumption in rural areas in the Edo period. One of the most productive and original historians of the book in recent years has been Suzuki Toshiyuki. His recent study of what he calls the ‘reading fever’ that took hold of Japan in the late eighteenth century and its impact upon the book trade analyses the spread of the reading habit from the big cities to rural areas.10 Using farmers’ diaries, book trade records and other sources he shows how the major booksellers of Edo (modern Tokyo) and Osaka spread their operations into rural areas and how local markets developed and were furnished with books, increasingly in the case of rural towns and cities by their own retailers. The most striking part of the book, however, is that in which he unravels the publishing history of a series of editions of Chinese classics published

7 Although this research is only accessible to those who can read Japanese, the work of some Japanese scholars has been translated into French in C.-A. Brisset [et al.] (ed.), Du pinceau à la typographie. Regards japonais sur l’écriture et le livre. Paris/Tokyo 2006. See also A.T. Kamei-Dyche, ‘The history of books and print culture in Japan: the state of the discipline’, in: Book history 14 (2011), 270-304. 8 Hashiguchi Ko¯ nosuke, Edo no hon’ya to honzukuri. Tokyo 2011, chapter 5. 9 For example: Kikuchi Yo¯ suke, Kinsei jitsuroku no kenkyu¯ . Tokyo 2008. 10 Suzuki Toshiyuki, Edo no dokushonetsu: jigaku suru dokusha to shoseki ryu¯ tsu¯ . Tokyo 2007. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 129

Recent work on the history of the book in Japan 129

Figure 2. Katakiuchi hashibasusumi, an early nineteenth-century illicit manuscript on a vendetta involving a samurai. This copy carries numerous impressions of the seal of a circulating library in Sendai. Author’s collection

under the rubric ‘Keiten yoshi’ (‘Too many teachers’). The first set was an edition of the Four Books of the Confucian tradition (The Analects, Mencius, Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean), published in ten volumes in 1786. These were designed to be accessible to readers with minimal education who nevertheless wished to acquire some sinological learning, which was the hallmark of being educated throughout pre-modern East Asia. Thus they included the most basic information, explanatory essays and even, in the upper margin, a complete guide to reading the Chinese text aloud in Japanese, in a translation based closely on the original. The Chinese classics had never bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 130

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been made so accessible before, but Suzuki’s real achievement has been to prove just how popular they were: by comparing dozens of extant copies he has established that the printing blocks for that 1786 edition quickly became worn out and were replaced in 1794, and again in 1824, 1842, 1852 and 1871. To put this in perspective, we need to remember that xylographic printing blocks are generally thought to have been capable of producing around 8,000 copies, depending on the kind of wood used, and that many sets of printing blocks prepared in the seventeenth century were still being used a hundred or more years later. In this case, the blocks needed replacing (requiring a renewed capital investment) within twenty years of publication and the demand required this to be done every twenty years. Not even the most popular works of fiction at the time could match this level of popularity. What Suzuki’s research has shown, then, is that we have been too quick to assume that fiction dominated the market, and that teach-your- self books, exemplified by the ‘Too many teachers’ series, demonstrate a thirst for sinological knowledge among readers who had hitherto not been able to approach Chinese books. These books gave them access not only to prestige texts but also to the vocabulary, diction and ethical maxims that gave them a claim to be educated. At the heart of this phenomenon was growing social differentiation especially in rural areas where the literate successfully distinguished themselves from their humbler neighbours by collecting books and aligning themselves culturally with their samurai superiors. Over the last two decades there has been growing interest in the contents of rural book collections, which in many cases have survived unscathed and intact from the Edo period to the present day in rural households, while urban collections have mostly long since been broken up or destroyed by fire. The contents are often surprising: banned books, poetry collections, local histories, and so on, most of them manuscripts. Apart from testifying to the profusion of manuscripts in circulation they also bear witness to rising levels of cultural sophistication in rural areas, particularly in the cases of village headmen, who were required to be literate in order to communicate by letter with the authorities. Sugi Hitoshi has produced a detailed study which explores the cultural life of people living in rural areas, focusing on some harbour towns, a post town on the To¯ kaido¯ between Edo and Osaka and a mountain village in Shinano. In each case there is ample evidence of literary and cultural activities in the form of book collections, poetry composition and even local publishing.11 Collections of haiku poetry published privately by the members of a local poetry club were the most common, but there were also collections of poetry in Chinese, a volume of biographies of local celebrities in the port town of Uraga put together by the leader of the local dried-sardine producers’ guild and treatises on the rearing of silk worms. It is clear that certainly by the early nineteenth century educated and literate men and women in rural areas formed ties with like- minded people in the neighbourhood not only to exchange books originating from the big cities but also to be creatively productive themselves. Finally, connections with continental Asia and the flow of books to Japan have begun to be taken seriously and to be explored in detail by a few scholars. O¯ ba Osamu and Wang Yong have been meticulous in their examinations of the importation of

11 Sugi Hitoshi, Kinsei no zaison bunka to shomotsu shuppan. Tokyo 2009. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 131

Recent work on the history of the book in Japan 131

Figure 3. Rokuso daishi ho¯ bo¯ dangyo¯, a Chinese Zen text known as the Platform sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. This Japanese edition, printed in 1634 with glosses for the convenience of Japanese readers, carries extensive marginalia which are dated 1645. Author’s collection

books from China: diaries and extant copies of imported books provide a wealth of information and, for the Edo period, we have even cargo manifests listing books imported via Nagasaki.12 In the case of Korea, Fujimoto Yukio has published numerous bibliographical studies and, more recently, the first of four projected volumes of an exhaustive catalogue of old Korean books in Japanese libraries, many of which were brought to Japan during the invasion of Korea launched by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 1590s.13 Meanwhile Mayanagi Makoto and Machi Senju¯ ro¯ have explored the impact of Chinese and Korean medical treatises on Japan.14

12 O¯ ba Osamu, Kanseki yunyu¯ no bunkashi – Sho¯ toku taishi kara Yoshimune e. Tokyo 1997; Wang Yong, Shomotsu no chu¯ nichi ko¯ ryu¯ shi. Tokyo 2005. 13 Fujimoto Yukio, Nihon genzon cho¯ senbon kenkyu¯ – shu¯ bu. Kyoto 2006. See also my ‘Korean books in Japan: from the 1590s to the end of the Edo period’, forthcoming in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 133 (2013). 14 Some of Mayanagi’s many works are available on his website: see for example his study of imported Chinese medical books and Japanese reprints of them in the course of the Edo period in mayanagi.hum.ibaraki.ac.jp/paper01/Imported ChMedBooksBig5.html. Machi has studied imported Korean medical books, for example in his ‘Manase Yo¯ an’in-ke to cho¯ senbon isho’, in: Nihon shiso¯ bunka kenkyu¯ 2 (2009) 1, 19-46. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 132

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Figure 4. Zo¯ho shojaku mokuroku, the booksellers’ catalogue of 1670, showing the end of the table of contents, listing ephemeral items at the end, and, on the left, the colophon giving the date 1670 and the names of the two publishers in Edo and Kyoto. Author’s collection

Studies by European and American scholars

Although most of the work done on the history of the book in Japan is being undertaken by Japanese scholars, there is a growing number of European and American scholars whose works are significant and in some cases fill lacunae in the Japanese research output.15 Prominent in this connection is the work of Lukacs on marginalia in Japanese medical books: hitherto marginalia have attracted little attention, with the rare exception of those written by some famous individual, and there has been no systematic study of the phenomenon in Japanese.16 Lukacs has made a detailed study of the extensive marginalia, for the most part written in literary Chinese, in his collection of Japanese medical books. Amongst them he found, astonishingly, some marginalia dated before the date of publication of the book in which they were inscribed. The explanation, he rightly concludes, is that marginalia by learned commentators were sometimes so highly valued as to be copied from perhaps a borrowed original edition into a newer edition, with the dates transcribed as in the original edition.

15 For an up-to-date bibliography of work in Western languages on the history of the book in Japan see www.ames.cam.ac.uk/jbib/edosoc7.html. 16 G. Lukacs, Extensive marginalia in old Japanese medical books. Piribebuy 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 133

Recent work on the history of the book in Japan 133

Some other recent studies in European languages deserve mention here. Firstly, Moretti has published a detailed study of the booksellers’ catalogues which were printed in the Edo period from the 1660s onwards.17 The earliest catalogues reveal quite clearly that the mainstay of the publishing industry in the seventeenth century was not the thin stream of new works of Japanese literature that have been the focus of much research, but the veritable flood of reprinted Chinese works, including both Buddhist texts and doctrinal works on the one hand and Confucian texts on the other: the latter in particular were available in a bewildering variety of formats that is evidence of the strong demand. Moretti reveals the shifts in the hierarchy of genres over time and emphasizes that the booksellers’ catalogues were primarily a commercial tool produced by commercial booksellers to facilitate sales. They naturally ignored the competition provided by manuscripts and imported editions, and thus cannot be taken to be a snap- shot of books on the market, but they do tell us how booksellers categorised and priori- tised their wares and this provides us with a very different perspective on the book market from that of literary historians who focus on Japanese literary works, which turn out to have been a rather small part of the market. Secondly, Amaury García Rodríguez has taken advantage of the recent acceptance of erotic publishing of the Edo period as a subject of serious study to produce a thorough examination of the vexed question of censorship as it affected erotic publications.18 And finally, Mary Berry, in a wide-ranging book partly based on her familiarity with the superb collection of old Japanese books at Berkeley, has explored the social consequences of print from the seventeenth century onwards.19 She points to the creation of a public market for books as commercial publishing made them familiar goods and then to the emergence of new kinds of knowledge once knowledge ceased to be the privilege of the educated elite. She describes this as a ‘library of public information’ and as components she draws attention to the huge number of commercially-published maps in circulation and to the publication of directories of goods and services, guidebooks, household encyclopaedias and a host of works which purport to convey up-to-date information. The ingenuity of publishers in devising new informative print genres and creating markets for them reveals the degree to which knowledge was being driven by commerce.

Reading traditions

In many other areas of study there have been important developments which are worth mentioning. The most important of these is the study of Japanese writing in Chinese, which for long had been much neglected, and the study of the practice of kundoku. Kundoku is a method whereby texts written in Chinese can be read in Japanese, by means of the addition of various glosses and pointers which enable readers to rearrange the

17 L. Moretti, ‘The Japanese early-modern publishing market unveiled: a survey of Edo-period booksellers’ catalogues’, in: East Asian publishing and society 2 (2012), 201-310. 18 A.A. García Rodríguez, El control de la estampa erótica japonesa shunga. Pedregal de Santa Teresa 2011. 19 M.E. Berry, Japan in print: information and nation in the early modern period. Berkeley 2006. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 134

Figure 5. Onna teikin gosho bunko, a conduct book for women based on supposedly courtly tastes and published in Kyoto in 1790. The page shown introduces various games involving shells and perfumes associated with the Tale of Genji. Author’s collection bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 135

Recent work on the history of the book in Japan 135

order of the Chinese words so that they conform to Japanese word order; it had its coun- terpart in Korea, and it is thought that it was transmitted to Japan in the eighth century. This practice developed before the invention of scripts to write Japanese and Korean, and it is probably best understood as a form of translation which is realised by the reader but which is bound by the vocabulary of the Chinese text being read. Two substantial collections of essays have explored the phenomenon throughout East Asia and have exposed the multiplicity of kundoku practices: each set of glosses represented an interpretation of the Chinese text, and so the same text could generate quite different glosses depending upon the interpretation chosen.20 To some extent this created the illusion that ancient Chinese texts were actually written in Japanese, and in the eighteenth century Ogyu¯ Sorai emphasized that Chinese texts were written in a foreign language and that the only authentic ways in which to approach those texts were either by having a thorough grasp of literary Chinese or through written translation in which obscure vocabulary in the original was rendered comprehensibly in Japanese. Nevertheless, kundoku remained the standard way of reading Chinese texts and is still taught in Japanese schools today. There has been a growing interest in women’s writing and reading in the Edo period and in the publication of calligraphy manuals and moral primers for women. Many of these primers and manuals have now either been reproduced in facsimile or are available as images on the website of Nara Women’s University.21 The most notorious of the conduct books for women was Onna daigaku (Greater learning for women), which seems to have been first published in the early eighteenth century, but it has now come to be understood that the moral message became gradually attenuated in later editions, to the extent that they became compendia of useful and practical information rather than conduct books.22 Needless to say, conduct books for women were by no means the only books actually read by women, and a number of studies have focused on women’s reading as revealed in diaries and letters or on their activities as poets and writers in various genres.23 Mention should also be made here of recent work in a few other areas. Firstly, ownership seals provide valuable information about the provenance of books and make it possible to reassemble the dispersed collections of significant figures from the past. Since these ownership seals are often written in decorative script they are frequently difficult to read and to identify correctly. For this reason volumes providing indices and

20 Nakamura Shunsaku [et al.] (ed.), Kundokuron: higashi Ajia kanbun sekai to nihongo. Tokyo 2008; id., Zoku kundokuron: higashi ajia kanbun sekai no keisei. Tokyo 2010. See also D.B. Lurie, Realms of literacy: early Japan and the history of writing, Cambridge, Mass., 2011; R.E. Clements, ‘A cultural history of translation in early-modern Japan’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2011. 21 See www.lib.nara-wu.ac.jp/nwugdb/jindex.html. On calligraphy manuals for women, see Koizumi Yoshinaga, Nyohitsu tehon kaidai. Musashi-murayama 1998. 22 See the collection of facsimiles in Koizumi Yoshinaga (ed.), Onna daigaku shiryo¯ shu¯ sei. 21 vols., Tokyo 2003-2006. 23 O¯ guchi Yu¯ jiro¯ (ed.), Rai Baishi nikki no kenkyu¯ . Tokyo 2001; Fukazawa Akio, Iseki Takako no kenkyu¯ . Osaka 2004; Maeda Yoshi, Kinsei nyonin no tabi nikki shu¯ . Fukuoka 2001. See also D. Ko [et al.] (ed.), Women and Confucian cultures in premodern China, Korea, and Japan. Berkeley 2003; B. Gramlich-Oka, Thinking like a man: Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825). Leiden 2006; P.F. Kornicki [et al.] (ed.), The female as subject: Women and the book in Japan. Ann Arbor 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 136

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reproductions of seals and identifying their owners are invaluable, and there have been some recent additions to the growing number of such volumes.24 Secondly, paper has been in extensive use in Japan since the seventh century at least, and it goes without saying that its quality and characteristics are essential considerations when assessing the authenticity and age of manuscripts. The recent publication of an encyclopaedic work on the usage of paper in documentary contexts as well as books of all kinds has served to draw attention to the fundamental material that underpins book culture in Japan and to the significance of variations in its usage.25

Official constraints and the socio-political context

Let me continue this survey of work on the history of the book in Japan by considering the writings of Fujizane Kumiko, who has published two major monographs, which are provocative and more ambitious in their scope than most other works. The first of these was a detailed investigation of bukan, which were directories of samurai giving their ranks, stipends and crests and which were published from 1644 until 1868, when the samurai regime collapsed.26 These directories provided an intimate glimpse of the ruling class in Japan and were constantly updated by altering the wooden printing blocks. In general commercial publishers were not allowed to print anything containing the names of the ruling samurai class but an exception was made for bukan, and it is clear that the compilation and publication of these works depended upon official patronage as well as the commercial nous of Kyoto publishers who realised that the newly-established samurai regime generated a need for information about its membership that could be satisfied by print. Fujizane’s more recent and even more ambitious book is a wide-ranging examination of Edo-period book culture in its socio-political context.27 Having emphasized in her previous book the official constraints under which publishers operated, at the outset of her second book she explores these constraints further, noting not only that the regime began to direct censorious attention to commercial publishing in 1644, much earlier than hitherto accepted, but also that the formation of guilds in all walks of commercial life imposed sanctions and controls on members of the same trade. She then con- siders seventeenth-century books from the point of view of their role in the distribution of knowledge, seeing books which did not circulate through commercial networks – such as manuscripts and private publications – as constituting a ‘closed’ form of knowledge distribution. Although it is refreshing to encounter an approach that attempts to see the book in seventeenth-century Japan in all its manifestations, it seems to me that a binary distinction does not stand up to close scrutiny, for some manuscripts were pro-

24 Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan (ed.), Hito to zo¯ sho to zo¯ shoin: Kokurtsu Kokkai Toshokan shozo¯ hon kara. Tokyo 2002. There is ~ now also a useful and growing database: base1.nijl.ac.jp/ collectors_seal/. 25 Shishikura Satoshi (ed.), Kotenseki komonjo ryo¯ shi jiten. Tokyo 2011. 26 Fujizane Kumiko, Bukan shuppan to kinsei shakai. Tokyo 1999. 27 Fujizane Kumiko, Kinsei shoseki bunkaron. Tokyo 2006. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 137

Figure 6. Daibirushana jo¯ butsu kyo¯ sho, a Buddhist commentary printed on Mt. Ko¯ ya, to the south of Nara, in 1278. This is one of the few texts printed in medieval Japan which was accompanied by some illustrations. Author’s collection bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 138

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duced in multiple copies for illicit sale and for distribution through circulating libraries: in effect they were published. What is original and interesting about her analysis, however, is her ensuing focus on regime historiography, which shows that some historical accounts which touched upon the sensitive matter of the foundation of the regime remained in the form of manuscripts for controlled circulation while others were permitted to be published by commercial publishers connected to the regime. There is insufficient space here to do justice to this rich and rewarding book, which successfully makes the case for the importance of book history to social and political historians. The one obvious lacuna remains the economic aspects of the history of the book in the Edo period. Some of the booksellers’ catalogues give prices for the books listed, but we do not even know whether these represent the retail or the wholesale prices. Detailed information on the economic costs of producing a book in terms of the proportional costs of the materials, of the labour involved in carving the printing blocks, of the finishing and binding processes is wanting, and publishers’ archives that might cast light on the economics of publishing have yet to be found. This is particularly unfortunate, since most publishing in the Edo period was carried out by commercial publishers whose livelihood depended on commercial success.

The history of the book before the Edo period

This essay may have given the impression that there was no history of the book before the Edo period, and it is undoubtedly true that an overwhelming proportion of work devoted to the history of the book is devoted to the Edo period. However, since printing began in Japan in the eighth century and was practiced continuously, albeit not commercially, from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, there is clearly a rich field of study yet to be exploited. This is not to say that there have not been studies of the earliest uses of printing in the eighth century, or of the manuscript tradition of the Tale of Genji, which has recently been shown to have been more complex than hitherto supposed.28 The manuscript culture and limited print culture of medieval Japan have been the subject of some precisely focused studies, but there has hitherto been little effort to grasp the role and significance of books in medieval society. Gomi Fumihiko has attempted to do just this in a book entitled ‘The medieval history of the book’, but it should be noticed that his attention is focused on Japanese literary writings and he neg- lects to consider the role of imports from Song and Ming China, to say nothing of non- literary texts or literary texts written by Japanese in literary Chinese.29 Until the 1590s, the few books that were printed in Japan were almost exclusively Buddhist texts in Chinese, with the sole exceptions of a few Chinese medical texts and editions of the Analects and the Great Learning. As a result Japanese texts were only available in the form

28 Masuda Harumi (ed.), Hyakumanto¯ darani no kenkyu¯ – Seikado¯ Bunko shozo¯ bon o chu¯ shin. Tokyo 2007; see also my ‘The Hyakumanto¯ Darani and the origins of printing in eighth-century Japan’, in: International journal of Asian studies 9 (2012), 1-28. On the Genji, see Ikeda Kazuomi, O¯ se de yomu Genji monogatari. Tokyo 2008. 29 Gomi Fumihiko, Shomotsu no chu¯ seishi. Tokyo 2003. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 139

Recent work on the history of the book in Japan 139

of manuscripts, often transmitted through families that kept their treasures from pry- ing eyes, and the only non-Buddhist printed texts in circulation were imports from China and occasionally from Korea as well. Gomi begins his study with a consideration of Honcho¯ shojaku mokuroku (Catalogue of the books of our country), a rather mysterious catalogue which probably dates back to the late Kamakura period (1185-1333) and survives today in more than seventy manuscript copies. It lists 493 Japanese works. What it is a catalogue of is unclear, for the compiler clearly had some of the works listed to hand while others are mentioned by title and are said not to be available. Nevertheless, it is important for the fact that 299 of the books listed are no longer extant and are known solely or principally from this catalogue, and for the fact that the compiler divided the books into twenty categories, this being the first attempt to bring order to the multitude of books by categorising them. Thus the world of the medieval book that Gomi describes is inevitably a partial one, constrained on the one hand by the loss of many works of Japanese literature during the centuries when Japanese writings circulated only in manuscript, and on the other hand by adopting the same focus as the catalogue and leaving out of the picture the many texts in classical Chinese which circulated either in manuscript or in imported printed editions. This side of the picture is becoming clearer thanks to the works mentioned above and to studies like that of Takahashi Satoshi, which unravels the complex antecedents of the Japanese manuscript tradition of Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Analects.30 But there is much work to be done, particularly with regard to imports from China and Korea before 1600, manuscript traditions and the uses of print. Why, for example, was neither the Tale of Genji nor any other work of Japanese literature printed before 1600, even though individuals were happy to sponsor the printing of works in Chinese? The voluminous diaries of the courtier and scholar Sanjo¯ nishi Sanetaka (1455- 1537) reveal that, while printed texts were already familiar objects either as imports or as Buddhist texts printed in Japan, scholars still lived and worked in a scribal world in which a courtier with a fine calligraphic hand was constantly required to produce manuscript copies of classic works.31 This scribal world is described in detail in his diaries and those of other courtiers, but it is yet to be studied; so great is the current concen- tration of effort on the Edo period.

30 Takahashi Satoshi, Muromachi jidai kosho¯ hon Rongo shikkai no kenkyu¯ . Tokyo 2008. 31 For a glimpse of the possibilities, see Haga Ko¯ shiro¯ , Higashiyama bunka no kenkyu¯ . Kyoto 1981, vol. 1, 106-119. A detailed study of a manuscript from the tail end of this tradition has been discussed and reproduced in C.-A. Brisset and P. Griolet, La vie du Buddha racontée et illustré au Japon. Paris 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 140

Figure 1. Should racism be purged from new editions of classic children’s books? Image from a song book by Norway’s most beloved children’s author, composer and illustrator, Torbjørn Egner (1951). Photo: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague. See pages 149-150 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 141

Aina Nøding

Book History in Norway From peasant readers to reading Ibsen

When Robert Darnton visited the University of Oslo around the year 2000, a small group of dedicated fans came to hear him talk on his latest findings in French book history. Ten years later, he visited Oslo as a household name in many disciplines, with an accordingly high turnout to his talk. This development does not only reflect the growth of Darnton’s reputation as a major figure in cultural and book history, but, more importantly, the growing interest in the field of book history among Norwegians. To mark this new and growing interest, and to make an academic statement, the anthology Bokhistorie (Book history) was published in 2003, compiling articles mainly on Norwegian literature from a book historical point of view.1 Still, there is no general Norwegian book historical society as such at the moment, although there is an informal network of scholars, librarians and others. Many of them also take part in a Scandinavian network, called Nordisk Forum for Boghistorie.2 With, in many respects, a common history and related languages, collaboration across the Scandinavian borders seems particularly meaningful. There is a Norwegian society specifically for library history whose members are currently from the library sciences only, but which might expand to include more disciplines in the future.3 The Norwegian book historians come from a wide range of disciplines and institutions: universities and university colleges, The National Library and The National Archives, to mention a few. They naturally tend to focus on fields and topics related to their main activity. Still, there is quite a bit of interdisciplinary activity and exchange going on, in terms of seminars, teaching and publications. Even with this increased interest and level of activity, there is not yet an academic chair or degree in book history. Classes are taught at the Universities of Oslo and Tromsø and the University College of Oslo and Akershus. Several postgraduates (PhD and Master) in these and other academic institutions are or have been writing on book historical topics, which gives great hopes for the future. The following presentation will sketch some of the main topics and fields of interest today.

1 T. Rem (ed.) Bokhistorie. Oslo 2003. 2 Visit the home page www.nffb.wordpress.com for more information on its activities and members. 3 Norsk Bok- og Bibliotekhistorisk Selskap, established in 1998. Home page: www.nbbs.no. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 142

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Book collections, library history and bibliography

Unlike major European countries, Norway has few old and special book collections or libraries. Even so, some book collections have come into the fore in Norwegian book history in recent years. A very thorough and informative contribution in that respect is Gina Dahl’s Books in Early Modern Norway (2011).4 In this work, Dahl (University of Bergen) traces the dissemination of books in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly by analysing book inventories and catalogues of private collections. Even with the limitations such an approach presents her with, it still produces a surprising image of Norwegian readers as fully integrated in the European book market of the time, including most learned professions, as well as readers of popular literature. What the picture will look like for the nineteenth century remains to be seen. Elisabeth Eide (The National Library) is currently writing a book on private book collections and reading societies in the nineteenth century.5 Her articles published so far on the subject cover reading societies and private book collections of both farmers and higher officials. She discusses book ownership and reading in all social layers of society, and shows there were marked differences in tastes: mainly religious reading among peasants, entertain- ing novels among the bourgeoisie, and theology, law and history among the officials.6 Library history was also the topic of an anthology published by The National Library in 2011, containing articles on libraries and book collections in Norway over the past 200 years. The main focus of this collection is the history of major public and university libraries of Norway.7 The National Library has been the core institution for organising a steady flow of author jubilees in recent years. It started with a massive celebration of the centennial of the playwright Henrik Ibsen’s death in 2006, and was followed by the anniversaries of, among others, the Nobel laureates Sigrid Undset (2007), Knut Hamsun (2009), and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (2010), as well as the contemporary author Dag Solstad (2011). An important part of these celebrations was the production of bibliographies, led by The National Library. In keeping with the times, these bibliographies are available online only.8 In the case of Ibsen, the bibliography includes both his production and (printed)

4 G. Dahl, Books in Early modern Norway. Leiden/Boston 2011. Dahl wrote her dissertation in history of religion on learned book collections in Norway in the seventeenth century: Questioning religious influence. Private libraries of clerics and physicians in Norway 1650-1750. Bergen 2007. She has also published Book collections of clerics in Norway, 1650-1750. Leiden/Boston 2010. 5 In 2002 Eide published a presentation of works in Norwegian book history between 1992 and 2002: E. Eide, ‘Twenty years of the history of the book and of library history in Norway’, in: Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria 2 (2002), 286-316. 6 E. Eide, ‘Boksamlinger i Norge på 1800-tallet: lærde, leste, underholdende og dekorative’, in: S. Engelstad (ed.), Bokhistoriske foredrag. Oslo 2007, 18-25; ‘Bønder og bøker – opplyst folkelighet omkring år 1800’, in: Nytt norsk tidsskrift 16 (2009) 2, 141-152; ‘Opplysning, vitenskap og nasjonsbygging i fire store private boksamlinger på 1800-tallet’, in: R. Hemstad (ed.) Opplysning, vitenskap og nasjon. Bidrag til norsk bibliotekshistorie. Oslo 2011, 303-337. The article was published in English as ‘Reading societies and lending libraries in nineteenth-century Norway’, in: Library & information history 26 (2010) 2, 121-38. 7 Hemstad, Opplysning, vitenskap og nasjon. 8 Ibsen: www.nb.no/bibliografi/ibsen; Undset: www.nb.no/bibliografi/undset; Hamsun: www.nb.no/bibliografi/hamsun; Bjørnson: www.nb.no/bibliografi/bjornson; Solstad: www.nb.no/bibliografi/solstad. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 143

Book History in Norway 143

reception. The bibliographies have proved helpful for and popular with the general public, students and scholars at home and abroad. As well as being important steps in collecting and organising information about important authors, they have also been instrumental in promoting these authors to a larger audience.

History of reading and literacy

Despite a lack of tradition of major libraries or book collections, Norway has a great tradition of reading and (as the bibliographies suggest) of writing. This could explain the academic focus on literacy, reading practices and the book market, rather than on the material book, in Norwegian book history. Partly due to the nation’s Lutheran and pietistic traditions, after the Reformation reading was regarded as essential to all subjects of the Dano-Norwegian king. As the Danish scholar Charlotte Appel has shown in her major work on reading in Denmark in the seventeenth century, literacy was widespread, even among lower social classes of society.9 This was further enhanced with the pietistic king Christian vi’s school law of 1739, which made learning to read compulsory for everyone, in order for children to pass their confirmation. That reading was widespread in Norway too, was documented by Jostein Fet in his detailed study of reading among Norwegian peasants before 1840, including inventories of peasants’ privately owned books (1995).10 That writing, as well as reading, was a more common skill among ordinary people than had been acknowledged before was the conclusion of his next study (2003).11 While he estimates that in the eighteenth century about 80-90% of the population could read to some extent, only 20- 30% of the population could write. Fet’s findings marked a shift in how historical literacy rates are estimated and his findings have informed more recent studies in this area. Among them is Lis Byberg’s PhD dissertation (University College of Oslo and Akershus) on book auctions in Norway between 1750 and 1815 (2007).12 She concludes that members from all parts of society bought a broad spectre of books at these auctions, and that the reading community was indeed much larger and more diverse than previously assumed. So, if this was the case, how did people acquire their reading skills, and how, where and by whom were people taught to read? Dagrun Skjelbred’s (University College of Vestfold) most recent book (2010) traces how reading and writing was taught in Norwegian schools from the eighteenth century to this day.13 In her study, the material book (abc books and readers) play an important role in uncovering teaching methods. By analysing the typography,

9 Ch. Appel, Læsning og bogmarked i 1600-tallets Danmark. 2 vols., København 2001. 10 J. Fet, Lesande bønder. Litterær kultur i norske allmugesamfunn før 1840. Oslo 1995. 11 J. Fet, Skrivande bønder. Skriftkultur på Nord-Vestlandet 1600-1850. Oslo 2003. 12 L. Byberg, Brukte bøker til bymann og bonde. Bokauksjonen i den norske litterære offentlighet 1750-1815. Oslo 2007. See also L. Byberg, ‘På sporet av 1700-tallets lesere’, in: Rem, Bokhistorie, 82-101. 13 D. Skjelbred, Fra Fadervår til Facebook. Skolens lese- og skriveopplæring i et historisk perspektiv. Bergen 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 144

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illustrations and formats, as well as content, the books reveal how teaching methodologies changed through history. From the Reformation onwards, reading for religious purposes was the most important factor in the increase of popular reading in Norway. In his work on the critical edition of the Cathecismesange14 by the seventeenth-century national bard, the vicar Petter Dass from northern Norway, Jon Haarberg (University of Oslo) was intrigued by the close link between religious songs, teaching, catechisms and reading. His work in this field runs parallel to the work of Charlotte Appel. Working on material from the Norwegian seventeenth century also means studying the textual interchange between manuscripts, transcripts and printed texts, as Dass’ work was never printed in his lifetime, partly due to his geographical position in the periphery of the periphery. An intimate knowledge of the material book, book market, transport and technology is indispensable for anyone working within textual criticism, perhaps particularly with texts of this time and place.

Figure 2. Adolph Tidemand, Followers of Hans Nielsen Hauge (1856). Hauge’s lay religious movement encouraged extensive reading, writing and printing among Norwegian peasants in the early nineteenth century. Oslo, Nasjonalmuseet

14 ‘Cathecism songs’, from about 1698. The oldest extant manuscript is currently owned by the Petter Dass museum at Alstadhaug. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:47 Pagina 145

Book History in Norway 145

Figure 3. The oldest surviving manuscript of Dass’ Cathecismesange (1698), discovered by Jon Haarberg in 2003. Photo: the Peter Dass Museum

In this scholarly crossroads of book history, religion and literacy we also find Trygve Riiser Gundersen (University of Oslo). He is currently writing his PhD thesis on the religious dissident and lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771–1824). Hauge wrote and published large numbers of religious tracts and books, which helped form a major religious layman’s movement in southern Norway. One of Riiser Gundersen’s main points is that the print runs of his texts, totalling hundreds of thousands of copies in a country with less than a million citizens, themselves bear witness to the extent of popular reading and literacy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Lay religion became a new arena where ordinary people could write and publish despite being severely frowned upon, and even persecuted, by the authorities. A parallel phenomenon in Denmark was the pietistic Herrnhuts (the Moravian church), where members’ reading and writing became core activities of the movement. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 146

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The book market and reception studies

The histories of book collections and reading are closely related to studies of the book market. A history of the Norwegian book trade was published in four volumes by Harald L. and Egil Tveterås (1936–1996)15 and in addition, some major publishing houses have had their histories published.16 In recent years the interest in this area has turned to the relationship between the Norwegian and the international market, particularly in the nineteenth century, when the book market was largely a common Dano-Norwegian market. For historical reasons, written Norwegian was very similar to Danish, so books published in Denmark were also sold on the Norwegian market (although not vice versa). During the second half of the century, major authors like Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Knut Hamsun all published their books with Gyldendal in Copenhagen, who distributed them to Danish and Norwegian book stores alike. The historian Narve Fulsås (University of Tromsø), working on the publishing history of Henrik Ibsen’s works, was astonished to find that the relatively small book markets of Denmark and Norway could provide authors like Ibsen and Bjørnson with a very comfortable living, even compared to major European authors of the time.17 It is also remarkable how, over a few decades, the work of a number of Scandinavian authors became world literature. When Ibsen became an internationally renowned author, and sold millions of copies of his dramas in Germany alone, it was still the home market that provided him with his core income. The reasons for that were partly international copyright laws, partly a difference between the home market (mainly bound books) and continental market (cheap paperback editions). A new research project led by Narve Fulsås is currently further investigating these findings and the structure of the international European book market in the nineteenth century.18 A project related to this thematically was Giuliano D’Amico’s PhD dissertation (University of Oslo, 2011) on Ibsen’s early reception in Italy.19 As Ibsen’s plays were imported into Italy by way of Germany, D’Amico’s research included an attempt to trace the written and unwritten laws of the international European book market in late nineteenth century. In addition, Tore Rem published a book on Ibsen’s reception in England

15 H.L. Tveterås, Den norske bokhandels historie. 4 vols., Oslo 1936-1996. 16 Among them are: M. Egeland, Med kunnskap skal landet bygges. Universitetsforlaget 1950-1990. Oslo 1996; S. Evensmo, Gyldendal og gyldendøler. Oslo 1974; H.L. Tveterås, Et norsk kulturforlag gjennom hundre år. Aschehoug 1872-1972. Oslo 1972; B. Birkeland [et al.] (eds.), Det Norske Samlaget 1868-1968. Oslo 1968; C. Just, N.W. Damm & søn 1843-1943. Et firmas historie. Oslo 1947. 17 Narve Fulsås’ project was part of the major text critical project, Henrik Ibsen’s writings (32 vols., 2000-2010; e-edition: www.ibsen.uio.no). Fulsås edited and commented Ibsen’s letters. For his introductions, containing his studies in Ibsen and the European book market, see www.ibsen.uio.no/brevinnledninger or vols. 13-15 of the paper edition (in Norwegian only at the moment). 18 The project ‘Norges litterære stormaktsperiode’ employs scholars in literature and history. The rise of major authors like Ibsen is studied in the light of the political and cultural contexts of the 1870s and 1880s, supplementing the traditional contexts of literature and history of ideas. 19 G. D’Amico, Domesticating Ibsen for Italy. Enrico and Icilio Polese’s Ibsen campaign. Oslo 2011. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 147

Book History in Norway 147

Figure 4. Letter from Ibsen to his German translator Julius Elias. Ibsen took an active part in regu- lating the publications and translations of his dramas in Europe. Photo: University of Oslo

(2006).20 While this study is mainly a mapping of Ibsen’s critical reception, Rem is now preparing a study of how Ibsen was published and promoted in England. A Dickens scholar, Rem has also published studies of Dickens’ groundbreaking methods in publishing his novels in serials and promoting them to the public, as well as working on the reception of Dickens’ work in Norway.21 Rem’s earlier publications include a book on the Norwegian author Alexander L. Kielland and the way he established himself early on as a classic on the book market by being very conscious of how the material aspects of a book convey meaning.22 The link between (international) reception and book market was also the topic for my own study of Norwegian editions of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the

20 T. Rem, Henry Gibson/Henrik Ibsen. Den provinsielle verdensdikteren. Mottakelsen i Storbritannia 1872-1906. Oslo 2006. 21 See for instance his Dickens, melodrama, and the parodic imagination. New York 2002. 22 T. Rem, Forfatterens strategier. Alexander Kielland og hans krets. Oslo 2002. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 148

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Figure 5. ‘A Journey to the Moon, a fable’, attributed to Carl von Linné, printed 1769 in the intelligencer Adresseavisen in Trondheim. The fable journeyed from a Latin dissertation in Sweden, across Europe and North America by way of periodicals, returning to Scandinavia as a satire on academic life. Photo: the National Library of Norway

Mohicans between 1826 and 1998 (2001). The development of the 300-page romantic epic turned children’s book reflected not just the changed literary status of Cooper. It also reflected changes in literary tastes, local politics, structural developments in the book market and its groups of readers, and how the text and its presentation were shaped in keeping with the shifting trends. The relationship between book market, reception and international circulation of texts continue to be the topics for my recent and current studies, looking at the intersection of literature and the press. My dissertation (2007) on literature published in the first Norwegian newspapers (of the 1760s) presented a broad range of texts published in these papers, originating from Persia to America. They included everything from classical to contemporary poems, or fables by Lessing to parts of novels by Voltaire. In my current project on eighteenth-century journals in the twin kingdom of Denmark–Norway, a main issue is the importance of the journal as a medium for the dissemination and circulation of literary texts and Enlightenment ideas. It was an important supplement bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 149

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and to some extent efficient competitor to the book. Both studies stress the close relationship between book and periodical, in terms of texts, personnel, economy and technology, concluding that particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these media cannot be studied separately.

The material book, technology and censorship

The National Library holds the major expertise on the material book and manuscripts, with staff working in research, bibliography and conservation. Historian Anne Eidsfeldt holds a position there in general book history, while Elisabeth Eide and Espen Karlsen are in charge of book history related to Norwegian and medieval texts respectively. The Library has hosted seminars in book history for Scandinavian participants and is an important resource and partner for those who teach book history in Oslo. Another important institution is The National Archive, especially when it comes to manuscripts. In 2007, its assistant director Knut Johannessen published a beautifully illustrated and very helpful history of and guide to the gothic script as it was used in Norway up until the late nineteenth century.23 The book provides both a history of writing and an introduction to deciphering gothic script. A complementary new history of print in Norway comes from another archival employee, Tor Are Johansen at Arbeiderbevegelsens arkiv (The labour movement’s archive). Johansen was one of the authors behind the new history of the Norwegian press (2010),24 writing the chapters on print and technology. Even though the main topic is newsprint, his study is really a groundbreaking investigation into the nation’s general history of print technology and industry between 1760 and 1940. Recent publications on the material book include two on illustrations. Vilborg S. Hovet (2011) traces the history of book illustrations in Norway, in a book itself gener- ously illustrated.25 It covers everything from illuminated manuscripts, the first printed almanacs and religious texts to the modern illustrations of artists such as Edvard Munch, Håkon Bleken and Pushwagner. Jahn Thon’s work (2011, University of Agder) focuses on the relationship between text and illustration.26 His study covers learned books from and about Norway between 1625 and 1775, and how the images form and inform the content the books convey. Censorship has become a core subject to new studies in several disciplines, including literature, media history and textual criticism. It is the topic for the Nordic conference in textual philology in 2013, held in Oslo. Studies in censorship are also included in a project on the history of Norwegian textual philology in the nineteenth and twenti-

23 K. Johannessen. Den glemte skriften. Gotisk håndskrift i Norge. Oslo 2007. 24 H.F. Dahl (ed.), Norsk presses historie. Vols. 1-4, Oslo 2010. For an extended version of his contribution see ‘Trangen til Læsning stiger, selv oppe i ultima Thule. Aviser ekspansjon og endring ca. 1763-1880’, in: Pressehistoriske skrifter 7 (2006), 7- 119 and ‘Hett bly og raske presser. Teknologisk endring i norsk avisproduksjon 1880-1940’, in: Pressehistoriske skrifter 9 (2007), 7-128. 25 V.S. Hovet, Den illustrerte boka. Historia om norsk bokillustrasjon. Oslo 2011. 26 J. Thon, Talende linjer. Lærde illustrerte bøker 1625-1775. Oslo 2011. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 150

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eth centuries, headed by Ståle Dingstad (University of Oslo). Censorship was not only a phenomenon of World War ii, but it also occurred in peace time. And where to draw the line between editing and censoring, for instance when it comes to racial expressions in old children’s books? Aasta B. Bjarkøy addresses such questions and practices in her study, which is part of the history of textual philology project. Censorship is also at the heart of a current project in media and book history, discussed below, called Diversifying Publics and Opinions.

Related fields: Textual criticism/philology, media history and sociology of literature

History of the book is intrinsically an interdisciplinary field of study. At the same time, as this article suggests, a lot of interesting work is being done even in the margins of what is regarded as ‘core’ history of the book studies. Textual philology and criticism is such a field, as well as media history. Sociology of literature is another, to some extent overlapping with history of the book in certain areas. I will briefly sketch some of the activities in these fields, as they have proved to be fruitful to work in history of the book in Norway over the past few years. As mentioned above, some of the new interests and projects in book history resulted from the extensive text critical project Henrik Ibsen’s writings. The project was extensive in terms of funding, volume and scholarly effort, and in its scope and ambition it raised the bar for critical editions in Norway, where such editions were (and still are) not a high priority. The project was based in Oslo, but it engaged scholars from universities and institutions all over the country. Particularly the collaboration between historians, librarians and literary scholars allowed book history and bibliography to open a common path to new insights into Ibsen’s texts, his career and his time. Also, when the paper edition was completed in 2010, a generation of students and young scholars in Scandinavian literature had acquired skills in both the scholarly and the technical challenges of modern textual criticism. This has proved very valuable to the ongoing project of Ludvig Holberg’s writings, a joint venture between the University of Bergen and the Danish Language and Literature Society. While the Ibsen project published everything both in book and electronic form, the Holberg project will publish mainly online, with only selected works in book form.27 The Norwegian Language and Literature Society follows suit, with a new online-only platform for their critical editions of Norwegian classics.28 As the communities of philology and book history are small, several people take active part in both fields. This applies to the Scandinavian and Nordic communities as a whole, where collaborations across the borders occur frequently. The international interaction, as well as the link between book history and philology, is reflected in the

27 For the Holberg project, see gandalf.uib.no/Holberg (beta version). A few parts of the Ibsen project have only been published online, like varia and scanned images of original manuscripts. 28 See www.bokselskap.no. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 151

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topics for seminars held by the Nordic society for textual criticism, such as materiality and censorship. Media history has been revived as an interesting discipline, mainly due to the large research and book project on the Norwegian history of the press, which culminated in a four volume work in 2010. As mentioned above, Tor Are Johansen’s and my own participation in that project contributed to a much needed strengthening of the link between book and media history. I have since become a member of a new interdisciplinary project, Diversifying Publics and Opinions, on Dano-Norwegian journals in the eighteenth century. Censorship in the absolute monarchy and the periodicals’ role in debat- ing, challenging and shaping the restricted public sphere are the main subjects for the project, which is headed by the historian Mona R. Ringvej. An important aspect is plac- ing this development in a broader European history of media and ideas, as the periodicals were instrumental in the speedy transfer of texts and knowledge across borders. History of the book – technology and distribution, laws and regulations, history of reading, etcetera – is a major part of the project’s common methodological ‘tool box’.29 While the sociology of literature has been an integral part of history of the book in Sweden, in Norway the two areas have kept more of a distance. A major work in this field is Trond Andreassen’s Bok-Norge, an introduction to all aspects of books and publishing in today’s Norwegian society (authors, publishers, distribution, translators, criticism, laws and regulations, libraries and readers, and so on). It was originally published in 1992, but the latest edition (2006) was entirely rewritten. In the revision, Andreassen was aided by University of Oslo students who did a bachelor in Litteraturformidling, a study which comprises elements of book history, sociology of literature, philology and criticism. The combination of sociology of literature and book history is also part of the curriculum for students of library and information studies (University College of Oslo and Akershus). A new book in sociology of literature, edited by Jofrid Karner Smith from this institution is currently under way.30 It will include articles with a book historical approach, as well as texts discussing the relationship between the fields of book history and sociology of books. Last but not least, a recent interdisciplinary project at the University of Oslo called ‘Tekst/Historie’ brought together literary scholars and linguists in a collective effort to study the historicity of different kinds of texts. The goal was to study the interactions of time, text and culture, and it resulted in the book Tekst og historie. Å lese tekster historisk.31 With chapters such as ‘the reader’, ‘the author’, ‘genre’ or ‘materiality’, the authors use different methods, including a book historical approach, to engage in ‘historical’ readings of very different types of texts.

29 For more information on the project see www.hf.uio.no/iakh/english/research/projects/diversifying/. 30 J. Karner Smith, Litteratursosiologiske perspektiver. Oslo 2013. Articles and introduction on book history are by Aina Nøding and Lis Byberg. 31 K. Asdal [et al.], Tekst og historie. Å lese tekster historisk. Oslo 2008. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 152

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Future visions

What is interesting about book history in Norway in the past few years is that it has developed from being a subject for literary scholars only into a truly interdisciplinary field. That is enriching not only to the study of book history, but also to the respective ‘mother’ disciplines, be it history or media sciences. Furthermore, there is a tendency to move away from the study of reading or books from a national perspective only, to plac- ing texts, authorships, technology, regulations or practices within an international or transnational context, be it Scandinavian, European or even larger. Still, the material studied tends to be national and local in origin. This is true for studies in most other countries as well, as much research in book history starts with local book collections and archives. There is, however, a need for more international comparative studies, and in that perspective, the Norwegian ‘case’ could well prove a different and interesting one. The new project on Ibsen and the international publishing history of his works is a case in point, as it highlights the differences between the Scandinavian and the European book markets, and the roles they played in forming Ibsen’s career and international acclaim. The ongoing projects on the international circulation of printed texts, in books and periodicals, as well as projects on the history of reading will hopefully spur further research in these areas, research that opens up for new perspectives on the transnational aspects of Norwegian history of print, books and reading. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 153

Archie L. Dick

Book history in South Africa Recent developments and prospects

The history of the book has emerged as a productive site of inquiry and there have already been several special issues of journals, a few chapters in books, a handful of monographs, and an anthology on South Africa’s print, text, and book cultures. By comparison with book history in many countries this represents a growing but modest body of work, and there is still no institutional home for research and tuition programmes of book and print culture studies in South Africa. Plans for a research-driven Centre for the Book at the National Library of South Africa evaporated when its focus became presentist and development-oriented in the 1990s. Nonetheless, between 2001 and 2009 scholarly contributions included a few monographs, an edited collection of conference papers, and six special issues of South African academic journals in the fields of English literature, history, and librarianship. This article focuses primarily on work that appeared between 2010 and 2012, and sketches briefly some prospects for the future.

Recent developments

One of the advantages of not fixing the boundaries of book history in South Africa is recent scholarship that connects unintentionally with this field of study. The publications discussed here therefore represent new work that benefits book history in South Africa in different ways. Written culture in a colonial context: Africa and the Americas, 1500- 1900 links the evidence of writing with issues of social and cultural significance.1 Edited by Adrien Delmas and Nigel Penn, this collection brings together the histories of written culture and European expansion during the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It lifts studies of literacy, writing, books, and reading into the realms of transnational and interdisciplinary scholarship. Foregrounding the largely overlooked regions of Africa and the Americas, some implications for book history in South Africa and more general methodological challenges become evident. One of the editors calls attention to the material dimensions of writing not just as

1 A. Delmas, N. Penn (eds.), Written culture in a colonial context: Africa and the Americas, 1500-1900. Cape Town 2011. 2 A. Delmas, ‘Introduction: The written word and the world’, in: Delmas, Penn, Written culture, xx. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 154

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the bedrock of historical studies but as a recent focus of cultural historians.2 The shift from the idea of writing to that of inscription extended written cultures to include rock art, pictograms as well as oral performance as forms of proto-writing, breaking down such dichotomies as ‘civility/barbarism’ and ‘writing/orality’. This now brings several cultures, previously thought to have been without writing and studied ethnologically only, into the terrain of book history. The chapters dealing with South Africa cover the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in the Cape, Natal, and Transvaal regions. Related to this theme and also published in 2011, Deciphering ancient minds: the mystery of San bushmen rock art by David Lewis-Williams and Sam Challis examine an even earlier period.3 These scholars reveal how the analysis of rock paintings and engravings can produce key insights into San beliefs and patterns of thought. This is a little-known area of significance to all book historians. Lewis-Williams and Challis argue that the three registers of the Rosetta Stone find parallels in the study of San rock art. Their general approach, as that found in Written culture in a colonial context, resonate with transnationalism and cosmopolitanism as prominent features of South African book history. Isabel Hofmeyr shows in the context of Indian Ocean print cultures, for example, that Gandhi’s press in South Africa circulated print across the Indian Ocean and ‘interpolated with cosmopolitanism in unexplored and interesting ways’.4 In doing so, she draws on Mark Ravinder Frost’s work on public spheres in Indian Ocean port cities in which the intellectual elite circulated periodicals to nurture universalisms such as pan-Islam, pan- Buddhism, and Hindu reformism.5 In a related article, Hofmeyr discusses transnational ideas of reading and theories of transnationalism more generally.6 She uses Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, which sets out his key ideas on nonviolence and civil disobedience, and which is essentially a dialogue between a ‘Reader’ and an ‘Editor’ discussing how best British India should achieve home rule. Scholarly consensus is that the ‘Reader’ is an Indian extremist who wants to oppose colonial rule by force. In early prefaces of the book, which have now largely disappeared from contemporary editions, Gandhi however views the ‘Reader’ as the reader of the newspaper Indian opinion that he edited in South Africa in the early twentieth century. Reinstating this South African reader in Gandhi’s seminal text, Hofmeyr explores the possible implications of this ‘diasporic’ or ‘unlikely’ reader on Gandhi’s thinking and on his ideas about Indian nationalism more generally. Tracing even earlier transnational elements in South Africa’s book history, Achmat Davids identifies one source of the Afrikaans language to the Cape Muslims who had their origins in South East Asia and the Indian Ocean rim.7 The Afrikaans of the Cape

3 D. Lewis-Williams, S. Challis, Deciphering ancient minds: the mystery of San bushmen rock art. London 2011. 4 I. Hofmeyr, ‘Gandhi’s printing press: Indian Ocean print cultures and cosmopolitanisms’, in: I. Hofmeyr, M. Williams (eds.), South Africa and India: shaping the global south. Johannesburg 2011, 10. 5 M.R. Frost, ‘That great ocean of idealism: the Tagore circle and the idea of Asia, 1900-1920’, in: A. Jamal, S. Moorthy (eds.), Indian Ocean studies: cultural, social and political perspectives. New York 2009; M.R. Frost, ‘To Durban via Singapore and other colonial port-cities: an historical journey across the Indian Ocean in search of cosmopolitanism, 1869-1919’, in: P. Gupta [et al.] (eds.), Eyes across the water: navigating the Indian Ocean. New Delhi 2009. 6 I. Hofmeyr, ‘Violent texts, vulnerable readers: Hind Swaraj and its South African audiences’, in: Public culture: an interdisciplinary journal of transnational cultural studies 23 (2011), 285-297. 7 A. Davids, The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims from 1815 to 1915. Ed. H. Willemse, S.E. Dangor. Pretoria 2011. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 155

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Muslims from 1815 to 1915 overturns the view that Afrikaans was a ‘European transplan- tation’ that ‘developed gradually out of Dutch dialects’.8 This English translation of Davids’ original Masters degree dissertation shows that the recognition of Afrikaans as a ‘separate’ language was thanks to ‘a group of men from Paarl in the Western Cape who in the late nineteenth century attempted to broaden the functional uses of Afrikaans’ in what became the so-called ‘First Afrikaans Language Movement’.9 One of Davids’ main objectives was to create a standard system of transliterating the Arabic script of Arabic-Afrikaans texts into roman script to demonstrate that the Cape Muslim community wrote as they spoke. This demonstrates that Arabic-Afrikaans texts are similar to audio-recordings, and that they preserved the original sounds of Muslim Afrikaans. Davids shows how Muslim Afrikaans speakers adapted the Arabic alphabet and Muslim ‘rules of reading’ to preserve their own unique sounds. He achieved this through a system of transliteration that could produce the actual sounds of past speakers. This translation comes more than twenty years after Davids completed his research, and Gerald Groenewald suggests that he was actually an ‘early South African practitioner of what is now called “book history”’.10

Figure 1. Early Muslim prayer book. Cape Family Research Forum; courtesy of Shamiel Gamildien

8 G. Groenewald, ‘Review of A. Davids The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims from 1815 to 1915. Ed. H. Willemse, S.E. Dangor. Pretoria 2011’. In: New Contree 62 (2011), 182. 9 Groenewald, ‘Review of A. Davids’, 182-183. 10 Ibidem, 185. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 156

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Figure 2. Muslim school: boys learning to read the Koran. From George F. Angas, The Kafirs illustrated in a series of draw- ings taken among the Amazulu, Amaponda, and Amakosa tribes, 1822-1886. London 1849, 9. Courtesy of Kimberley Africana Library, Kimberley

The translation of Davids’ dissertation into English comes fortuitously for book history in South Africa when jawi (Arabic-Malay) and Arabic-Afrikaans texts are being analysed in greater detail. Saarah Jappie explains that these texts were translations of Arabic literature into the vernacular Malay and Cape Dutch languages using the Arabic script to ensure that they could be easily read by worshippers and learners.11 Copies of the texts are called ajami manuscripts to indicate that Arabic script is used to write in another language. The earliest ajami manuscripts were called jawi when the Malay language was widely used at the Cape, and from 1826 the ajami manuscripts appeared in the Dutch-Afrikaans language. Following Davids’ cue, Jappie emphasises the broader social and historical contexts of the manuscripts instead of philological methods that focus primarily on their content. She shows how the manuscripts are ‘objects with dynamic lives, accruing history and taking on different social functions as the contexts around them develop’.12

11 S. Jappie, ‘From the Madrasah to the Museum: The Social Life of the Kietaabs of Cape Town’, in: History in Africa 38 (2011), 369-399; S. Jappie, ‘Jawi Dari Jauh: “Malays” in South Africa through Text’, in: Indonesia and the Malay World 40 (2012), 143-159. 12 Jappie, ‘From the Madrasah to the Museum’, 374. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 157

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Demonstrating this approach, she traces the roles of the manuscripts and kietaabs (books) from their ‘lives’ as practical objects in the educational, medicinal, and commu- nicative practices of the early Cape Muslim community to their use today in heritage, identity, and genealogical projects. The study of the Cape Muslim ajami manuscripts is part of the larger Tombouctou Manuscripts Project and an African ajami network that includes experts from Mali, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Niger, South Africa, Poland, and Norway.13 South African historian Shamiel Jeppie, for example, recently analysed Malian Islamic scholar Bularaf’s personal archive. Bularaf was born in 1864 in south-western Morocco, but by 1907 he established himself in Timbuktu and started his archive repos- itory. He had a place for copyists and for checking copies, and a unit for making covers for the loose leaves of writing.14 He made space for copyists to work with an original

Figure 3. Slave reading a ‘kitaab’ (book). Detail of the author’s portrait in François Valentijn, Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën, vervattende een naaukeurige en uitvoerige verhandelinge van Nederlands mogentheyd in die gewesten. Dordrecht, by Johannes van Braam, Amsterdam, by Gerard onder de Linden, 1724. Photo: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague

13 Projects available at: www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/projects/, accessed 26 October 2012. 14 S. Jeppie, ‘History for Timbuktu: Ahmad Bul’aräf, archives and the place of the past’, in: History in Africa 38 (2011), 401- 416. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 158

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beside them while copying onto a blank page. He not only paid for the paper, pens, and ink but also the copyists for their travel costs and sometimes the owners for lending the originals. Bularaf had no aversion to printing and in fact arranged for several books to be printed. Printing itself had been around since the French colonial presence in the region a century earlier. As a copyist himself, Bularaf added his own interpellations in texts when it involved the region whose local conditions he knew better. These practices, albeit locally distinctive, resonated with wider Islamic ‘cultures of scholarship’.15 The protection from destruction of the Timbuktu manuscripts has re-emerged as a critical concern for scholars in the light of the unstable political situation in Mali and the North African region more generally.16 Also linking book history concerns with present-day culture and politics, Ashwin Desai’s Reading revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island17 comes crucially at a time when textbooks and libraries are being destroyed in South Africa.18 As a sociologist he may not view his work as book history, but it actually progresses the field by showing how we can connect the past with the present, and it links print culture with political critique. By the time that apartheid was unravelling, political prisoners had turned Robben Island prison into a university and a library. Many who arrived as illiterates and left as book collectors often left behind some of their own literary treasures to fan the fires of the reading revolution they had started. Desai samples prisoners who signed off on their favourite passages from prisoner Sonny Venkatrathnam’s disguised copy of William Shakespeare: the complete works before he was released. He weaves a compelling narrative about Shakespeare’s reception and audiences on the island, and about reading more generally in apartheid’s most forbidding jail. An attractive feature is the range of Shakespearian genres, forms, and themes from which prisoners, representing a range of anti-apartheid organisations, selected their favourite passages. These passages provide a springboard into each prisoner’s personal journey as a reader. They also encapsulate an aspect of his character and political outlook. Desai follows some of the readers after their release from Robben Island prison and into their post-1994 lives. This feature gives the book its special significance. Inequalities in the new South Africa’s education system, which Desai attributes to poor economic choices and political compromises, have left some of the reading revolutionaries disillusioned. Others seek to re-ignite the revolutionary spark of Robben Island through reading programmes in poverty-stricken townships.

15 Jeppie, ‘History for Timbuktu’, 413-414. 16 Although the library of the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research was burned down in Mali in late January 2013, most of the manuscripts had already been removed earlier and were saved from destruction, See: ‘People of Timbuktu save manuscripts from invaders’. Available at: bigstory.ap.org/article/people-timbuktu-save-manuscripts-invaders (accessed 16 February 2013). 17 A. Desai, Reading revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island. Pretoria 2012. 18 ‘Public protector looking into destruction of Limpopo textbooks’. Available at: www.businessday.co.za/articles/ Content.aspx?id=177135 (accessed 30 July 2012); for the burning of libraries, see: ‘Book burnings in South Africa’. Available at: www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=357815&sn=Detail&pid=71619 (accessed 16 February 2013). bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 159

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Uncovering book and reading cultures like those of the Robben Island political prisoners is the theme of Archie Dick’s The hidden history of South Africa’s book and reading cultures.19 Dick shows how book and reading cultures in South Africa’s past emerged, survived or even thrived ‘despite the ways in which controlling and repressive regimes have sought to destroy or limit the impact of reading and writing for their own purposes’.20 Despite the widely-held belief that there is either a poor reading culture or none at all, this book demonstrates that ordinary South Africans have always read and wrote. By looking at junctures in South Africa’s history we find examples of common readers and writers among Cape slaves, free blacks, and mission-based workers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ordinary readers and writers were active also in the twentieth century among school learners, soldiers, Soweto exiles, community activists, and political prisoners. They often read in ways that defied the strategies of elites and authorities that sought to control what they read. Contestations about what, where, and how to read led to acts of censorship, book burning, book theft, and subver- sive reading and writing. Surprising discoveries include the earliest official statistics of working class literacy, and the popularity of Charles Dickens across South Africa’s class, colour, and political divisions. The case studies in Dick’s book suggest that many gaps in South African book history remain. Elizabeth le Roux’s work both identifies and closes some of these gaps. Her literature reviews of print culture and book history studies in South Africa and Africa more generally are comprehensive, and she has undertaken the first study of the country’s university presses during the apartheid period. Recognising the need for foundational texts, she mapped the growth of book history in South Africa.21 Of the work on the African continent that Le Roux has been able to track down much is still descriptive, although some theoretical models have emerged in the past decade. Her overview presents ‘a sampling of the most significant work’ that also highlights recent trends.22 Le Roux has looked also at aspects of scholarly publishing in South Africa,23 but her work on the university presses in the colonial and apartheid periods fills a gap in the country’s book and publishing history. Of the roles played by university presses in the apartheid era, she notes that they were ‘neither clearly anti-apartheid, nor neatly col- laborationist’.24 University presses, she argues, can reveal much about academic freedom in an oppressive society, and about how they relate to political shifts. Le Roux critiques the Oxford University Press model that guided the early development of South

19 A.L. Dick, The hidden history of South Africa’s book and reading cultures. Toronto 2012. 20 C. van Onselen, ‘Review of The hidden history of South Africa’s book and reading cultures by Archie Dick. Toronto: University of Toronto Press’, in: Quarterly bulletin of the National Library of South Africa 66 (2012), 41. 21 E. le Roux, ‘The accidental growth of book history: a literature review of print culture and book history studies in South Africa’, in: Mousaion 30 (2012), 1. 22 E. le Roux, ‘Book history in the African world: the state of the discipline’, in: Book history 15 (2012), 248-300. 23 E. le Roux, ‘The “politics” and practice of peer review in South Africa’, in: S. Ngobeni (ed.), Scholarly publishing in Africa: opportunities and impediments. Pretoria 2010, 315-326; E. le Roux, ‘Does the North read the South? The case of South African scholarly publishers’, in: B. Benwell [et al.] (eds.), Postcolonial audiences: readers, viewers and reception. Oxford 2012, 73-85. 24 E. le Roux, ‘The university as publisher: towards a history of South African university presses’, in: A. van der Vlies (ed.), Print, text and book cultures in South Africa. Johannesburg, 437. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 160

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African university presses, which largely promoted the academic and research aims of the universities they served. A trenchant analysis of Oxford University Press itself during the apartheid period comes from Caroline Davis. She explains how it sacrificed its liberal outlook to secure its commercial position when it came increasingly to depend on profits from the ‘publication of Bantu Education approved texts, which led to an avoidance of the publication of “controversial” or anti-apartheid texts’.25 Bringing together similar case studies and overviews of book history in South Africa is Andrew van der Vlies’s anthology Print, text, and book cultures in South Africa.26 His intro- ductory essay systematically maps the conceptual terrain of the field of study and demonstrates its relevance to South Africa’s literary and cultural history.27 Including contributions from prominent scholars in English and African literature, history, librarianship and publishing studies, it offers revisions of previously published work, as well as new essays covering topics on colonial and missionary print cultures, orature and the image of the book in autochthonous languages, book collections, transnational histories of the book, print and circulation, censorship, and the politics of educational publishing. Effectively, this collection takes the measure of book history scholarship in South Africa and may become a primer for students. Novelty, interdisciplinarity, relevance to public policy, and an awareness of its location in Africa appear therefore to characterise South Africa’s modest book history profile. Some of these qualities already distinguished the failed effort by South African writer J.M. Coetzee to start ‘The book in Africa’ course in 1980 for undergraduate students at the University of Cape Town. Peter McDonald explains that this specialist option in the African Literature programme planned to explore ‘environmental pressures of all kinds on writers, the economics of publishing and distributing literary works, [and] the nature of the readership of literary works’, and that the course would require ‘a certain amount of bibliographical ferreting and a certain amount of practical investigative research’.28 Some of the practical work required students to locate bookshops in the Cape Peninsula and libraries in the black townships. They would also investigate small literary magazines, the practices of apartheid censors, the Heinemann African Writers series, and compare themes and the readers of West African Onitsha market literature and South Africa’s photo-novels.29 One can only speculate what book history in South Africa may have looked like today had more than just one student enrolled for Coetzee’s course. What is evident though is that South African and non-South African scholars are actually investigating some of the themes on Coetzee’s course list. The United States- based scholar Lily Saint, for example, has investigated the reading of ‘Western’ or cow-

25 C. Davis, ‘Histories of publishing under apartheid: Oxford University Press in South Africa’, in: Journal of Southern African studies 37 (2011), 79. 26 Van der Vlies, Print, text, and book cultures in South Africa. 27 Ibidem, 16-48. 28 P. McDonald, ‘The book in South Africa’, in: D. Atwell, D. Attridge (eds.), The Cambridge history of South African literature. Cambridge 2012, 800. 29 Ibidem. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 161

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boy photo-comics of the middle and late apartheid periods. She claims that ‘narrative and aesthetic conventions of the form reinforced yet simultaneously disturbed the apartheid state’s fantasy of total segregation.’30 Moreover, through reading practices black and white South Africans could have contact in the ‘imaginative and affective spheres even while apartheid doctrine attempted to prevent it.’31 Photo-comics were therefore not just distracting and ‘light’ reading; they also functioned politically. More recently, Saint has looked at the notorious apartheid passbooks as books, examining the ways in which they ‘narrated lives and conditioned various political and racial modes of subjectivity’.32 Using literary and other techniques, she argues that despite the aims of controlling the everyday lives of South Africans, passbooks actually failed to do so in ways that apartheid authorities intended. Had Coetzee’s course flourished in the 1980s, there may have been more South African literary scholars doing book history today. That they are now starting to recog- nise its value is perhaps best expressed by Sarah Duff who notes in a review of Van der Vlies’ collection that ‘when literary analysis is grounded in an understanding of the material circumstances in which texts are produced, it has the potential to shed light on the ways in which books and other publications are implicated in the creation of identities, and in the production and maintenance of power’.33 She insists, however, that book historians should include popular forms of publishing and popular fiction or risk ‘a tiny and elite print and book culture in South Africa’.

Prospects

Book history in South Africa is in its early phase of development, but the prospects for growth are good. Some departments of history, literature, and publishing studies at universities feature book history themes as special topics, but these initiatives are driven by individuals instead of being curriculum-based. The number of South African scholars working both self-consciously and ‘accidentally’ in this field is growing, and collaboration with book history scholars abroad has strengthened international research networks. A recent example is Print, publishing, and cultural production in South Africa, 1948-2012, which is a British Academy research project funded under the International Partnership and Mobility Scheme 2012-13.34 This project establishes a long-term research partnership between the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University and the Publishing Studies programme at the University of Pretoria. It examines the production, dissemination and

30 L. Saint, ‘Not western: race, reading and the South African photocomic’, in: Journal of Southern African studies 36 (2010), 939. 31 Ibidem. 32 L. Saint, ‘Reading subjects: passbooks, literature and apartheid’, in: Social dynamics 38 (2012), 117-133. 33 S.E. Duff, ‘Reviews: on the matter of books’. Available at: www.slipnet.co.za/view/reviews/review-print-text-and- book-cultures-in-south-africa-andrew-van-der-vlies-editor-by-sarah-emily-duff/ (accessed 31 January 2013). 34 For more information, see: www.publishing.brookes.ac.uk/research/project/print-publishing-and-cultural- production-in-south-africa/. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 162

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reception of the book in South Africa, with a special focus on the role of print culture in constituting national identities during the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. The programme included participation in ‘The book in Africa’, an International Symposium held on 20 October 2012 at the Institute for English Studies, Senate House, University of London, and a research visit by Archie Dick and Beth le Roux to the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies. Caroline Davis and Sarah Hughes will visit the University of Pretoria in May 2013. The most significant step forward for book history in South Africa would be a teaching programme at a research-intensive university, or a research centre that focuses on book history and/or print and digital cultures. Another way forward would be to connect South Africa’s manuscript, book and print culture scholars to existing centres or projects in Africa with broader but germane research themes. One possibility is the Africa Codicology Institute, but its website has been under construction for some time and therefore remains elusive. A more likely possibility may be the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project located with the Institute of Humanities in Africa (huma) at the University of Cape Town. The Timbuktu Manuscripts Project, or the South Africa-Mali Timbuktu Manuscripts Project, was officially launched in 2003.35 A major achievement of this project was the new library-archive building, which was inaugurated in Timbuktu in January 2009. The project is dedicated to research various aspects of writing and reading the handwritten works of Timbuktu and beyond. Training young researchers is an integral part of its work. This project includes a sub-project on ‘Book history in Africa’, and provides an opportunity for strengthening the transnational outlook of South African book history. The prospects for a more stable growth path for book history is kept alive also in a seminar series arranged as a partnership between the Institut Francais d’Afrique du Sud (ifas) and the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria. The seminar series will involve the cooperation of scholars from the University of Cape Town, Wits University, and the University of Johannesburg. International speakers will feature in the seminars that will take place once a month, alternating between ifas and the University of Pretoria.36 What is therefore certain is that the interest in book history is deeper and the circle of scholars is wider. The next phase of development will establish book history’s place on the map of South African and international scholarship.

35 For more information, see: www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/. 36 For more information, see: www.ifas.org.za/research/. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 163

Anders Toftgaard

Princely libraries, the readings of common man and the entry of the book cover into literary studies Trends in book history research in Denmark

Book history is often claimed to be a new discipline, taking its starting point from the publications of Roger Chartier and Robert Darnton from the 1980s. But it has been in existence in libraries since the nineteenth century, and Chartier and Darnton revitalised a discipline that had been part of library studies and turned it into an academic discipline with more general applications.1 It might be argued that in a Danish context book history takes its beginning with the Danish eighteenth-century antiquarians.2 The Danish word boghistorie first appeared, however, in 1861 when it was suggested as a Danish equivalent of the foreign word bibliography.3 In the first Danish-language introduction to library studies, published in 1912, book history – in a wider sense – was defined as a specific field within the field of library studies. The book was edited by the 25-year-old librarian Svend Dahl (1887-1963), the future national librarian. In his preface to the handbook, the director of The Royal Library H.O. Lange (1863-1943), claimed that ‘Book history, bibliography and library history should be cultivated with special affection by librarians’.4 Later, in an article on book history published in the Scandinavian successor to the handbook, Nordisk leksikon for bogvæsen, Svend Dahl defined book history as follows:

In contrast to literary history which deals with the spiritual content of books and their authors’ contribution to the history of thought, the history of books comprises the historical development of the book as a material object, its outer form, its manufacture and equipment, the history of paper and other writing materials, the development of writing, printing and illustration and the history of bookbinding. To this may further be added the various ages’ forms of

1 I wish to thank Ivan Boserup, Susanne Budde, Karsten Christensen, Erik Petersen and Karen Skovgaard-Petersen for their comments on various versions of the present article. Any shortcomings are my responsibility alone. 2 On Danish book history in the nineteenth century see H. Horstbøll, ‘A survey of the history of the book and libraries in Denmark since 1990’, in: Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria 86 (2002), 2, 165-203. See also S. Bruhns, Bibliografiens historie i Danmark, 1700- og 1800-tallet. Aalborg 2004. 3 H.P. Selmer, Om de i det danske sprog forekommende fremmede ord, iii: Fremmed-afløsnings-ordbog. København 1861, 86. 4 H.O. Lange, ‘Forord’, in: S. Dahl (ed.), Haandbog i bibliotekskundskab. København 1912, 3. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 164

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both book diffusion (book sellers and book auctions) and book collecting (libraries, bibliophily). There is a rich literature on the history of the book, but predominantly on the individual branches of it; the history of the printing press has been treated in particular detail.5

He then goes on citing books that cover the history of the book in a holistic way, among others his own Bogens historie, based upon lectures at the Royal School of Librarianship, published in 1927 and later revised (1957), translated and reprinted (1970). In the preface, Dahl expresses his wish for a holistic approach to the history of the book:

Most of the existing works on the history of the book present its various phases: manuscripts, printing, binding, illustration, the book-trade and libraries separately. In this work I have attempted to present them all in a unified account so that their interrelationship will become apparent and the history of the book will appear in perspective as an essential factor in the history of culture.6

In Dahl’s description of the various parts of the history of the book, there is only one important domain of ‘modern’ book history which is not included, and that is the question of reading and literacy. As we will see, this particular field has been addressed in recent years in Danish research in book history. In the following, I will give an overview of the state of affairs in the field of book history studies in Denmark. Let me start by pointing out that there are excellent bibliographical surveys of the literature on the history of the book in Denmark in the period from 1950 to 2005. In 1992 Ingrid Ilsøe published a survey of literature on the history of the book in Denmark from 1950 to 1990, based upon an earlier article in English covering the period from 1950 to 1985.7 In 2006, Henrik Horstbøll published a survey of the history of the book and libraries in Denmark in the period from 1990 to 2005. It was issued with similar surveys of the other Nordic countries in Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria.8 In the present article I consequently wish to point to current trends in book historical research in Denmark. The article will cover the period from 2005, but in some cases it is useful or necessary to go back to the end of the 1990s. I will focus on research dealing with the history of the book in Denmark in the era of the printed book, and especially on research that consciously addresses the field of book history. Palaeography and medieval studies are not dealt with here and I will not address library history as such. The definition of book history underlying this article is thus narrower than the one formulated by Dahl.

5 S. Dahl, ‘Boghistorie’, in: P. Birkelund [et al.] (eds.), Nordisk leksikon for bogvæsen. København/Oslo/Stockholm 1951-1962, vol. 1, 153 (my translation). 6 S. Dahl, History of the book. New York 1958, iii. The translation renders the corresponding paragraph in the Danish edition from 1927 quite well. 7 I. Ilsøe, ‘Litteratur om dansk bogvæsen trykt 1950-1990. Tryk, bind og boghandel ca. 1482-1920’, in: Fund og forskning 31 (1992), 143-198. The article was a revised version of an article published in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch: ‘Printing, book illustration, bookbinding, and book trade in Denmark, 1482-1914. A survey of the most important contributions to the history of the Danish book during the last 35 years’, in: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 60 (1985), 258-80. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 165

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Journals

Henrik Horstbøll published his survey of the history of the book and libraries in Denmark in 2006 in what proved to be the antepenultimate issue of the journal Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria. This journal was founded as Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och biblioteksväsen in 1914 and published for the last time in 1996. In the new millennium it was briefly resuscitated by a consortium of Scandinavian national libraries under the slightly changed title Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria but it did not last long. From 1986 to 2004, the journal Grafiana was published by the Danish Museum of the Graphical Industries – now The Media Museum. Instead of publishing journals, the museum now sends out a newsletter by email. It also publishes small books on the history of modern printing in Denmark.9 Bogens verden (The world of the book) was founded in 1906 and its publication was terminated by the end of 2011. Rotunden was a periodical published by the State Library in Århus dedicated to research in its collections which stopped appearing in 2009. Some book historical journals are, however, still being published. Bogvennen (‘the friend of books’) has been issued by the Association for Book Craftsmanship since 1890. The journal has in recent years published special issues with a certain emphasis on book history.10 The Association for Book Craftsmanship also publishes the quarterly newsletter Nyt for bogvenner,11 and it organises a yearly exhibition of book craftsmanship with a catalogue. Fund og forskning i Det Kongelige Biblioteks samlinger is the annual research journal published by The Royal Library. Magasin fra Det Kongelige Bibliotek is a quarterly popular journal published by The Royal Library which also prints original research. Bibliotekshistorie is a journal dedicated to library history, published at irregular intervals by Dansk Bibliotekshistorisk Selskab.12 Care and conservation of manuscripts publishes papers from the conferences of the same name; so far twelve volumes have been published.

Institutions

There is no chair in book history at any university in Denmark, but occasionally courses in book history are taught in Danish universities. In 2010 the Royal School of Librarianship changed its name in Danish into Det Informationsvidenskabelige

8 H. Horstbøll, ‘A survey of the history of the book and libraries in Denmark since 1990’, in: Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria 86 (2006) 2, 165-203. 9 Such as B.H.G. Ditzel, Maskinsætteren. Odense 2009; C.P. Clausen Buch, Levnedsskildring. Bogtrykker C.P. Clausen Buch. Odense 2010. 10 Bogvennen 2011-2012 was about Danish book collectors of the twentieth century. In 2013 all volumes of Bogvennen will be made available at www.tidsskrift.dk. 11 See: www.boghaandvaerk.dk/Aktuelt.htm. 12 The three journals are available at www.tidsskrift.dk. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 166

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Figure 1. An exhibition of the Treasures of The Royal Library staged by Russian artist Andrey Bartenev and edited by Bruno Svindborg and Anders Toftgaard opened in May 2012 in the Montana Hall. Photo: Th. Trane Petersen, The Royal Library

Akademi, iva (‘Royal School of Library and Information Science’). Part of the research in book history at iva has in recent years been relocated within the field of information studies. The printing presses of the Laboratory of book history have been transferred to the Royal Academy of Arts, and book history is no longer a part of the research profile of iva, but at the Master level students can follow a course in ‘The Book – its history and materiality’. In January 2013 iva merged with the University of Copenhagen. The Royal Library is a key player in the field of the history of the book – sometimes accused of being too attached to traditional bibliography. It holds important historical book collections, it publishes journals in book history and it organises exhibitions and an annual conference dedicated to the history of the book.

The Royal Library’s director, Erland Kolding Nielsen, is the editor-in-chief of the series Danish Humanist Texts and Studies. Kolding Nielsen is also president of the Association for Book Craftsmanship,13 which was founded in 1888 and traditionally unites the book business with the library world. Recent years have witnessed joint publications by The Royal Library and the association, such as the book Alle tiders tryk about the library’s collection of pamphlets and corporate publications.14

13 A Festschrift to Erland Kolding Nielsen was published in 2007, with many articles on book history: J.T. Lauridsen, O. Olsen (eds.) Umisteligt. Festskrift til Erland Kolding Nielsen. København 2007. 14 T. Høeg Jacobsen [et al.], Alle tiders tryk. Småtrykssamlingen i Det Kongelige Bibliotek. København 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 167

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The Danish bibliophile association Dansk Bibliofil-Klub was founded in 1942. It publishes books and catalogues of its exhibitions and its members edited the recent catalogue of twentieth-century Danish book collectors.15

International Cooperation

There are long lasting traditions of cooperation between the Scandinavian countries in book history. In 2007 Charlotte Appel and Karen Skovgaard-Petersen initiated a network for Scandinavian book historians. At a conference in the beginning of 2008 they proposed the creation of an internet portal dedicated to the history of the book in Scandinavia,16 for which the Dutch Bibliopolis served as a model.17 At the conference, Marieke van Delft from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague gave an introduction to that website. Since then, both Appel and Skovgaard-Petersen have been appointed to new positions, and the conferences were not followed up, but the network did serve for cooperation on the Oxford Companion to the book. Instead a Nordic Forum for Book history was created, which organises two annual conferences, and with its 200 members is a lively forum for discussions in book history.18 The main partners in the forum are the universities of Lund and Copenhagen; in fact, the forum is mostly a Danish-Swedish cooperation. It has close ties with Danish and Swedish libraries. In 2010 Horstbøll and Lundblad edited a volume of Lychnos, the journal published by the Swedish society Lärdomshistoriska samfundet, on book history to which several of the network’s members contributed.19 Many of the members of the Nordic Forum for Book history are also members of sharp, the international Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing. In 2012 Simon Frost – who is a member of sharp’s executive committee – published the book The business of the novel. Economics, aesthetics and the case of Middlemarch.20 Both Frost and Robert Rix participated in the organisation of the sharp conference ‘Published Words, Public Pages’ which was held at Copenhagen in September 2008.21 They co-edited a collection of essays, Moveable type, mobile nations. Interactions in transnational book history.22 In the book, the contribution of the English-speaking world to the flow of books in smaller countries is explored. At the University of Southern Denmark, Frost was a member of the research group ‘The Gutenberg Parenthesis’, headed by Lars

15 Bogvennen 2011-2012/Danske bogsamlere i det 20. århundrede. 2 vols., København 2012. 16 Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Årsberetning 2008, 86-88. Newsletter from the Manuscripts Department at The Royal Library, January 2008: www.kb.dk/da/kb/nb/ha/center/nyhedsbrev1-2008.html#3. 17 See www.bibliopolis.nl. 18 Its main forum is the blog nffb.wordpress.com. 19 Available online: www.vethist.idehist.uu.se/lychnos/index.php?view=book&book=2010. 20 S. Frost. The business of the novel: economics, aesthetics and the case of Middlemarch. London 2012. 21 S. Frost, ‘Introduction to sharp Copenhagen: a Nordic conference of international print culture’, in: Library & information history 25, 3 (Sept. 2009), 171-173. 22 S. Frost, R.W. Rix (eds.): Moveable type, mobile nations: interactions in transnational book history. København 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 168

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Ole Sauerberg. Among the results of the group are four book historical articles in a special issue of the journal Orbis litterarum.23 At Aarhus University, in november 2010, the international seminar ‘Media in Transition. The Book as Concept and in Use from Manuscript to Print’ took place. Several Danish scholars are members of a Nordic network for text editors,24 founded in 1995.25 The network has organised annual conferences on editorial philology and since 1999 it has published its own series. The latest issue, dedicated to the materiality of the book, book history and bibliography, was published in 2009.26 The network has built upon and informed the editions of the works of the great Scandinavian classics published over the last years. Søren Kierkegaard’s collected works have been published both in print and online,27 Ludvig Holberg’s works are being published in print and online,28 and the works of N.F.S. Grundtvig are being published online.29 Book historians have been working on these editions and their work has yielded several studies.30 Recently Johnny Kondrup published a handbook in textual scholarship, which to a certain extent also serves as an introduction to bibliography.31 Danish scholars also partic- ipate in the European Society for Textual Scholarship and have published articles in its journal Variants.32 Book historical research has benefited from a comparative and transnational approach. The ethnologist Jürgen Beyer, who in the years 2008-2010 was an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, wrote an article on printers’ and publishers addresses in eighteenth-century books, including Danish books.33 In January 2012, Wolfgang Undorf defended his doctoral dissertation From Gutenberg to Luther. Transnational print cultures in Scandinavia 1450-1525 at the Humboldt Universität in

23 Orbis litterarum 64 (2009) 2. See also: P. Simonsen, ‘Italic typography and Wordsworth’s later sonnets as visual poetry’, in: Studies in English literature 1500-1900 47 (2007) 4, 863-880, and id., Wordsworth and word-preserving arts. Typographic inscription, ekphrasis and posterity in the later work. Basingstoke 2007. 24 See: nnedit.org. 25 For the history, see K. Steen Ravn, ‘The academic status of editorial history and editorial philology. Conference of the Nordic Network of Textual Critics, Sandbjerg Gods (Aarhus University), September 30-October 2, 2011’, in: Editio 26 (2012) 1, 184-187, doi: 10.1515/editio-2012-0014. 26 M. Malm [et al.] (eds.), Bokens materialitet. Bokhistoria och bibliografi. Stockholm 2009. 27 www.sks.dk. 28 holbergsskrifter.dk. 29 www.grundtvigsværker.dk. On national editions of Scandinavian authors, cf. the survey by J. Kondrup, ‘Store tekst - kritiske udgaver i Norden: Et overblik’, in: Fund og forskning 49 (2010), 511-537. 30 In Kierkegaard’s case: N.J. Cappelørn [et al.], Tekstspejle. Om Søren Kierkegaard som bogtilrettelægger, boggiver og bogsamler. Esbjerg 2002. But also J. Kondrup, ‘Ekspressiv typografi hos Søren Kierkegaard?’, in: E. Damberg [et al.] (eds.), Litterat på eventyr. Festskrift til Finn Hauberg Mortensen. Odense 2006, 39-57. 31 J. Kondrup, Editionsfilologi. København 2011, especially 273-328 on bibliographical description, and 329-368, on manuscript description. 32 E.g. C. Benne, ‘Ossian: the book history of an anti-book?’, in: Variants 7 ‘Textual scholarship and the canon’ (2008), 179- 211; S. Frost, ‘Masterworks and merchandise. Showing off the goods of Middlemarch’, in: Variants 6 ‘Textual scholarship and the material book’ (2010). Anne Mette Hansen edited Variants 4 (2005) dedicated to the theme ‘The book as artefact’. 33 J. Beyer, ‘Adressen von Druckern, Verlegern und Buchhändlern im 18. Jahrhundert. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Diskussion über ein VD18’, in: Wolfenbütteler Notizen zur Buchgeschichte 31 (2006), 159-190. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 169

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Berlin.34 Analysing Scandinavian book history between the catholic late Middle Ages and protestant modern times, Undorf discusses the concept of periphery and concludes that ‘pre-Reformation book culture in Scandinavia didn’t differ that much from European book culture at that time’.35 In his conclusion, Undorf seeks to refine Darnton’s revised model by creating a model of transnational pre-Reformation print culture. Within the broader Scandinavian scope, the dissertation contains important chapters on institutional and private provenances in Denmark and is a starting point for anyone interested in early modern provenances in Denmark.

Dissertations

The first Danish doctoral dissertation in the discipline of history of the book was submitted and passed in 1923 by librarian Lauritz Nielsen (1881-1947),36 who wrote his dissertation in close connection to his seminal bibliography of fifteenth- and sixteenth- century Danish books.37 It was not until the new millennium that book historical dissertations were again submitted. Ever since the PhD degree was introduced in Denmark in 1993, there have been two different kinds of doctoral dissertations, i.e. the PhD dissertation and what is sometimes called the higher doctoral dissertation. A higher doctoral degree can be obtained by mature researchers after the public defence of a dissertation based upon individual and original research. The two most important recent contributions to Danish book history are the doctoral dissertations Menigmands medie (1999) by Henrik Horstbøll and Læsning og bogmarked i 1600-tallets Danmark (2001) by Charlotte Appel. They both combine an interest in social cultural history with book history, and they both at the outset declare to have been inspired by Darnton and Chartier.38 Charlotte Appel investigates the history of the book in seventeenth-century Denmark (the Kingdom of Denmark, including the provinces that became Swedish in 1645/1648, but excluding Norway and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein).39 Her main interest is in the relationship between the printed word and the ‘common man’,

34 W. Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther. Transnational print cultures in Scandinavia 1450-1525. Berlin 2011; urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-100199197. 35 Ibidem, 510. 36 L. Nielsen, Boghistoriske studier til dansk bibliografi 1550-1600. København 1923. 37 L. Nielsen, Dansk bibliografi 1482-1550: med særligt hensyn til dansk bogtrykkerkunsts historie. København 1919; id., Dansk bibliografi 1551-1600. København 1929-1931; id. Registre til Dansk bibliografi 1482-1550 & 1551-1600. København 1935. A revised edition of Dansk bibliografi 1482-1600 was published with a supplementary volume by E. Dal in 1996. Nielsen also published Dansk typografisk Atlas 1482-1600. København 1934. 38 When she started working on her project, Appel wrote an article on recent studies in book history in English, French, German and Dutch, which is still an excellent Danish-language introduction: C. Appel, ‘Bogmarkedets og læsningens historie ca. 1500-1700 i nyere europæisk forskning. En introduktion’, in: Fund og forskning 32 (1993), 185-234. 39 C. Appel: Læsning og bogmarked i 1600-tallets Danmark. København 2001. Review by J.T. Lauridsen in Fund og forskning 41 (2002), 351-370. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 170

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Figure 2. Anon, ABC. København, Mads Vingaard, 1591. Popular books, such as this abc, were printed in large numbers, but have hardly survived. Photo: The Photographic Studio, The Royal Library

and she looks into both the history of reading and that of the book market. Appel analyses the spread of literacy, the actual use of books and the books appearing in inventories made after death, socalled probate records. Thanks to Lauritz Nielsen the national bibliography of fifteenth- and sixteenth- century Danish books is well established; Appel has done a pioneering work on the seventeenth-century Danish book. She thoroughly investigates the authorities’ attempts to restrict the spread of ‘evil books’ through censorship and prohibition of import and to promote the spread of ‘good books’. She shows how the number of printing presses quadrupled in the seventeenth century, and discusses to what extent we have access to ephemeral imprints. Dealing with ‘books surviving and books lost’, she argues that ‘even though many ephemeral imprints such as ballads, newsletters and practical manuals have not survived to the present, their existence in seventeenth-century Denmark can be proven’ (948).40 Pointing to the many documented re-issues, Appel argues that even though the nineteenth-century Danish bibliography Bibliotheca Danica only cov-

40 For this aspect see also the exhibition catalogue: K. Skovgaard-Petersen (ed.), From dust to gold. Handbooks and broad- sheets from the Royal Library. København 2006. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 171

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ers as little as 75% of the actual books printed, we probably know 90% of the book titles that ever existed. (573-4).41 Finally, Appel addresses the question as to whether the books actually reached the common man. She concludes that poor people could buy popular books; analyses of ‘the intended reader’ of various publications reveal that a large number of publications were aimed at the ‘common man’, and her study of inventories after death allows her to conclude that ‘a minimum of between thirty and forty per cent of registered urban households were in possession of books in the last decades of the seventeenth century’ (949). As John T. Lauridsen has pointed out, however, the greater part of the population was without any property. In his review in Fabula, Christoph Daxelmüller stated that if it were not for the language, the book would have been of outstanding importance internationally: ‘Sie wäre weit über die Grenzen des Landes hinaus von überragender Bedeutung, stünde nicht – trotz einer englischen Zusammenfassung – die Sprache des Dänischen im Wege (...)’.42 However, this barrier has since been overcome. Charlotte Appel was a member of the Steering Comittee of hibolire, The Nordic-Baltic-Russian Network on the History of Books, Libraries and Reading, which existed from 2006 to 2010.43 Together with Karen Skovgaard-Petersen, Appel wrote the article ‘The history of the book in the Nordic countries’ and contributed many entries to the Oxford Companion of the book.44 In 2011 Appel published, with her co-editor Morten Fink-Jensen, the anthology Religious reading in the Lutheran north. Studies in early modern Scandinavian book culture.45 Appel and Fink-Jensen are currently finishing a collaborative research project on the history of education in Denmark. Henrik Horstbøll published his doctoral dissertation on the culture of popular print in early modern Denmark in 1999.46 The book deals with popular print in a rather long period from the first book printed in Danish (Den danske Rimkrønike, 1495) to the advent of industrialised printing around 1840. Popular print is defined as a medium that addresses the common man in the vernacular (29). The development of different formats is discussed thoroughly, and the format of the book is added to Darnton’s model of the communications circuit (316). Horstbøll finds convergences between print format and the function of the medium on the one hand, and between print format and language on the other, and concludes that ‘popular print in Denmark can be recognised by the printed medium’s use of the small formats’ (763). The analysis of for-

41 C.V. Bruun [et al.], Bibliotheca Danica. Systematisk fortegnelse over den danske litteratur fra 1482-1830. København 1877-1902 (vol. 1-4) & 1914-31 (vol. 5). Revised edition 1961-63. H. Ehrencron-Müller, Supplement 1831-1840 til Bibliotheca Danica samt Bibliotheca Slesvico-Holsatica til 1840. København 1948. 42 C. Daxelmüller, ‘Rezension zu Appel, Charlotte: Læsning og bogmarked i 1600-tallets Danmark, 2001’, in: Fabula. Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung 44 (2003), 317-320. 43 One of the outcomes was M. Dyrbye (ed.), Library spirit in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Historical perspectives. Tampere 2009. 44 M.F. Suarez, H.R.Woudhuysen (eds.), The Oxford companion to the book. Oxford 2010. 45 C. Appel, M. Fink-Jensen (eds.), Religious reading in the Lutheran north. Studies in early modern Scandinavian book culture. Newcastle upon Tyne 2011. 46 H. Horstbøll, Menigmands medie, det folkelige bogtryk i Danmark 1500-1840. En kulturhistorisk undersøgelse. København 1999. Review by Jürg Glauser in: Fabula, Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung 45 (2004) 1/2, 140-143. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 172

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mat poses the question whether prints in small formats have been less well preserved than prints in larger formats. Horstbøll concludes that we know most of the titles but far from all of the single editions, probably only 50-70%. In the third part of the dissertation he identifies the ‘effective history’ of the popular print, the conceptual communities created by print in general and popular print in particular, analysed through the three master concepts of Cosmos, Chronos, Topos and through the grid of a number of empirically derived genre-groups: ‘pamphlets, instructive and devotional literature, chapbook stories, chronicles and history, and lastly almanacs and housekeeping literature’ (765). In a certain sense, Horstbøll combines the two domains that Svend Dahl had singled out between literary history and the history of books: ‘the spiritual content of books and their authors’ contribution to history of thought’ with ‘the historical development of the book as a material object’.47 The book has inspired similar research in Scandinavia. Since 2009, Henrik Horstbøll has held the only Scandinavian chair in book history, at Lund University. He is a prolific writer and has published individual chapters of the book in revised versions in English and German.48 Several PhD students in departments of Scandinavian studies have worked on book historical dissertations. At the University of Aarhus, Christina Holst Færch wrote her PhD dissertation on literary works that circulated in manuscript in the first half of the eighteenth century because they could not be printed within the legal framework of the absolutist state.49 She deals in particular with the satiric and erotic writings of pastor Hans Hansen Nordrup (1681-1750), whose works exist in manuscripts in Aarhus and Copenhagen. His pasquils had their own manuscript distribution, but could not be printed because of censorship.50 At the University of Copenhagen, Anne Mette Hansen wrote her PhD dissertation on medieval prayer books and material philology.51 Also, a number of PhD students have worked at the intersection of philology, textual scholarship, sociology of literature

47 In her book on Danish medieval literature, Sanselig senmiddelalder, litterære perspektiver på danske tekster 1482-1523. Århus 2010, Pil Dahlerup moves in the opposite direction, from literary history to history of the book. 48 H. Horstbøl, ‘In Octavo. Die Formveränderung der Kleinen Historien auf dem dänischem Buchmarkt vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert’, in: J. Glauser, A.K. Richter (eds.), Text, Reihe, Transmission. Unfestigkeit als Phänomen skandinavischer Erzählprosa 1500-1800. Tübingen/Basle 2012; id., ‘The unstable almanac. Transformations of the almanac in Denmark in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, in: R. Siegert [et al.] (eds.) Volksbildung durch Lesestoffe im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert Voraussetzungen – Medien – Topographie /Educating the people through reading material in the 18. and 19. centuries: principles – media – topography, Bremen 2012; id., ‘The politics of publishing. Freedom of the press in Denmark 1770-1773’, in: P. Ihalainen [et al.] (eds.), Scandinavia in the age of revolution. Nordic political cultures, 1740-1820. Farnham 2011, 145-156. 49 C. Holst Færch, Utrykkelighed og enevælde. Politisk satire og erotisk digtning i 1700-tallet med særligt henblik på Hans Nordrups forfatterskab. Aarhus 2012. 50 See also: C. Holst Færch, ‘Bisp Deichman og den sorte pest. Om paskviller og håndskriftdigtning i første halvdel af 1700-tallet’, in: Lychnos 2010, 137-146; id.,‘En særdeles parfumeret retorik. Danske smædevers i 1600- og 1700-tallet’, in: Rhetorica Scandinavica 57 (2010), 60-78. 51 A.M. Hansen, Den danske bønnebogstradition i materialfilologisk belysning. København 2005. Cf. id., ‘Die Transmission spätmittelalterlicher Gebetbücher als Primärquelle zur textkritischen Ausgabe. Zwei dänische Gebetbücher aus der Zeit der Einführung des Buchdrucks in Dänemark in materialphilologischer und transmissionstheoretischer Beleuchtung’, in: Glauser, Richter, Text, Reihe, Transmission. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 173

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and book history. Jens Bjerring-Hansen wrote his dissertation on Ludvig Holberg and the book, and currently works on a post-doctoral project with regard to the seventeenth-century learned antiquarians at the Danish Society for language and Literature (dls).52 Torben Jelsbak wrote his dissertation on the challenges posed to modern philology by the literary material of the historical avant-gardes (such as montage, typographic poems and artists’ books).53 By analysing the popular work Gitte’s monologer by the poet Per Højholt (published as books, radio readings, audio and video releases and performed live by Højholt), Klaus Nielsen has tried to devise a method for using material aspects in the study of literature. He also tried to develop a uniform concept of the literary work, common to literary history and book history.54 The title of the dissertation provocatively invites the reader to always judge the book by the cover. Nielsen does not stand alone with this provocation. Tore Rye Andersen recently published an article on the function of dust jackets and paratexts in novels by David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon.55 Using Bourdieu’s theory of the literary field and Genette’s notion of paratextuality, Anders Juhl Rasmussen wrote his PhD dissertation on a special variant of twentieth- century Danish prose-modernism, tied to the publishing house Arena.56 Together with Thomas Hvid Kromann, Juhl Rasmussen has published an edition of the small leaflets published by Arena, Arena-information.57 Hvid Kromann has published articles on Danish artists’ books.58

Book history and literary studies

In 2010 an anthology on book history edited by Jens Bjerring-Hansen and Torben Jelsbak was published in the series Modern Literary Theory, published by Aarhus University Press.59 The publication of the anthology within this series is an eloquent witness of the rise of book history as an academic discipline within literary studies. The editors introduce book history as a tool in literary studies, well aware that it is by no means evident that an introduction to book history should be part of a series on modern literary theory. On the other hand they argue that book history should be consid-

52 J. Bjerring-Hansen, Holberg og bogen. Om Peder Paars, socialt forfatterskab og litteraturhistoriens empiriske grundlag. København 2010. 53 T. Jelsbak, Avantgardefilologi og teksttransmission. Den historiske avantgardelitteratur som udfordring til moderne filologi og lit- teraturforskning. København 2008. Cf. his article in Lychnos 2010. 54 K. Nielsen, Døm altid bogen på omslaget. Om boghistorie og litteraturanalyse – og Gittes monologer. København 2012. 55 T. Rye Andersen, ‘Judging by the cover’, in: Critique. Studies in contemporary fiction 53 (2012) 3, 251-278. The article is a revised translation of T. Rye Andersen, ‘Omslag’ in: Passage. Tidsskrift for litteratur og kritik 57 (2007), 66-104; ojs.statsbib- lioteket.dk/index.php/passage/article/view/1393/1281. 56 A. Juhl Rasmussen, Arenamodernisme. Rekonstruktion af en position i nyere dansk litteratur. København 2011. 57 A. Juhl Rasmussen, T.H. Kromann (eds.),Arena-information. Et kapitel i dansk forlags- og litteraturhistorie. København 2011. 58 T.H. Kromann, ‘Skriftflader i svenske, danske og engelske kunstnerbøger’, in: C. Handberg, J. Løgstrup (eds.), Blandt ord & billede. En antologi om forholdet mellem billedkunst og litteratur. København 2011, 49-65. 59 J. Bjerring-Hansen, T. Jelsbak (eds.), Boghistorie. Aarhus 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 174

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ered a part of the ‘return to history’ of the last 25 years in comparative literature. The editors place the field of book history within an interdisciplinary triangle composed by history, bibliography and literary studies (13-14), but their selection of texts reflects – for good reasons – the part of the immense field of book history which is of particular interest to literary studies and especially literary theory. All seven essays take as their point of departure the books of belles lettres printed in Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.60 A proof of what literary history and book history can do together – and yet another evidence of the new importance assigned to book history in literary studies – is given by the new history of Danish literature published by Gyldendal. The very first chapter, significantly entitled ‘In the beginning was the book’,61 departs from the tradition of starting with runes and pagan oral traditions and begins instead with late medieval book culture in Denmark.62

Bookbindings, provenance, and the history of collections

Although they have not been the subject of doctoral dissertations, bookbindings have also caught the attention of researchers. The history of Danish bookbinding from 1650 to c.1800 was explored in the 1990s in a series of articles by Ingrid Ilsøe.63 Research has been published on medieval bookbindings, as has an interesting contribution on so- called ‘multiple-strand bookmarkers’ from the field of textile research.64 Karsten Christensen, who has done extensive research on sixteenth-century bookbindings, has studied bookbindings in a specific diocese library, and Mikael Kristensen has published a Who’s who of Danish bookbinders in the period from 1880 to 2000, taking up a title used by Emil Hannover in the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘kunstfærdige danske bogbind’.65 As more and more rare books become available online, their role as museum objects in the library is highlighted. This entails an interest in copy-specific information. In recent years provenance research has become more and more important in the research of The Royal Library and other libraries in Denmark. The origin, history and fate of a

60 K. Skovgaard-Petersen, review, in: Danske Studier 106 (2011), 226-229. 61 L. B. Mortensen, ‘I begyndelsen var bogen’ in: K.P. Mortensen, M. Schack (eds.) Dansk litteraturs historie, vol. 1: 1100-1800. København 2007. 62 I am obliged to Bjerring-Hansen, Holberg og bogen, which made this break very clear to me. 63 Cf. Horstbøll, ‘Survey’, 174. 64 A.M. Lindskog Midtgaard, ‘Medeltida danska bokband i Det Kongelige Biblioteks samling: en preliminär under- söknin’, in: Fund og forskning 44 (2005), 43-61; K. Christensen,‘Et genfundet middelalderligt lædersnitbogbbind’, in: Magasin fra Det Kongelige Bibliotek 16/4 (2003), 33-38; J. Boutrup,‘Multiple-strand bookmarkers and other book-connected textiles’, in: Care and conservation of manuscripts 13 (2012), 327-340; J. Vnoucˇ ek, M. Suchy´, ‘The Prague Sacramentary. From manuscript folia back to animal skin’, in: Care and conservation of manuscripts 13 (2012), 235-266. 65 K. Christensen, ‘Bogbind i Sjællands Stiftsbibliotek: nogle eksempler fra de ældre samlinger’, in: Årbog for Historisk Samfund for Roskilde Amt (2012), 113-122; M. Kristensen, Bogbindernes blå bog: kunstfærdige danske bogbind ca. 1880-2000. Hellerup 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 175

Figure 3. The Italian expatriate scholar Giacomo Castelvetro (1546-1616) lived in Denmark from August 1594 to October 1595. A number of his manuscripts and books are now kept in The Royal Library. Some of the books are heavily annotated, like this copy of a book published in 1568 in Ferrara. Photo: The Photographic Studio, The Royal Library bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 176

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number of private and public collections have been described in journal articles and anthologies.66 Every Danish work on provenance necessarily draws upon the work of Harald Ilsøe, the official chronicler of The Royal Library, where he has worked as a research librarian and senior researcher.67 Ilsøe has published on most aspects of book history, including printers,68 binders, authors, collectors and auctions. For the celebration of the 200th anniversary of public access to The Royal Library in 1993, he wrote a voluminous book on the treasures of the library.69 In 1999, Ilsøe published a two-volume study of the early foundations of The Royal Library, which serves as a bible for anyone working on its history.70 He later published a select bibliography of Danish book auctions in the period 1661-1811.71 Most recently he has published a lavishly illustrated work on illustrated cloth bindings and book covers in Denmark.72 On the occasion of his eightieth birthday in January 2013, a volume of the journal Fund og forskning i Det Kongelige Biblioteks samlinger was published as a Festschrift to his honour. At The Royal Library the interest in publishing knowledge about royal ownership marks was originally spurred by the numerous book thefts from the library in the 1970s, which were finally solved in 2003 upon which several persons were convicted.73 A web exhibition on royal identification marks was created as a tool to identify books belong- ing to The Royal Library, but it is also used as a working resource and has recently been expanded by many private ownership marks.74 In order to determine the extent of the

66 O.A. Hedegaard, ‘Hærens boghistoriske samling. En militærkulturel skat’, in: Militært tidsskrift 126 (1997) 1, 94-106; R. Bentzen, ‘Lord Harley og grev Thott. En studie i nogle af Det Kongelige Biblioteks bind og bøger fra Harleys og Thotts bogsamlinger’, in: Fund og forskning 44 (2005), 277-369; T. Schlichtkrull, ‘Det Classenske bibliotek. Samlingens udvikling og videre skæbne’, in: Bibliotekshistorie 8 (2007), 5-37; P. Kragelund, ‘Ejermærker i Danmarks Kunstbiblioteks ældre samling 1754 til 1810’, in: Fund og forskning 50 (2011), 287-314; H. Horstbøll, M. Bregnsboe, ‘Dronning Caroline Mathildes bøger. Et inventarium fra juli-august 1775 over dronning Caroline Mathildes efterladte bogsamling’, in: Danske magazin indeholdende bidrag til den danske histories oplysning 51 (2012) 2, 555-581; H.-Chr. Eisen, Sjællands Stiftsbibliotek 1812 til 2012. En historie om Danmarks første stiftsbibliotek. Roskilde 2012. 67 Ilsøe of course also builds upon a tradition, and concerning provenance one should at least mention the pioneering work done by Otto Walde (1879-1963), such as ‘Studier i äldre dansk bibliotekshistoria’, in: Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bib- lioteksväsen 19 (1932), 1-66. 68 H. Ilsøe, Bogtrykkerne i København og deres virksomhed, ca. 1600-1810. En biobibliografisk håndbog med bidrag til bogproduk- tionens historie. København 1992. 69 H. Ilsøe, On parchment, paper and palm leaves. Treasures of the Royal Library, Denmark. København 1993. 70 H. Ilsøe, Det kongelige Bibliotek i støbeskeen. Studier og samlinger til bestandens historie indtil ca. 1780. København 1999. 71 H. Ilsøe, Biblioteker til salg, om danske bogauktioner og kataloger 1661-1811. København 2007. 72 H. Ilsøe, De gamle bogomslag. 610 dekorerede danske bogomslag fra ca. 1820-1920 afbildet og præsenteret af Harald Ilsøe. København 2013. Ilsøe has already published several articles on illustrated cloth binding in Fund og forskning: H. Ilsøe, ‘Danske komponerede bind ca. 1860-1877. Bidrag til en præsentation’, in: Fund og forskning 41 (2002), 171-212; ‘Danske komponerede bind ca. 1877-1888. Bidrag til en præsentation’, in: Fund og forskning 42 (2003); 177-275; ‘Danske komponerede bind ca. 1888-1900. Bidrag til en præsentation’, in: Fund og forskning 43 (2004); 177-265; ‘De billige bøgers indtog i dansk boghandel 1908-1918’, in: Fund og forskning 45 (2006), 107-172. 73 On the thefts, see www.kb.dk/en/kb/manglende-boger/index.html and L. Korsgaard, S. Surrugue, Det store bogtyveri. København 2005. 74 www.kb.dk/en/nb/tema/webudstillinger/Royal_Identification_Marks/index.html. Cf. K. Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘Royal identification marks – a digital exhibition of characteristic features on the books of the Royal Library, bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 177

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Figure 4. Book cover of H.Iversen, Amerikanske Tilstande. En Rapport til unge Nordboer. København 1920, as reproduced in H. Ilsøe, De gamle bogomslag. Photo: The Photographic Studio, The Royal Library

thefts between 1979 and 1999 the library conducted a total survey of its old collections. Provenances were noted, and these notes are currently being entered by librarians as metadata in the online catalogue.75 Queries are posted on the ‘Can You Help?’-page on cerl’s Provenance Information website.76 A keen interest has been taken in recent years in virtual reconstructions of the library of Gottorp Castle, which in its time was a rich, princely library.77 It was founded as an institution in 1606 by Duke Johann Adolf (1575-1616) of Schleswig-Holstein- Gottorp and continued by his successors. In 1713, following the Seven Years’ War, the library was captured by the Danish king and then, between 1735 and 1749, transferred to The Royal Library. Many of the great treasures of The Royal Library – among them a copy of the second part of the Gutenberg Bible – stem from this library.

Copenhagen’, in: Care and conservation of manuscripts 10 (2008), 224-34; S. Strecker, ‘Kongelige kendetegn: ejermærker på KBs bøger’, in: Magasin fra Det Kongelige Bibliotek 25 (2012) 3, 12-27. 75 J. Rui Aadna, ‘Synliggørelse af proveniens i KBs bøger’, in: Magasin fra Det Kongelige Bibliotek 25 (2012) 3, 28-33. 76 See: www.cerl.org/resources/provenance/main. 77 E. Petersen, ‘Bibliotheca Gottorpiensis Manuscripta. The inventories of the manuscripts of Gottorp’, in: U. Kuder [et al.], Die Bibliothek der Gottorfer Herzöge. Symposium, Stiftung Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf. Nordhausen 2008, 117-128; K. Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘Gottorp books in The Royal Library of Copenhagen. Methodological considerations on the possibilities of identification’, and I. Boserup: ‘Some new ways to identify prints with a Gottorp provenance in The Royal Library, Copenhagen’, in: I. Boserup, D. J. Shaw (eds.), Virtual visits to lost libraries. Reconstruction of and access to dispersed collections. London 2011, 131-148 and 148-168. Cf. D. Lohmeier, ‘Die Gottorfer Bibliothek‘, in: Heinz Spielmann [et al.] (eds.): Gottorf im Glanz des Barock. Kunst und Kultur am Schleswiger Hof 1544-1713. Vol. 1. Schleswig 1997, 324-347. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 178

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Figure 5. Super ex libris of Christian Albrecht (1641-1694), duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp, bishop of Lübeck, on the binding of The Royal Library’s copy of the Gutenberg- bible. Photo: The Photographic Studio, The Royal Library

In his doctoral dissertation Intellectum liberare. Johann Albert Fabricius – en humanist i Europa, Erik Petersen studies the role of the philologist and theologian Johann Albert Fabricius (1668-1736) in the book trade and gives an overview of the manuscripts and annotated books in the Fabricius collection that once belonged to Marquard Gude (1635-1689), who worked as a librarian in the Gottorp library.78 Fabricius’ manuscript collection is now in The Royal Library. The Royal Library also has a collection of ex-libris, parts of which have been cut out of books in the old collections. It is embarrassing to admit that the ex-libris designed by Albrecht Dürer for Willibald Pirckheimer was cut out of one of the incunabula. Previously, the incunabula were believed to contain illustrations by Dürer as well, but this misunderstanding has recently been corrected.79 The collection of ex-libris deserves to be studied. Frederikshavn Kunstmuseum & Exlibrissamling in Northern Jutland holds an important ex-libris collection which is currently being digitised.80 Cooperation between the two institutions might be fruitful.

78 E. Petersen, Intellectum liberare. Johann Albert Fabricius – en humanist i Europa. København 1998. 79 I. Magnussen, V. Thorlacius-Ussing, ‘Willibald Pirckheimer og Albrecht Dürer. Et nyt Fund, i & ii’, in: Fund og forskning 5-6 (1958-1959), 110-128; cf. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Heilige und Hasen. Bücherschätze der Dürerzeit. Nürnberg 2008, 80. 80 See: www.art-exlibris.net. 81 See: N. Christensen, ‘How to make sense. Reflections on the influence of eighteenth century picturebooks on picturebooks of today’, in: New directions in picturebook research. New York/London 2010, 55-67; id., ‘Les tout-petits et leurs albums. Une perspective scandinave’, in: Revue des livres pour enfants 257 (2011), 105-111. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 179

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Other trends in book historical research

Children’s literature is an important aspect of the literary market and of the public libraries in Denmark, and research in children’s literature takes place at The Centre for Children’s Literature, Aarhus University, headed by Nina Christensen.81 Recent years have witnessed both a new history of children’s literature in Denmark and a discussion of the difference between a literary and a book historical approach to children’s literature.82 Recently, much attention has been given to typography as a part of book craftsmanship, in particular to the creation of new types for, among others, the publishing house Vandkunsten (Niebuhr Antikva by Allan Daastrup) and the ephemeral newspaper Dagen (designed by e-types) which existed for 40 days in 2002. The same year saw the more successful publication of the new Danish hymn book designed by Carl- H.K. Zakrisson, who chose the Arnhem typeface developed by the Dutch typographer Fred Smeijers. The interest in typography has also given rise to research and exhibitions. Sofie Beier has tried to combine insights from the history of typography and reading research in her study of high-legibility typefaces.83 The typeface Abrams Venetian, which was given to the printer and publisher Poul Kristensen for his exclusive use in 1989, was exhibited at the Media museum in 2012. In the same month a festschrift was published in honor of Poul Kristensen at the occasion of his ninetieth birthday.84 In a facsimile edition of a manuscript of Lex regia, Jesper Düring Jørgensen studied the textual history of the Lex regia, and identified Frederik Rostgaard’s typographical inspiration from the French typeface Romain du Roi.85 Caroline Nyvang, who is finishing her PhD dissertation, has recently published on the history of Danish cookery books.86 Research has also been done on censorship. Jesper Jakobsen has written about censorship in eighteenth-century Denmark – providing a useful survey of previous research87 – and Henrik Horstbøll has written about the period of press freedom in Denmark 1770-1773.88

82 A. Øster, ‘Litteraturhistorie eller boghistorie? Børnelitteraturhistorieskrivningens udfordringer’, in: K. Esmann Knudsen (ed.), Historiske fortællinger. Historieformidling og litteratur. København/Odense 2008. 83 S. Beier, Reading letters. Designing for legibility. Amsterdam 2012. 84 Bogtrykkeren, festskrift til Poul Kristensen, 12. januar 2012. Herning 2012. Cf. M. Lowry, Venetian printing. Nicolas Jenson and the rise of the Roman letterform. Herning 1989, which used Abrams Venetian for the first time. 85 J. Düring Jørgensen, D. Tamm (eds.), Kongeloven. Thomæsons håndskrift. København 2012. 86 C. Nyvang, ‘Originaler og kopister. Danske trykte kogebøger 1616-1900’, in: Magasin fra Det Kongelige Bibliotek 20:4 (2007), 15-21; id., ‘Mutter som kogebogsforfatter. Danske trykte kogebøger i 1800-tallet’, in: Personalhistorisk tidsskrift 128 (2008) 1, 101-13; id., ‘Medie og måltid – danske trykte kogebøger i 1800-tallet’, in: O. Hyldtoft (ed.), Syn på mad og drikke i 1800-tallet. København 2010, 145-231. 87 J. Jakobsen, ‘Omorganiseringen af den teologiske censur. Generalkirkeinspektionskollegiets censurvirksomhed 1737- 1747’, in: Historisk tidsskrift 111 (2011) 1, 1-36; id., ‘Christian Gottlob Proft og de utilladelige skrifter. Bogforbud i årene efter trykkefrihedsperioden’, in: Fund og forskning 51 (2012), 289-309, in which Jakobsen draws upon C. Meyer, ‘Farlige og forbudte skrifter i Helsingør: En episode’, in: Fra Frederiksborg Amt: årbog, 2000, 49-63. See also H. Ilsøe, ‘Censur og approbation. Lidt om bogcensurens administration i 16-1700tallet’, in: J.T. Lauridsen, O. Olsen (eds.), Umisteligt. København 2007, 119-135. 88 H. Horstbøll, ‘Bolle Willum Luxdorphs samling af trykkefrihedens skrifter 1770-1773’, in: Fund og forskning 44 (2005), 371-414. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 180

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Early European Books and national bibliography

What is really new in book history is the research infra-structure resulting from digitisation. The Royal Library was the first library to enter into a partnership with ProQuest for the mass digitisation of early printed books in the Early European Books (eeb) database; ‘Collection 1’ in eeb consisted of pre-1601 Danish books from its collections. eeb issues annual collections of around 4000 books and will be publishing collections for many years to come. The Royal Library is currently contributing with Danica from the seventeenth century and in the coming years the entire collection of incunabula will be digitised. Recently, the books from Karen Brahe’s Library were also made available in the database. One of the many advantages of eeb is that all the copies of an edition in the national library are scanned, which means that all eight copies of the 1514 Parisian edition of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum have now been digitised. The business model implies that the books from The Royal Library are accessible for free in Denmark and at a cost everywhere else in the world. ProQuest holds exclusive rights for ten years to Collection 1, which, in 2010 was criticised by the French national librarian, Bruno Racine, for being a ‘clause d’exclusivité drastique’.89 Of course, those books that are not in The Royal Library are not available in eeb.90 Another bibliographical disadvantage is that – in contrast to Lauritz Nielsen’s bibliography – eeb does not give any bibliographical information on books that we know once existed but which are no longer extant.91 Some of these books exist in manuscript copies. It is, therefore, still necessary to use Nielsen’s printed bibliography. Cooperation with ProQuest showed that mass-digitisation is also a question of providing and producing metadata. It has been a welcome occasion for The Royal Library to improve all catalogue records of Danish books from the seventeenth-century while preparing the books for scanning, and it will hopefully eventually lead to the creation of a modern replacement of Bibliotheca Danica. A recently published catalogue of Scandinavian books in the British Library has shown the weaknesses of Bibliotheca Danica.92 The catalogue only contains a minor part of the total number of records in the catalogues of the corresponding national bibliographies, but they are described in very great detail. The review of the catalogue by Karen Skovgaard-Petersen makes it clear that there are huge differences in the level of bibliographical description in the various national bibliographies.93 Danish sixteenth-century books are well described, but for the later centuries, until 1830, the Bibliotheca Danica remains the fundamental work. Because of the detailed decriptions and the many indices and cross-references, Skovgaard-Petersen finds the catalogue a good starting point for any kind of research on Scandinavian literature, especially for the Danish material.

89 B. Racine, Google et le nouveau monde. Paris 2010, 113. 90 Out of the 1672 numbers in Nielsen’s bibliography, 181 are not in the holdings of The Royal Library. Copies of 53 of these editions are in Karen Brahe’s library, and have consequently been added to eeb. 91 27 of the first 298 numbers in Nielsen’s bibliography refer to no longer extant editions. 92 British Library, Catalogue of Scandinavian books in the British Library printed before 1801. London 2007. 93 K. Skovgaard-Petersen, review of Catalogue of Scandinavian books in the British Library printed before 1801, in: Fund og forskning 49 (2010), 543-552. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 181

Figure 6. ‘Frederik ii’s War Book’. København, Lorentz Benedicht, 1578. The book, printed in only one copy, contains seven sections on various aspect of the science of warfare. It is now available through Early European Books. Photo: The Photographic Studio, The Royal Library bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 182

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The Universal Short Title Catalogue, based in St. Andrews, has created new bibliographies of Latin and vernacular books published in France, of books published in the Low Countries and of books published in the Iberian peninsula and is planning to collect and analyse information on books published in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. This might be a way to proceed in order to create a Scandinavian bibliography. Books that used to be extremely difficult to access are now available for free from any Danish IP-address. This means that many more people have access to Danish rare books and that the individual researcher has rapid access to (reproductions of) a great number of books. Whereas a researcher interested in the bindings of the Danish sixteenth-century books could until recently order only a limited amount of books per day, he or she is now able to browse through 2600 copies and make a rapid selection of the interesting ones. eeb has revolutionised research for the relatively few scholars already working on sixteenth-century Danish books, and hopefully it will make many more scholars work on those books – and inspire teaching.

Further perspectives

In Danish – where understatement is generally preferred to hyperbole – it is common to use an idiom which literally translated says ‘none mentioned, none forgotten’. I have mentioned many names and consequently run the risk of forgetting other names for which I apologise. I am also aware that my perspective from The Royal Library in Copenhagen may imply a certain bias. Much work still remains to be done on provenance in Danish libraries. Walde’s article (together with his personal archive in Uppsala) and Ilsøe’s work remain important studies on which to build. Recent years have shown, what exciting stories can be told by tracing the history of a manuscript or of a specific copy of a printed book.94 If one con- siders the size of the collections of manuscripts and rare books, this approach opens up a myriad of possibilities. One of the desiderata mentioned by Undorf in his doctoral dissertation is a bibliography of books printed before 1525 in Scandinavian collections. His observation that there was a massive import of Dutch books to Scandinavia around 1480 leads to another desideratum: ‘It might be interesting to see whether Dutch archival sources provide any information on what appears to be an expansive era of Dutch printing and its impact on Scandinavia and Northern Europe in general’.95 In 2011, Sune De Souza Schmidt-Madsen’s history of the Bonnier publishing houses in Denmark was published, covering the period from 1804, when Gutkind Hirschel cre-

94 I. Boserup, ‘Videnskabelig (kilde)udgivelse og den digitale revolution’, in: E. Kolding Nielsen [et al.] (eds.), Kommunikation erstatter transport. Den digitale revolution i danske forskningsbiblioteker 1980-2005. København 2005 (on Guaman Poma’s Nueva Corónica, Peru 1615); T. Schlichtkrull, ‘Audubon: Birds of America’, in: Fund og forskning 49 (2010), 237-282; E. Petersen: ‘Propria manu. Om Erasmus af Rotterdams testamente og hans efterladte papirer’, ibidem, 7-56. 95 Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, 510. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 183

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ated a lending library, a book store and a publishing house – and changed his name to Bonnier.96 This kind of publishing history should be continued. Lauritz Nielsen started working on a history of Danish private libraries, but he only finished the first volume dealing with the seventeenth century. Since some of the great libraries are still virtually untouched, a continuation of this work would be very welcome. Indeed, one of the main sources for the treasures of The Royal Library is the incredibly rich library of Otto Thott (1703-1785). He left virtually no personal documents concerning his library, and other sources for its history are few in Denmark, but it might be worthwhile to look for them abroad; annotated auction catalogues would help as well.97 I hope to be able to proceed in this direction. The University Library’s copy of the 12 volume auction catalogue of Thott’s library, in which the names of the persons and institutions that bought books at the auction are inscribed, is a tremen- dous and underexploited resource.98 A proper description of the chapter library of Lund Cathedral is a desideratum in the field of book history in Denmark. Fortunately, Thomas Rydén at the University of Lund is currently working on a project to catalogue its collection of manuscripts. Likewise, Torsten Schlichtkrull has just started working on a history of the Copenhagen University Library after the fire in 1728. A certain number of major existing manor house libraries are currently being catalogued, and a proper use of these inventories could contribute to our understanding of the learned culture in Denmark through the centuries. One might also concentrate on one person’s impact in the literary field. Peter Zeeberg has shown the way for this kind of studies in his bio-bibliography of the Danish viceroy in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, Heinrich Rantzau (1526-1598), who was a prolific publisher-writer, the owner of a rich library and acted as a patron for scholars.99 Concerning book collections and the book trade, it would be interesting to shed light on the European connections in the book trade before 1800.100 How did collectors in Denmark acquire foreign books?101 By which agents in Europe? What letters from Danish collectors are preserved in foreign libraries? Henrik Waldkirch (active 1598-1629) was the most important Danish printer of his time. Harald Ilsøe’s portrait in his book on Danish printers might be used as a starting

96 S.D.S. Schmidt-Madsen, Bonnier Forlagene i Danmark: en forlagskrønike. København 2007. Schmidt-Madsen also wrote a book at the 40th anniversary of Lindhardt og Ringhof publishers: S.D.S. Schmidt-Madsen, Lindhardt og Ringhof. Et forlag- seventyr. København 2011. 97 Cf. on the annotated auction catalogue of Gram’s library, K. Christensen, ‘Universitetsbibliotekets inkunabler. Til en opløst samlings historie’, in: Bøger. biblioteker, mennesker. Et nordisk Festskrift tilegnet Torben Nielsen. København 1988, 65. 98 Catalogi bibliothecæ Thottianæ tomus i [-vii]. Havniæ: Nic. Møller (...), 1789-1795. (Copenhagen, kb, I 6295 8°). 99 P. Zeeberg, Heinrich Rantzau. A bibliography. København 2004. 100 K. Jensen, Revolution and the antiquarian book. Reshaping the past, 1780-1815. Cambridge 2011, could be used for inspiration. 101 Henrik Horstbøll recently published a study, inspired by Robert Darnton’s study of stn, of the correspondence between stn and the publisher C. Philibert in Copenhagen: H. Horstbøll, ‘En bogtrykker og boghandler i København. Claude Philiberts forbindelse med Société typographique de Neuchâtel 1771-1783’, in: Fund og forskning 51 (2012), 311-335. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 184

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point for an inquiry into his connections at the Frankfurt fair and in Basle. Waldkirch is known to have been a mail carrier for Danish scholars,102 and Dennis E. Rhodes has described how, on 14 March 1592, the Danish physician Gellius Sascerides wrote to the Italian mathematician and astronomer Giovanni Antonio Magini, that “if you want to send anything to Tycho Brahe, I think the best idea would be for you to give it to J.B. Ciotti the Venetian printer to take to Conrad Waldkirchius at Frankfurt.”103 The printer Conrad Waldkirch in Basle was Henrik Waldkirch’s uncle and there were close ties between the two houses. Much research has been done into the history of reading in Denmark, but instead of looking for evidence of literacy one might take the books (printed and handwritten) and their readers as a point of departure, in search of marginalia.104 Louis Hjelmslev’s copy of fellow linguist Viggo Brøndal’s book Ordklasserne (1928) is an interesting object for inquiry into twentieth-century linguistics,105 and Jakob Ulfeldt’s marginal notes to his manuscripts on contemporary sixteenth-century Europe might give us an idea about what a Danish nobleman learned about the world during his study abroad.106 Turning to the borrowing records of The Royal Library would be another possibility. The library has 133 volumes of borrowing records covering the period 1778-1935, that have been used by scholars working on, for instance, Kierkegaard and Grundtvig. The borrowing records have been portrayed by Christian Kaatmann as a buried treasure.107 Another possibility would be to analyse reading as it is taking place. Reading room readers often describe the encounter with a long searched for book in the reading room as an emotional event: accelerated heart beats, time standing still, awe or ecstasy. It would be interesting to see a cognitive research project carried out at The Royal Library on the two different reading situations, reading the same rare book in the reading room after having overcome various barriers and at home in front of the screen using the Early European Books website. The two doctoral dissertations mentioned in this article were written by historians with an interest in cultural history. A significant new trend in book historical research in Denmark, since Horstbøll published his survey in 2005, is the way book history has entered literary studies, and especially Scandinavian studies. With the recently published handbook and the active Nordic network, the ground has been prepared for coming research projects. Apart from the perspectives that I have hinted at here, judging the book by its cover, or rather including the function of dust jackets, book covers and paratexts in literary history, seems a promising endeavour for literary studies.

102 A. Frøland, Dansk boghandels historie 1482 til 1945. København 1974, 69. 103 D.E. Rhodes, ‘Some neglected aspects of the career of Giovanni Battista Ciotti’, in: The library, 6th series 9 (1987) 3, 230- 231. 104 H.J. Jackson, Marginalia. Readers writing in books. New Haven 2001. Cf. E. Jørgensen’s review of O. Walde, Storhetstidens litterara krigsbyten, in: Historisk tidsskrift, 9th series 2 (1921-1923), 384-386. 105 The Royal Library, ms. Acc. 1965/95. 106 F. Zuliani, ‘En samling politiske håndskrifter fra slutningen af det 16. århundrede. Giacomo Castelvetro og Christian Barnekows bibliotek’, in: Fund og forskning 50 (2011), 240; cf. D. Tamm, Christian den fjerdes kanslere. København 1987, 44. 107 C. Kaatmann, ‘En nedgraven skat. Det Kgl. Biblioteks udlån 1778-1820’, in: Fund og forskning 33 (1994), 119-149. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 185

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In 2013 an exhibition on the Art of the Book in Denmark showcasing 50 Danish printed books from 1482 to the present will open at The Royal Library. The centuries old and recently revitalised discipline book history seems to be thriving in Denmark in the field of tension between history, bibliography and literary studies, where traditional bibliography all of a sudden finds itself being the weaker part. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 186 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 187

César Manrique Figueroa

Studying the book in Hispanic America The process of consolidation of national identities

Book history in Latin America, at least from a Western point of view (since the pre- Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica boasted their own codices, with their own writing systems), started strictly under the Spanish colonial regime that triggered the Europeanisation of Spanish America, or rather its Hispanicisation. This relatively peripheral position with respect to Europe during the ancien régime, together with the independence processes during the nineteenth century and the modernisation of most Latin American nations in the last hundred years, directly determined the lines of study regarding book historical activities. Hence, the present text provides an overview of book history in Latin America from the colonial period to present day, with special attention to those authors that have produced the most important contributions in the field from Mexico to Argentina. Moreover, this review presents and discusses the most relevant topics and trends generated in this vast cultural and geographical region, as well as the professionalisation and modernisation of the current lines of research, to finally provide a general idea of the challenges expected for the future.

General historical frame

The Spanish occupation, conquest and colonisation of an enormous range of geographical areas all over the New World from the late fifteenth century, but especially after the conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires during the sixteenth century, launched one of the most fascinating and complex developing processes of a new reality and society in human experience: the colonial or viceroyal Spanish America.1 This period became a real

1 Both terms, ‘colonial’ and ‘viceroyal’, have been extensively used in historiography; it is more accurate to speak about viceroyalties when referring to Mexico (New Spain) and Peru and later in time when referring to the viceroyalties of New Granada and Río de la Plata. In such kingdoms, a viceroy held the power as the representative of the royal authority directly appointed by the king himself. See L. Weckmann, The medieval heritage of Mexico. New York 1992, 337-338. 2 C. Bernard, S. Gruzinski, Historia del Nuevo Mundo del Descubrimiento a la Conquista. La experiencia Europea, 1492-1550. Vol. 1, Mexico 1996, 9. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 188

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human laboratory as expressed by Gruzinski and Bernard,2 in which Spain improvised a system of maritime commerce without precedent and ordered a transoceanic empire that included the emerging societies of the continent, bringing about the diffusion of European culture in the New World.3 This extended historical period came to an end (at least politically speaking) during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, when the wars of independence started simultaneously all over Spanish America, giving way to the formation of most of the current independent Hispanic American nations. The case of Brazil offers a different situation, because the country belonged to Portuguese and not to Spanish America, having its own historical development. Therefore, Brazilian book studies will not be reviewed in the present article. Regarding the nineteenth century, it was an agitated period for the whole Hispanic America. For decades the young nations had similar problems such as the consolidation of their national identities, the formation of their governing bodies and political parties, fights between conservatives and liberals as well as facing civil wars and foreign invasions. Finally, from the last decades of the nineteenth century onwards the liberal Republics in the region witnessed the modernisation and further development of their economies and institutions and the consolidation of the modern nation states. However, along with the incorporation of modernity, several military regimes and dictatorships hit the region throughout the twentieth century, exacerbating the deep social differences that have survived up to present day as one of the major challenges for the region.

An overview of the Spanish American presses during the ancien regime

Transference of European culture to the New World included the establishment of the first European type of printing press outside the Old Continent, which was set up in Mexico City on June 12, 1539 when a contract was signed between the German printer Johann Cromberger and his Italian press operator Giovanni Paoli (known in Spanish as Juan Pablos), both residents in Seville, in order to establish a printing office in Mexico City, capital of the newly established Viceroyalty of New Spain.4 The first of its type in the New World.5 After Mexico City, other urban centres throughout Spanish America boasted printing shops during the colonial period, being usually capitals of administrative units such as viceroyalties or audiences, as well as important ports or regional centres. The rich city of Lima, capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru hosted the second printing press in the New World (1584); in 1593 a printing press was established in Manila, and although

3 I. Leonard, ‘Spanish ship-board reading in the sixteenth century’, in: Hispania 32 (1949), 53. 4 The Viceroyalty of New Spain was the first established in Spanish America (1535). It included not only present Mexico, but also vast areas of the present usa (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California), as well as Central American countries such as Guatemala. 5 On Crombergers’ editorial activity see: C. Griffin, The Crombergers of Seville. The history of a printing and merchant dynasty. Oxford 1988. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 189

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Figure 1. An example of a book printed in Mexico: Hernán Cortés, Historia de Nueva España. México 1770. Photo: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague

the Philippines are not part of Latin America, by that time they were under Spanish rule, and all the maritime communication was done through New Spain (with the famed Galleon of Manila). Therefore, Manila’s press has been somehow considered as one of those printing shops established within the Spanish Empire. By the seventeenth century we find presses in two more places: Puebla de los Ánge- les, the second most important urban centre in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1640) and Guatemala City, capital of the homonymous Royal Audience (1660).6 During the following century more towns or even remote Jesuit missions joined the exclusive list of places boasting a printing press in Spanish America. Thanks to the Jesuits’ efforts, their Missions in Paraguay had their own self-made press (c.1703); followed by Havana, which was one of the most important maritime hubs of the whole Spanish Empire due to its

6 A Royal Audience was a high court, a collegiate power, which exercised not only judicial and political functions within the Spanish Empire but also administrative and even military powers. In Spanish America such institutions took over the civil governments of vast territories along with the viceroy. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 190

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Figure 2. An example of a book printed in Lima: Nicolas Mastrilo Duran, Sermon en el otavario, que la ilustrissima religion de redemptores celebro a la canon- izacion de su primero fundador, y patriarca San Pedro Nolasco. Lima 1632. Photo: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague

strategic position (1707); Antequera, (present Oaxaca, Mexico), which was an important regional centre in New Spain (1720); Santa Fe de Bogotá, capital of the viceroyalty of New Granada (1739); The village of Ambato, in the Royal Audience of Quito, where the Jesuits set up a printing press (1755); Córdoba, present day Argentina, which was the Jesuits’ centre of operations in the vast region of Tucumán (1765); Santiago, capital of the Royal Audience of Chile (1776); the port of Buenos Aires, which was going to be the capital of the Viceroyalty of Río de La Plata (1780); Guadalajara, capital of the Royal Audience of New Galicia (1792); and Veracruz, the port of entrance to New Spain (c.1794). Finally, other printing presses were established during the first decades of the nineteenth century, still under Spanish rule. This happened in cities such as Caracas, capital of the homonymous Royal Audience (1808); the port of Cartagena in the viceroyalty of New Granada – present Colombia – (1809); and Mérida, capital of the Intendancy of Yucatán – present Mexico – (1813).7

7 J.T. Medina, La imprenta en Mérida de Yucatán, 1813-1821. Santiago de Chile 1904; reprinted in Amsterdam in 1964. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 191

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The first Spanish American bibliographic compilations

It should be noted that in Spanish America access to education – and therefore to higher European culture – was restricted to the dominant population of Hispanic origin, which was numerically a minority compared to the abundant Indian, black and ‘mixed’ population. As a result, the scholarly activity, the circulation of books, the formation of libraries and the cultivation of a taste for reading was, with some exceptions, reserved to the population of Hispanic origin. However, the criollos, those who were born to Spanish parents, were also socially excluded by the Spaniards by birth, since the highest government posts (such as that of viceroy, archbishops, or oidores of Royal Audiences),8 were exclusively reserved to Spaniards appointed by the Spanish king. Hence, the criollos conceived themselves as inheritors of the European culture transmitted by their parents, but living in another continent and facing different human experiences, and in some way feeling isolated and resigned to play a marginal role in the cultural world emanated from Europe. These criollo elites, although a minority in numerical terms, had the intellectual and analytical European tools (language, religion, culture) to face, interpret, understand and assimilate a more complex human reality than that of the motherland. However, this dominant group was constantly confronted with the fact that despite being the owners of vast lands, they were subject to the policies of the Spanish Crown, which was not always well-informed of the American reality. Finally, the so-called criollismo, the cultural identity generated by this group, included symbolic and ideological representations derived from this tense reality within a hierarchical society constantly faced with delicately balanced situations.9 Within this context, the first bibliographic work that attempted to catalogue the Spanish-American authors or those books related to Spanish America, was written by a criollo from the city of Córdoba (present Argentina): Antonio León Pinelo’s Epítome de una biblioteca oriental y occidental, náutica y geográfica (1629).10 Definitely, León Pinelo’s great merit was to summarise for the first time the bibliographic production regarding the New World (the Philippines included), in what can be considered as the first bibliography related to the American continent.11 As Millares Carlo pointed out, León Pinelo may be deemed the father of the American bibliographic studies.12 The main purpose of Epítome de una biblioteca was to provide reliable studies to contemporary scholars about the American continent and, if possible, to stimulate the interest in American-related topics.13 León Pinelo’s Epítome was the starting point of the Spanish-American bio-biblio-

8 The oidor (literally ‘hearer’), was a civil judge and member of a collegiate tribunal, the Audiencia. They represented the king’s supreme judicial power. See Weckmann, The medieval heritage of Mexico, 337. 9 E. González González, ‘La Universidad en la cultura novohispana del siglo xvii’, in: K. Kohut (ed.), La formación de la cultura virreinal. Vol. ii: El siglo XVII. Frankfurt am Main/Madrid 2004, 346. 10 A. de León Pinelo, Epítome de una biblioteca oriental y occidental, náutica y geográfica. Madrid: Juan González, 1629. 11 J.J. Eguiara y Eguren, Biblioteca Mexicana. Repr. Mexico 1986, 187. 12 A. Millares Carlo, El Epitome de Pinelo, primera bibliografía del Nuevo Mundo. Washington 1958, 27. 13 At that time León Pinelo was working in Spain where he was related to one of the most important governing bodies of the Spanish Crown, the Council of the Indies based in Seville. See: L. Hachim Lara, ‘De León Pinelo a Beristain: ensayo sobre la tradición de los repertorios literarios hispanoamericanos’, in: Revista Chilena de literatura 59 (2001), 141. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 192

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graphic genre, mainly produced by American criollo scholars, which increasingly became a vindication of their own culture against the allegedly superiority of the Spaniards due to the misconception of the general backwardness of the American continent.14 Possibly the best example of these bio-bibliographies is the unfinished Bibliotheca Mexicana (1755) written in Latin by the cleric Juan José de Eguiara y Egurén, who wanted to highlight the abundance of remarkable scholars that were born in or that had been active in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (including also some references to the Viceroyalty of Peru) and their works (in print and manuscript). The work was essentially a refutation of the slanderous affirmation of the Spaniard Manuel Martí, dean of the cathedral of Alicante, who considered the intellectual and academic activity produced in the New World as backward and without any kind of academic merit. As a result, the Bibliotheca Mexicana is a repertory of the underestimated scientific, literary, philosophic and religious knowledge produced and printed in Hispanic America, specifically in New Spain.15 The work not only shows the vast erudition displayed by Eguiara but also his clear intention to vindicate the honour and letters of his fatherland, as illustrated by this beautiful quote:

Oh, if only the printing houses of Lyon in France, of Antwerp, Louvain, Venice and other such cities were as close to our lands as the sun! What an abundance of books would Europe enjoy – their ranks swollen with all manner of literature, notable for their variety, adorned to perfection, wonderfully finished and as if burnished to serve as a mirror reflecting the rays of that sun? The Holy Spirit did not pour forth his divine science with such lavish generosity over one part only of this world, but over all.16

In the same vein, some other eighteenth-century authors left bio-bibliographic catalogues, such as Antonio de Alcedo y Bejarano, historian from Quito with his Bibliotheca Americana (1791), which was only published in the twentieth century. In his work, Alcedo provided a repertory of works related to the American continent, written in different languages, as well as the biographies of the authors.17 The work has been considered a systematic, scientific bibliographic tool, which was in accordance with the Enlightenment’s desire to systematise knowledge. Furthermore, directly inspired on Eguiara’s unfinished Bibliotheca Mexicana, José Mariano Beristain y Souza, another cleric from New Spain, wrote his Biblioteca Hispanoamericana Septentrional, started in 1796 and published in three volumes between 1816 and 1821, also in the form of a modern bio-bibliography.18 Beristain’s vast bibliography is the last one written during the colonial period as part of this series produced by criollos and intended to positively

14 E. González González, ‘La Universidad en la cultura novohispana del siglo xvii’, 339. 15 Eguiara y Eguren, Biblioteca Mexicana. The work is preceded by 20 prologues or anteloquia. See the Spanish translation: J.J. De Eguiara y Egurén, Prólogos a la Biblioteca Mexicana. Repr. Mexico 1996. 16 Eguiara y Eguren, Biblioteca Mexicana. Repr. Mexico 1986, vol. 1, 137. 17 A. De Alcedo y Bejarano, Bibliotheca Americana. Catálogo de los autores que han escrito sobre la América en diferentes idiomas y noticias de su vida y patria, años en que vivieron y obras que escribieron. Repr. Quito 1964. 18 J.M. Beristain y Souza, Biblioteca Hispano-americana Septentrional. 3 vols., Mexico 1816-1821. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 193

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strengthen the identity of the Hispanic American people highlighting the cultural output generated in the viceroyalties.

The creation of national bibliographic repositories

After the Independence from Spain and the foundation of the Republican system in most of the Latin American new countries (with occasionally brief monarchical attempts), it was mandatory to develop and consolidate the national identities and the power of the State. As part of this process, the new republican regimes favored the creation of national libraries, that not only secured the national bibliographic patrimonies, but were also in accordance with the modern nineteenth-century European standards of civilisation, being considered as symbols of cultural achievement.19 In November 1868, Manuel Payno, a Mexican writer and intellectual, published an article entitled ‘La gran biblioteca nacional’, in which he argued about the importance of such institutions in modern and civilised societies in these terms:

That such an institution [a national library] is indispensable in a civilised society, as necessary as food, no one doubts. Thus, what should be done is not to collect books without taste, with neither criterion nor discernment, in humble, dark quarters distant from the centre of the cities, but to erect a dignified grand monument to inspire the august ideas of scholarship and of scientific inquiry.20

Argentina was the first nation to officially establish a National Library in Buenos Aires (1810), which was founded by decree of the first governing board of the new Republic. It was followed by neighboring Chile (1813) and Uruguay (1815). Shortly after independence had been declared, the government of Peru signed a decree on the foundation of its National Library in 1821. The case of Peru’s National Library offers a notable example of the impact of armed conflicts on bibliographic repositories. During the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), Chile confronted Peru and Bolivia for control of mineral rich areas. The Chilean troops occupied Lima in 1881 and looted the National Library, taking with them thousands of books to Santiago. Recently the Chilean government has returned some thousands of books to Peru.21 Other countries were to follow. In 1822 the Colombian government reorganised the Royal Library that had been created in 1777 with Jesuit collections, and which was reopened as the National Library of Colombia in 1823. In the following decade other countries also established their own national libraries. Such was the case of Venezuela

19 P. Jones, ‘Indispensable in a civilized society. Manuel Payno’s Las Bibliotecas de México’, in: Libraries & the cultural record 42, 3 (2007), 270. 20 M. Payno, ‘Las bibliotecas de México’, in: El semanario ilustrado 2 (1868). Quoted and translated into English in Jones, ‘Indispensable in a civilized society’, 280. 21 ‘Chile returns looted Peru books’, www.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7082436.stm (retrieved 22 January 2013). bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 194

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(1833). In the case of Mexico, the National Library was originally founded also in 1833, but it was only established definitely in 1867 after several unsuccessful attempts. The Central American nations followed the rest of the region in the second half of the century: Guatemala (1879) and Costa Rica (1888). In order to provide collections to the newly created national libraries, the republican governments of several countries (Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, for instance) assumed control over the rich Jesuit libraries (the Society of Jesus had been expelled from all Spanish possessions in 1767), incorporating them into the national collections and charging intellectuals with collecting and caring for the books.22 In Mexico, with the proclamation of the ‘Reform Laws’ (1859-1860), all church properties were nation- alised in order to weaken the financial hold the church had on Mexico. Thus, virtually all the rich clerical libraries were integrated into the National Library and other State collections. Eventually, the Latin American national libraries became larger and richer thanks to private donations of intellectuals and book collectors. Finally the legal deposit of books was also implemented (e.g. in Chile in 1820 and in Mexico in 1846).

Nineteenth-century national bibliographies

Nineteenth-century Latin American intellectuals, who, to a great extent, were under the influence of the European currents of thought (specially from the second half of the century), were increasingly interested in the production of national historiographies, since these works laid the basis for the construction of a national past.23 Historical production was considered a decisive cohesive element in the formation of national identities. Multifaceted learned men, typical examples of nineteenth-century erudition, undertook this essential task by publishing corpora of historical documents and works on national history. In line with this, the history of the domestic printing press and its output in Latin America was one of the relevant topics during the second half of the century all over the region, as proved by the works of several historians such as the Argentinian Juan María Gutiérrez’s Bibliografia de la primera imprenta de Buenos Aires: desde su fundación hasta el año de 1810 (1866); the Colombian Pedro María Ibáñez’s La imprenta en Bogotá: desde su intro- ducción hasta 1810 (1898); the Ecuadorian cleric and historian Federico González Suárez’s Bibliografía ecuatoriana (1892); and the Mexican historians, Joaquín García Icazbalceta’s Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVI (1886) and Vicente de Paula Andrade’s Ensayo bibliográ- fico mexicano del siglo XVII (1899).24

22 Jones, ‘Indispensable in a civilized society’, 280. 23 See, for instance: H. Morales Moreno, ‘Las ideas políticas sobre la nación en América Latina durante la segunda mitad del siglo xix’, in: Revista de historia de América 132 (2003), 55-74. 24 J.M. Gutiérrez, Bibliografia de la primera imprenta de Buenos Aires: desde su fundación hasta el año de 1810. Buenos Aires 1886; P.M. Ibáñez, La imprenta en Bogotá: desde su introducción hasta 1810. Guayaquil 1898; F. González Suárez, Bibliografía ecuatoriana: la imprenta en el Ecuador durante el tiempo de la colonia 1750-1792. Quito 1892; J. García Icazbalceta, Bibliografía Mexicana del siglo XVI. Catálogo razonado de impresos en México de 1539 a 1600. Mexico 1886; V.P. Andrade, Ensayo bibliográfico mexicano del siglo XVII. Mexico 1899; Ensayo bibliográfico mexicano del siglo XVIII. Mexico 1899. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 195

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Figure 3. Joaquín García Icazbalceta, Bibliografia mexicana del siglo XVI. Mexico 1954. Photo: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague

However, the first scholar who provided a complete detailed overview of the output of Latin American printing presses during the whole colonial period was the Chilean historian and bibliographer José Toribio Medina. His copious bibliographic catalogues were printed from 1891 to 1908 and reprinted several times. Medina’s extensive and exhaustive research is classified by cities or viceroyalties that hosted a printing press, covering the printing press history in Argentina, his native Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay, Peru, the Philippines, and Venezuela.25

25 J.T. Medina, Historia y bibliografía de la imprenta en el antiguo Virreinato del Río de La Plata: epítome 1705-1810. Santiago de Chile 1890; La imprenta en Santiago de Chile desde sus orígenes hasta febrero de 1817. Santiago de Chile 1891; La imprenta en Bogotá, 1739-1821. Santiago de Chile 1904; La imprenta en Cartagena de Indias, 1809-1820. Santiago de Chile 1904; La imprenta en La Habana, 1707-1810. Santiago de Chile 1904; La imprenta en Guatemala, 1660-1821. Santiago de Chile 1910; La imprenta en México, 1539-1821. Seville 1893; La imprenta en Guadalajara, 1793-1821. Santiago de Chile 1904; La imprenta en Mérida de Yucatán, 1813-1821. Santiago de Chile 1904; La imprenta en Oaxaca, 1720-1820. Santiago de Chile 1904; La imprenta en Puebla de los Ángeles, 1640-1821. Santiago de Chile 1908; La imprenta en Veracruz, 1794-1821. Santiago de Chile 1904; Historia y bibli- ografía de la imprenta en el antiguo Virreinato del Río de La Plata: Historia de la imprenta en Paraguay (1705-1727), en Montevideo (1807-1810). La Plata 1892; La imprenta en Lima. Epítome, 1584-1810. Santiago de Chile 1890; La imprenta en Arequipa, Cuzco, Trujillo y otros pueblos del Perú durante la campaña de la independencia 1820-1825. Santiago de Chile 1904; La imprenta en Manila desde sus orígenes hasta 1810. Santiago de Chile 1896; La imprenta en Caracas, 1808-1821. Santiago de Chile 1904. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 196

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It may therefore be affirmed that from the last quarter of the nineteenth century and through the first three decades of the twentieth century, Latin American bibliographic studies were focused on the study of the bibliographic patrimony printed by domestic presses, as well as on the history of those national printing presses. Nearly all these works were somehow inspired by Toribio Medina’s research. See, for instance, the studies regarding Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, Uruguay, and Venezuela.26

Early twentieth century new approaches

In consonance with this positivist distinctive spirit of the turn of the century, new scientific approaches also aroused the interest of Latin American scholars, such as the classification of local editions according to modern scientific disciplines27 and the study and republication of manuscripts printed by Hispanic America’s presses in the indigenous languages of the continent, mainly during the colonial period. These were normally liturgical or grammatical works written by monks (Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians) in order to perform the massive Christianisation of the Indians, a subject which still attracts much attention from modern scholars.28 Finally, the study of inquisitorial documents related to book history during the

26 Regarding Argentina: L.R. Fors, Indice cronológico de los trabajos ejecutados en la imprenta de los niños expósitos de Buenos Aires durante los siglos XVIII y XIX que existen en la Biblioteca Pública Provincial de La Plata. La Plata 1904; C. Heras, Los primeros trabajos de la imprenta de Niños Expósitos. La Plata 1930; J. Canter, La imprenta de los Niños Expósitos en 1820 y 1821. Buenos Aires 1931. Regarding Chile: J. Vicuña Cifuentes, Contribución a la historia de la imprenta en Chile. Santiago de Chile 1903; M. Bianchi, La imprenta en Chile. Santiago de Chile 1936. Regarding Colombia: E. Posada, La imprenta en Santa Fé de Bogotá en el siglo XVIII. Madrid 1917; G. Otero Muñoz, Historia del periodismo en Colombia: desde la introducción de la imprenta hasta el fin de la Reconquista Española (1737-1819). Bogotá 1925. Regarding Cuba: L.M. Pérez, Impresos de la Real Sociedad Patriótica y del Real Consulado de La Habana y adiciones a la imprenta en La Habana de José Toribio Medina. La Habana 1907. Regarding Ecuador: C.E. Sánchez, La imprenta del Ecuador: en conmemoración del IV centenario de la fundación de Quito: 1534-1934, y el primer centenario de la imprenta nacional. Quito 1935. Regarding Guatemala: J.E. O’Ryan, Bibliografía de la imprenta en Guatemala. Santiago de Chile 1897; V.M. Díaz, Historia de la imprenta en Guatemala. Guatemala 1930; G. Valenzuela, La imprenta en Guatemala: algunas ediciones a la obra que con este título publicó en Santiago de Chile (…) José Toribio Medina. Guatemala 1933. Regarding Mexico: N. De León, Bibliografía Mexicana del siglo XVIII. 5 vols., Mexico 1902-1908; id., La imprenta en México: ensayo histórico y bibliográfico. Mexico 1900; J.B. Iguíniz, La imprenta en la Nueva Galicia 1793-1821. Mexico 1911; see also A. Millares Carlo, Ensayo de una bibliografía de bibliografías mexicana. Mexico 1943. Regarding Peru: R. Moreno (ed.), Biblioteca peruana: apuntes para un catálogo de impresos. 2 vols., Santiago de Chile 1896; C. Prince, La biblioteca peruana en la exposición universal de París de 1900. Lima 1900; id., Suplemento a la biblioteca peruana colonial. Lima 1912. Regarding the Philippines: W.E. Retana, La imprenta en Filipinas: Adiciones y observaciones a la imprenta en Manila de D.J.T. Medina. Madrid 1899. Regarding Uruguay: E. Dado, Historia y bibliografía de la imprenta en Montevideo 1810-1865. Montevideo 1912; J. Torre Revello, Contribución a la historia de la imprenta en Montevideo. Buenos Aires 1926. Regarding Venezuela: M.S. Sánchez, La imprenta de la expedición libertadora: capítulo de la obra en preparación: historia y preparación de la imprenta en Venezuela. Caracas 1916. 27 N. De León, Apuntes para una bibliografía antropológica de México. Mexico 1901; id., Biblioteca botánico-mexicana. Mexico 1895. 28 J. García Icazbalceta, Apuntes para un catálogo de escritores en lenguas indígenas de América. Mexico 1866; J.T. Medina, Bibliografía en las lenguas Quechua y Aymará. New York 1930; id., Bibliografía de la lengua guaraní. Buenos Aires 1930. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 197

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Figure 4. José Toribio Medina, Biblioteca Hispano-Americana, 1493- 1810. Reprint Amsterdam 1962. Photo: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague

viceroyal period, particularly the rich collection kept at the Archivo General de la Nación of Mexico (agn). These sources provide different kinds of documents, such as lists of private libraries confiscated by the Inquisition which belonged to people (including book printers) accused of heresy, Lutheranism, Judaism, heterodoxy or witchcraft. These documents also mention isolated books seized to be reviewed and the results of the inquisitorial inspections or visitas carried out by inquisitorial officers seeking prohibited books on board the Spanish fleets that yearly arrived at the port of Veracruz. The documentation available covers the period 1575-1600, the rest of the series is incomplete or not preserved in the archive. This pioneering and precious compilation of inquisitorial documents related to book history in New Spain was originally published by Francisco Fernández del Castillo in Mexico in 1914, under the name Libros y libreros en el siglo XVI.29 Since then, this book become a classic, as it has enhanced much of the literature on the topic, and it is still an obligatory reference for contemporary researchers interested in book history during the viceroyal period.

29 See the recent edition: F. Fernández del Castillo, Libros y libreros en el siglo XVI. Repr. Mexico 1982. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 198

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Following this trend, in 1939, with the celebration of the fourth centenary of the establishment of the printing press in Mexico, the Archivo General de la Nación published 40 inventories of books found among the Inquisition documents. Particularly interesting were the memorials of books presented by seventeenth-century booksellers of Mexico City, whose book lists were requested by the Inquisition in order to have control over the printed stock available in Mexico City book stores (from 1655 to 1661).30 Such records still provide material for current research. During the following decades, scholars in Latin America continued to focus their attention on the study of the local printing presses, as well as on the history of Latin American journalism. In this respect, the work of the Argentinian historian José Torre Revello, El libro, la imprenta y el periodismo en América (Buenos Aires 1940) sparked new interest on the topic. Furthermore, the study of the works of the already mentioned criollo scholars such as León Pinelo, Eguiara y Egurén, Beristain y Souza increasingly became a subject of study, particularly in Mexico, where the Spanish exiled professor Agustín Millares Carlo developed a line of studies in local book history, focusing on the bio-bibliographies and compilations left by the criollo scholars and by nineteenth century historians.31

Recent research and professionalisation of bibliographic studies

The new Latin American book historiography has been produced during the last 15 years, and it has been strongly influenced by authors such as Roger Chartier and Robert Darnton, who have defined the field of study on book history.32 These two internationally well-known researchers have established a fruitful exchange of ideas with Latin American researchers interested in the history of the book, particularly in Mexico and Argentina, the two most important Latin American editorial centres, where several works by Chartier and Darnton have been translated into Spanish.33 As a result, new approaches have aroused scholars’ interests, such as the complex relations established between readers and books – not only during the viceroyal or colonial period, but also during the nineteenth century –, as well as the circulation, reception and diffusion of written culture. In this vein, Mexico is the country where the largest amount of studies directly influenced by Chartier and Darnton have been produced, possibly due to the rich archives and libraries of the country available for

30 E. O’Gorman, ‘Bibliotecas y librerías coloniales 1585-1694’, in: Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación 10 (1939), 661-1006. 31 A. Millares Carlo, Ensayo de una bibliografía de bibliografías mexicanas la imprenta, el libro, las bibliotecas. Mexico 1943. 32 C. Castañeda, ‘Prólogo’, in: id. (ed.), Del autor al lector. I. Historia del libro en México, II. Historia del libro. Mexico 2002, 7. 33 Regarding Roger Chartier’s works see: R. Chartier, Cultura escrita, literatura e historia. Coacciones transgredidas y libertades restringidas. Conversaciones de Roger Chartier. Mexico 1999; El juego de las reglas: lecturas. Buenos Aires 2000; Escribir las prácti- cas: Foucault, De Certeau, Marin. Buenos Aires 1996; Sociedad y escritura en la Edad Moderna. Mexico 1995. Regarding Robert Darnton’s works see: R. Darnton, Edición y subversión. Literatura clandestina en el Antiguo Régimen. Mexico 2003; El coloquio de los lectores. Ensayos sobre autores, manuscritos, editores y lectores. Mexico 2003; Los best-sellers prohibidos en Francia antes de la re - volución. Mexico 2008; El beso de Lamourette. Reflexiones sobre historia cultural. Buenos Aires 2010; El negocio de la Ilustración. Historia editorial de la Encyclopédie, 1775-1800. Mexico 2011. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 199

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researchers.34 The study of private libraries as sources for historians has also been extensively researched since the 1970s in several countries of the region such as Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela.35 Moreover, Mexico was the first Latin American country that established an institute specifically devoted to book research, the Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas (ibb), as one of the research institutes of the National University of Mexico (unam). The institute was created in 1967 and is directly linked to the National Library of Mexico. The main lines of investigation focus on bibliographical, bibliological, hemerographical and archival studies, as well as on librarianship. Thus, the institute is directly responsible for the study, preservation and administration of the collections stored at the National Library and the National Periodicals Library. In fact, the National Library in Mexico is related to the National University, and is not an independent institution like in most countries. The academic staff organise symposia, colloquia, exhibitions and activities related to bibliographical studies. The institute also boast a journal and publishes books on regular basis.36 In Argentina the Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas y Crítica Textual (iibcrit) was created in 1978. Its main purpose is the study of problems and methods related to text editions and textual criticism of all the Spanish-language works produced either in Spain or in Latin America from the Middle Ages until present day.37

Future perspectives

The recent commemoration of the bicentennial of the independences of most of the Spanish speaking countries of the region, which were mostly celebrated in 2010, sparked fresh interest in the study of the bibliographical production of the nineteenth century.

34 See the different studies compiled in works like Castañeda, Del autor al lector; M.P. Gutiérrez Lorenzo (ed.), Impresos y libros en la historia económica de México (siglos XVI-XIX). Guadalajara 2007; I. García Aguilar [et al.], Leer en tiempos de la colonia: imprenta, bibliotecas y lectores en la Nueva España. Mexico 2010; M. Garone Gravier (ed.), Miradas a la cultura del libro en Puebla. Bibliotecas, tipógrafos, grabadores, libreros y ediciones en la época colonial. Mexico/Puebla 2012. 35 Regarding Mexico see L. Coudart [et al.], ‘Las bibliotecas particulares del siglo xviii: una fuente para el historiador’, in: Secuencia: revista de historia y ciencias sociales del Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora 56 (2003), 173-191; R. Diego Fernández, ‘Biblioteca del oidor de la audiencia de la Nueva Galicia Joseph Manuel de la garza falcón (1763)’, in: Anuario Mexicano de historia del derecho 11-12 (1999-2000), 91-160; C. Gómez Álvarez [et al.], Una biblioteca obispal, Antonio Bergosa y Jordán, 1802. Puebla 1997; C. Gómez Álvarez [et al.], Un hombre de estado y sus libros. El obispo Campillo, 1740-1813. Mexico/Puebla 1997; I. Osorio Romero, Historia de las bibliotecas Novohispanas. Mexico 1986. Regarding Peru see T. Martínez Hampe, Bibliotecas privadas en el mundo colonial: la difusión de libros e ideas en el virreinato del Perú (siglos XVI-XVII). Frankfurt 1996; P. Guivobich Pérez, ‘Bibliotecas de médicos en Lima colonial’, in: Castañeda, Del autor al lector, 293-304. Regarding Chile see A. Dougnac Rodríguez, ‘Reforma y tradición en la Biblioteca de un obispo ilustrado de Chile. El caso de Francisco José de Marán (1780-1807)’, in: Revista Chilena de historia del derecho 16 (1990-1991), 579-618. Regarding Argentinian scholars see D. Ripodas Ardanaz, ‘Bibliotecas privadas de funcionarios de la Real Audiencia de Charcas’, in: Memoria del Segundo Congreso Venezolano de Historia. Caracas 1975, vol. 2, 499-555. Finally, regarding Venezuela see I. Leal, Libros y bibliotecas en Venezuela colonial, 1633-1767. Caracas 1979. 36 See the internet site www.iib.unam.mx. 37 See the internet site www.iibicrit-conicet.gov.ar. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 200

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Thus, the studies of nineteenth-century written culture are expected to experience a steady growth within the following years.38 Moreover, the bibliographical studies and the journalistic production related to the social, artistic and political movements of the twentieth century such as the Mexican Revolution or the dictatorships in countries like Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, the Cuban Revolution, the guerrillas in Central America or Colombia are becoming increasingly popular within scholarly circles. Regarding the preservation of national bibliographic patrimonies, Mexican institutions have recently made considerable progress in cataloguing the copious national bibliographic patrimony amassed throughout the colonial period and the nineteenth century. Thus, the foundation has been laid for Mexican institutions to perform professional cataloguing. Several Mexican libraries have done excellent works of cataloguing, such as the Library José María Lafragua of the Benemérita Universidad of Puebla (buap), the Franciscan Library of Cholula of the University of Las Américas (udla), the sixteenth-century collection of the Public Library ‘Juan José Arreola’ of Guadalajara, as well as the Library of the Universidad Michoacana of San Nicolás Hidalgo in Morelia (umich). Moreover, the work done by adabi (Apoyo al desarrollo de archivos y bibliotecas de México) in the restoration, preservation, research and diffusion of Mexican archives and libraries had included the cataloguing of major collections such as the Palafoxiana of Puebla, the Library of the regional Museum of Querétaro, the Library of the National Museum of the Viceroyalty in Tepotzotlán, the Library of the Museum of Zinacantepec and the Library Armando Carrillo Olivares of the University of Guanajuato among many others.39 However, there is still a lot of work to do not only in Mexico, but also in Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru. All of these countries boast rich bibliographic collections that ought to be properly catalogued. This is certainly one of the main challenges in the region: the improvement or creation of institutions focused on research, preservation and diffusion of their national bibliographic heritage. Currently, only Mexico and Argentina have made considerable efforts in modern bibliographic research. Finally, the importance of Latin American collections is worth stressing, since they often contain rare and unique items which have been frequently overlooked by the scholarly community. For this reason, scholars interested in the European printing press must take into account the existence of rare copies, barely known, available in Latin American collections. To give just an example, eight sets (at least two of them complete) of Christophe Plantin’s well-known Biblia Políglota are still available in Mexican libraries.40 Therefore, the preservation and study of the rich national bibliographic patrimony should become of prime importance for the cultural policies of the Latin American governments.

38 For instance, the Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas in Mexico launched the seminary ‘Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo xix’. 39 The online catalogue of adabi is available at www.adabi.org.mx. 40 This example was provided by a Dutch scholar, Theodor Dunkelgrun, who has researched copies of the Biblia Políglota in Mexican libraries. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 201

Adriaan van der Weel

Pandora’s box of text technology

Gathering the dust of ages in libraries and archives around the world, the material record of centuries of book history patiently and quietly awaits the curious seeker. Meanwhile in the world of the contemporary book things have been a great deal less serene. Digital publishing and e-books have arrived, attended by new business, publishing and value-chain models. E-books are read on devices that are ‘on the grid 24/7’, creating endless possibilities for dynamic functionality, such as social reading, sharing annotations and experiences. E-books can be enhanced by links to dictionary or encyclopedic entries, or video or audio fragments. As these innovations are transforming the nature of the book, we often hear that it is ultimately the content that matters; not the ‘mere’ form in which we consume that content. To book historians this seems a rather ingenuous belief. As we know, an entire arsenal of paratextual elements lies always in readiness to be employed in the production of a text. They are deliberately selected by editors, printers, and publishers to lend the text’s final appearance a particular connotation. Digital production adds to this existing arsenal an array of additional possibilities, further widening the range of reader experiences, and the range of meaning the text may take on. Indeed, the choice between paper and digital production and dissemination is itself a meaningful one. So in a digitising world, the concept of the book is proving more transient than it ever was on paper. But the consequences of the digital transformation do not end there. Libraries are being overtaken by an acute identity crisis as Web-based alternative ways of finding relevant information, such as LibraryThing and Goodreads, Google Books and Elsevier’s Science Direct, Amazon and the iBookstore, are vieing for patrons’ time and attention. Publishing is becoming a free-for-all, with tech companies, libraries, museums, archives, governments and private individuals all thronging to claim their part of the cake. Bookshops are disappearing, as shopping is swept up in the unprece- dented wave of mediatisation that is washing over our daily lives. In this perfect storm of Internet and www the position of the long-form book, paper or digital, is proving less stable than it was once thought to be. The new digital substrates for the creation, preservation, and dissemination of text are engendering bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 202

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new and very different reading practices. Yes, more people are reading more than ever in history, but brief, disconnected fragments rather than long discursive texts. And if long discursive texts are read digitally, the technology invites them to be read fragmen- tarily, interrupted by the siren calls of status updates and WhatsApp messages, if not by the ‘passages from the book that mention the idea, person, or topic you’re interested in’ helpfully highlighted for you in advance by Amazon Kindle’s X-Ray function. It is certainly true that a tablet can be used for immersive reading no less than a printed book; it is just a great deal less likely that it will be. Distraction is built into the device – and may well be built increasingly into the very text. In these circumstances I wonder if it isn’t perhaps naive to maintain that the form in which we consume our reading does not matter. Isn’t that notion just as misguided as the notion that ‘technology is just a set of tools’, that it isn’t the technology that makes the difference, but the use we make of it? Under the suggestive title ‘Are we becoming cyborgs?’ the New York Times not long ago published a striking example of this mantra being repeated several times in a single discussion by three prominent thinkers about new technology: Susan Greenfield, Evgeny Morozov, and Maria Popova.1 Greenfield fears that ‘we are heading toward a short attention span and a premium on sensationalism rather than on abstract thought and deeper reflection’, but says that ‘what concerns me is not the technology in itself, but the degree to which it has become a lifestyle in and of itself rather than a means to improving your life’. Popova: ‘My concern is really not ... the degree to which technology is being used, but the way in which we use it.’ Morozov: ‘[W]e have to be very careful not to criticize the whole idea of technological mediation. We only have to set limits on how far this mediation should go, and how exactly it should proceed.’ To ‘critise the whole idea of technological mediation’ would be pointless, and very silly. But that does not mean we should not critically examine how it may affect us and why it may affect us the way it does. The history of the book – of authorship, printing, publishing and reading – has always been intimately bound up with intellectual history. Especially since the French ‘annales’ school of history, it has been one of the central pursuits of book history to map how the history of culture and ideas, the history of scientific discoveries and inventions, and our social history, have all been intimately connected with the history of print culture. However, book historians have also been divided about the extent of a causal connection between the history of print technology and intellectual history. Most have been just as wary of attributing any form of agency to technology as Greenfield, Morozov, and Popova. This attitude is understandable enough. It makes sense to assume that by virtue of being the inventors of the technnology we must be in control of it, deciding if and how we use it. Yet I think the assumption may be based on wishful thinking. This is certainly what the countless myths and stories about technology running out of hand that can be found in all cultures at all times are warning us for. In the myth of Pandora and her box; Prometheus and the fire of the gods; the sorcerer’s apprentice; The golem of Prague; Frankenstein, and so on, technology seduces the protagonist with the promise

1 ‘Are we becoming cyborgs?’, New York Times, 30 November 2012. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 203

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of somehow enhancing a particular human capability only to then turn against him. In most cases this atavistic fear takes the shape very literally of an inanimate object becoming animated. A particularly fascinating example that clearly belongs in this category of warning tales is Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, where Plato has Socrates discuss writing in very much the same terms as Pandora’s box. Writing too, Socrates believes, is capable of taking on a life of its own, out of control of its author. Not only is the technology beguiling because it takes over or makes easier a task that would cost us more time or energy or other resources (in the case of script, for example memorising factual knowledge or fictional narratives). It also has inherent properties, or affordances, that suggest how it is likely to be used. In the case of writing probably the most obvious one is carrying a record to another place or time, obviating the need to memorise it. In having Thamus call attention to the medium’s unintended consequence of a collective loss of memory Plato proved himself a very early and very perceptive ‘media crit- ic’. Plato forefelt that writing, which could fall into the hands of any number of unspecified anonymous, and not necessarily well-informed, readers, would change the nature of human communication forever. Plato deplored this, but ultimately the issue is not whether we regard this change as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but simply that we acknowledge that it happened. The technology of digital textuality (and digital media at large) holds out even more beguiling promises of convenience than did writing. As in the case of writing, social acceptance is so widespread that it is hardly possible for individuals to evade its use.2 And like writing it comes with all sorts of inherent properties that stand to make their mark on human communication. I would therefore like to propose two things. Firstly, as I have suggested before,3 we should extend bibliography, and book studies, to include all written texts, even if they are not in the form of print. We can and should use the methods of bibliography and book studies to study the book in its ever evolving digital guises. As Alan Galey has recently again reminded us, ‘bibliography’s unity lies in method and mindset, not in materials’.4 This is also useful as a form of ‘applied history’. Each material substrate, from clay, inscriptions, and scrolls, to the digital text forms, has its own affordances. Contrasting the inherent characteristics and affordances of digital text forms with those of, for example, the print medium will elucidate the nature and extent of the current developments. Reversely, observations and insights about the radically different nature of digital textuality will also present a vantage point for a better understanding of the print paradigm and the Order of the Book5 and help us break through the per- sistent myth of textual transparency. Regarded sub specie mutationis the material evi-

2 Recently Jennifer A. Chandler has given a very persuasive account of the mechanism of such ‘social enforcement’: J.A. Chandler, ‘“Obligatory technologies”. Explaining why people feel compelled to use certain technologies’, in: Bulletin of science, technology & society 32 (2012) 4, 255-264. 3 A. van der Weel, ‘Bibliography for the new media’, in: Quærendo 35 (2005) 1-2, 96-108. 4 A. Galey, ‘The enkindling reciter. E-books in the bibliographical imagination’, in: Book history 15 (2012), 210-247; 217. 5 I explain the term in Changing our textual minds. Towards a digital order of knowledge. Manchester 2011, 67-103. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 204

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dence of the history of the book that continues to lie undisturbed and apparently unchanged in libraries and archives will take on new and surprising meaning. Secondly, I suggest that as book historians we allow ourselves to entertain – if only as a hypothesis – the idea that after a certain point in its evolution technology shapes society more than society shapes technology. Already there is clear evidence that the digital media are having an effect on our reading habits. The suggestion is strong that this may have cognitive effects, and whatever we may think about them, these are certainly unplanned. As we have seen in the case of writing and printing, changing our dominant textual medium also changes our mindset, but not by design. The point of this is not to suggest that digital text technologies (or digital technologies at large) are bad for us. This is precisely one criticism often levelled at Plato’s assessment of writing: that his attitude is that of a culture pessimist. We all hate to be thought Luddites. As we just saw in the case of the New York Times article, modern commentators fall over backwards denying that they are cultural pessimists. Instead, they maintain, it is merely a matter of setting limits to its use. However, the eagerness not to be cast in the feared role of the technophobe threatens to make us miss the point. Suggesting that technology has a certain sway over us is not tantamount to believing that we will all become dumber;6 merely that the dominant mediums, including the dominant textual medium, will affect the way we think more deeply than we realise or apparently wish to know – without anyone planning for this to happen. What all the technology-run-out-of-control myths are about is that where we fail spectacularly is precisely in setting limits: in controlling the technology. Instead of attacking, denying or glorifying the potential effects of the technology, we would do better to acknowledge the limitations of our control, and study the mechanisms involved. The point is also not to be unduly technologically determinist. Of course it’s humans who adopt, or don’t adopt, technologies. The discovery of a technology’s use- fulness and uses is a social process. However, it is one that is to a large extent confined by that technology’s inherent properties. The properties inherent in technologies will suggest to what use they are put. Only if we face the possibility that technology may in that sense have a mind of its own can we hope to influence its further development. How are texts used to transmit culture and knowledge? How does a particular technological substrate, such as the printed book, affect the content and its dissemination? What types of texts (and knowledge) does it stimulate? These are all important questions in book history. Much more challenging is the question how this might affect the way we think: our very mentality. How to establish the causal link between the technological properties of a given dominant medium or substrate and such farreaching social effects is what I believe the major challenge of book studies should be in the digitising decades to come. Asking such questions would certainly make book studies even more relevant than it already is.

6 As do, for example, M. Bauerlein, The dumbest generation. How the digital age stupefies young Americans and jeopardizes our future. New York 2008, and N.G. Carr, The shallows. What the internet is doing to our brains. New York 2010. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 205

Jos A.A.M. Biemans

Book history and manuscript studies at the University of Amsterdam A personal story

At the website of Project muse – Book History the editors of the journal Book history published a rather broad specification of our scholarly field. ‘Book History is devoted to every aspect of the history of the book, broadly defined as the history of the creation, dissemination, and reception of script and print. It publishes research on the social, economic, and cultural history of authorship, editing, printing, the book arts, publishing, the book trade, periodicals, newspapers, ephemera, copyright, censorship, literary agents, libraries, literary criticism, canon formation, literacy, literary education, reading habits, and reader response.’ Personally, I regard literary criticism, canon formation and literary education for the greater part as aspects of philology and literary history. On the other hand I am inclined to incorporate textual criticism in this specification, for to those without a good knowledge of book history and manuscript studies the prac- tise of text editing should be forbidden. Anyway, to me such an extensive and open or including enumeration is preferable to a usually limiting or excluding definition, speaking about the mission, the goals etcetera of the book history. I think there is no such thing as the book history. Book history in my view is an extensive scholarly field, more or less divided into many different plots, often with much ground in common with other disciplines such as philology, art history etcetera, and with numerous bridges between as many plots as possible. The implication of this point of view is that in their activities and publications scholars in this field should always formulate an operational definition of what they are doing, or at least explain the specific nature or framework of their book historical approach. In this small contribution I will amplify my personal aims with book history or rather, with manuscript studies. For a clear understanding of the following, some information about my position and opportunities may be useful. For many years I have had one day a week for teaching and research. Since September 2004, I have spent two days a week on these activities, thanks to the Professor Herman de la Fontaine Verwey Foundation in Amsterdam and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, that gener- ously finance my extraordinary professorship in Book History and Manuscript Studies. Meanwhile, since the retirement or passing away of some colleagues, as a professor of palaeography and codicology I have been the Last of the Mohicans in our country bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 206

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(though at the universities of Groningen, Leiden and Nijmegen courses in manuscript studies are taught as well). During the more than twenty-five years of teaching palaeography and codicology I may of course have stimulated one or two students to become professional palaeogra- phers/codicologists. In the Netherlands, however, chances for obtaining an academic position devoted to this field of scholarship are very few, so each sensible student in Humanities will wisely choose another discipline in order to find a job. In addition, we do not have institutions or courses for the education of manuscript and rare book curators, antiquarians and book auctioneers. Acquiring an ma-degree in Book History, however, improves the chance of becoming such a rara avis. Some of my former students indeed fulfil such a position. An annual number of about fifteen ba-students follow my course on the archaeolo- gy of the medieval book. Apart from seven to ten ma-students in Book History & Manuscript Studies attending my more advanced lectures there often are some additional students from departments of classical and modern languages, history and art history, both from Amsterdam and elsewhere (including Belgium). Usually a twenty person table proves to be large enough. Most of the ma-students of course are medieval- ists, and all of them show a very special interest in the medieval book. Sometimes we meet a student in physics, medicine or law, interested in the history of their own discipline and studying medieval sources. Almost every year a PhD student in philology or art history pulls up a chair to our table. In short, my teaching is meant for book historians but serves everyone who comes across medieval books in his or her own field. The kind of research I do and, as a result, the nature of my publications correspond to my teaching. First of all, I hope to contribute to the development of manuscript studies. Secondly, however, and for the greater part I study phenomena that are of course relevant to book history but at the same time prove to be especially important for philologists and occasionally art historians. A third subject of research and writing is manus cripts in the possession of the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam. The first aspect needs no explanation. The third aspect is also evident: from 1991 to 2011 I was curator of manuscripts at the Special Collections and curators are expected to write about their collections. Explaining the second aspect needs some more words. Originally I am both a philologist – specialized in medieval Dutch literature – and a palaeographer/codicologist. Hence I particularly study the manuscript tradition of medieval Dutch literature. For instance, researching some hot items in the editing of medieval Dutch texts – the transliteration of medieval i/j (i.e. short respectively extended i) and u/v/w to their modern equivalences – made it plausible that these questions did not have a linguistic or phonological but a palaeographical background and should be solved from that point of view. Studying both the quantitative and qualitative features of the manuscript tradition of a certain text may reveal the book historical part of its reception during the Middle Ages. To give one example: with regard to the world chronicle by Jacob van Maerlant (c. 1225/1235-c. 1300), one of the most important medieval Dutch authors, I studied 64 manuscripts with – parts of – this text. In a history of Dutch literature Maerlant of course has to be treated as a thirteenth-century poet. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 207

Book history and manuscript studies at the University of Amsterdam 207

The manuscript tradition, however, surprisingly demonstrates that in the first half of the fourteenth century, so post mortem, Maerlant must have been a greater literary phenomenon than during his lifetime. Finally, I assist anyone who grasps the sleeves of my academic gown. I am happy to receive the most unexpected and sometimes fascinating questions. The most interesting problems come from PhD students, who during their education never got round to manuscript studies. They all make my life colourful. It is a pleasure to help – and to learn! – and I am usually glad to demonstrate the surplus value of codicological research in relation to philological or art historical investigations.

Figure 1. Jos Biemans with some of his students. Photo: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 208 bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 209

Samenvattingen

David McKitterick, Het Verenigd Koninkrijk: een nationale geschiedenis van het boek

De boekgeschiedenis in het Verenigd Koninkrijk is de laatste jaren vooral gedomineerd door de uitgave van de zevendelige reeks Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Grote projecten als deze hebben nooit de pre- tentie om volledig of definitief te zijn, maar bijzonder is wel dat dit project gebaseerd is op bronnen die eer- der niet of nauwelijks zijn onderzocht: de bibliografische database estc, en nog onaangeroerde archieven van drukkers, uitgevers en boekhandelaren. Het domein van de boekgeschiedenis heeft zich de laatste jaren uitgebreid, en naast de traditionele aandacht voor drukkers en uitgevers gaat er nu ook specifieke belangstelling uit naar vragen over overleve- ring van teksten en naar de geschiedenis van de smaak. Op welke manier zijn typische en traditionele boekhistorische vragen gerelateerd aan vragen over de interpretatie van teksten? Ook is er een groeiende interesse voor de overgang van manuscript naar gedrukte teksten en bovendien neemt de belangstelling voor internationale aspecten van de boekgeschiedenis toe. In de geschiedenis van bibliotheken en collecties doe- men vragen op over de verspreiding van bibliotheken en daarmee komen we tot de meest prangende vraag van allemaal: wat moet er bewaard worden en wat niet? Wat is er verdwenen? Wat betekent dit voor het toekomstige onderzoek in de boekgeschiedenis?

Roger Osborne, Om de beurt in Australazië. Geschiedenissen van het boek in Australië en Nieuw-Zeeland

In de afgelopen twee decennia is het onderzoek naar de rol van boeken en ander drukwerk als betekenisvolle media voor culturele overdracht in Australië en Nieuw-Zeeland sterk gestegen. Tot nu toe is dit vooral gebaseerd op analyses van archiefmateriaal die zich richten op geschiedschrijving die zich beperkt tot een natio- naal, zelfs nationalistisch, discours. Een dergelijk discours is recentelijk bekritiseerd door voorvechters van transnationale geschiedschrijving die de culturele productie van Australië en Nieuw Zeeland in een globaal perspectief plaatsen. Dit hield gelijke tred met de ontwikkeling van nationale bibliografische databases en andere digitaliseringsprojecten, waardoor de boekgeschiedenis in Australië en Nieuw Zeeland werd gesti- muleerd. Door het plaatsen van grootschalige alternatieven tegenover de microstudies die het onderzoek tot nu toe domineerden, vormt deze digitale omwenteling een uitdaging en een uitbreiding van het veld. Om aan te tonen hoe dit de beoefening van boekgeschiedenis in Australië en Nieuw-Zeeland het komende bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 210

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decennium kan beïnvloeden, reflecteert dit essay op de belangrijkste boekhistorische werken uit Australië en Nieuw-Zeeland, resumeert het verscheidene essays die inspelen op de nationale en empirische funda- menten van het veld en overweegt het de methodologische en theoretische uitdagingen van nieuwe studies die gebruikmaken van transnationale thema’s en van digitale mogelijkheden.

Frederick Nesta, Het boek in China en de moderne westerse boekgeschiedenis

Dit artikel geeft een overzicht van lopend onderzoek naar de geschiedenis van het boek in China. China heeft een lange traditie in boekhistorisch onderzoek, maar nieuwe richtingen, zoals ontwikkeld door Bour- dieu en anderen, worden nu zichtbaar. In het artikel ligt de nadruk op Westers onderzoek, omdat dat toegankelijk is voor hen die geen Chinees kunnen lezen en omdat de bredere opzet van dat onderzoek tot op zekere hoogte een vergelijking met de Westerse boekcultuur mogelijk maakt. Het werk van Westerse geleer- den zoals Brokaw, Chow, Chia en Reed wordt tegen het licht gehouden om iets te laten zien van de omvang van de Chinese boekgeschiedenis en de mogelijkheden van toekomstig onderzoek. In de negende eeuw kwam het drukken met houtblokken op in China, en dit bleef het meestgebruik- te procedé tot in de late negentiende eeuw. Om te kunnen blokdrukken waren geen grote investeringen of speciale vaardigheden nodig, en het Chinese examensysteem voor ambtenaren ten behoeve van de uitge- breide nationale bureaucratie zorgde voor een grote geletterde bevolking. Het in kaart brengen van de geschiedenis van het boek in China kent de nodige uitdagingen, vooral omdat zoveel verloren is gegaan in de twaalf eeuwen dat er in het land gedrukt wordt, waardoor veel gereconstrueerd moet worden aan de hand van fragmenten. Chia’s onderzoek naar uitgevers in de provincie Fuijan richt zich slechts op drie families, maar die families vertegenwoordigen een traditie die meer dan zeshonderd jaar standhield. Hoewel de Chinezen ook, eeuwen voor Gutenberg, ‘los’ zetsel uitvonden en gebruikten, werd het drukken met houtblokken er pas aan het eind van de negentiende eeuw door verdrongen. Westerse missiona- rissen brachten de drukpers naar China omdat ze hem beschouwden als de meest efficiënte manier om de miljoenen Chinezen te bereiken met hun bijbels en andere publicaties. Nieuwe technologieën maakten drukken in het Chinees betaalbaar; in zijn zucht naar modernisering begon China zijn eigen persen en moderne uitgeverijen te ontwikkelen om kranten en vertalingen van Westerse teksten te kunnen drukken.

Christine Haug, Slávka Rude-Porubská, Wolfgang Schmitz, ‘Buchwissenschaft’ in Duitsland. Een overzicht

Dit essay beschrijft de ontwikkeling van de boekwetenschap in Duitsland als een academische discipline. De verschillende instellingen en voorzieningen komen aan bod, zowel binnen als buiten de universiteiten: gespecialiseerde en onderzoeksbibliotheken, wetenschappelijke verenigingen, het netwerk van de verschillende universiteiten die opleidingen op het gebied van de boekwetenschap aanbieden en de talrijke wetenschappelijke organisaties in de Duitstalige landen. Er wordt verder ingegaan op het onderzoek en publicaties binnen het ‘Buchwissenschaft-programma’ op de Ludwig-Maximilians-Universiteit in München. Ook wordt aandacht besteed aan het ‘mission statement’ van de Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesell- schaft (IBG) in München die zich voornamelijk bezighoudt met zaken met betrekking tot de hedendaagse boekenmarkt, met de tegenwoordige transformatieprocessen in de boekhandel en de gevolgen van de ver- schuivingen in het gebruik van media. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 211

Samenvattingen 211

Peter R. Frank, Johannes Frimmel & Murray G. Hall, Boekgeschiedenis in Oostenrijk

Als erfgenaam van het immense, multi-etnische Habsburgse rijk voelt de Oostenrijkse (boek)geschiedenis, meer dan in andere landen, de uitdaging van een transnationale aanpak. In tegenstelling tot ondermeer buurland Duitsland is de boekgeschiedenis hier echter niet tot een aparte academische discipline uitge- groeid. Wel bestaat er een grote bibliografische traditie. Sinds 1998 zorgt de Gesellschaft für Buchforschung voor een gemeenschappelijk forum voor iedereen die het boek onderzoekt. Een belangrijke impuls kwam er ook van de wet op de kunstrestitutie, die zorgde voor een grote aandacht voor herkomstonderzoek. Door een gebrek aan methodologische discussie blijft de inbedding van het boekhistorisch onderzoek in de cul- tuurgeschiedenis echter beperkt, en wordt er geen verband gelegd tussen het bibliografische werk en de sociale geschiedenis, zoals dat in andere landen wel gebeurde. De Oostenrijkse situatie is echter juist uiter- mate geschikt voor een internationale blik om, bijvoorbeeld, de relatie tussen de groei van nationale identiteiten en de boekdrukkunst te onderzoeken.

Benito Rial Costas, Bibliografie en de geschiedenis van het gedrukte boek in Spanje. Beschouwingen over een oud en een nieuw onderzoeksgebied

Dit artikel beschrijft de geschiedenis van de bibliografie van het gedrukte boek in Spanje evenals haar doel- stellingen en benaderingen. Sinds de negentiende eeuw wordt de bibliografie als hulpwetenschap gedo- ceerd aan vele Spaanse universiteiten. In 1956 besloot de universiteit van Madrid het vak ‘bibliografie van de Spaanse literatuur’ in te stellen. Deze leerstoel werd ingenomen door José Simón Díaz, een charismatisch bibliograaf die decennialang een grote invloed op het vakgebied heeft uitgeoefend. In 1979 introduceerde Jaime Moll de bibliografische principes van Fredson Bowers, waardoor er naast pure bibliografie meer belangstelling groeide voor haar potentieel voor een literair-historische studie van het boek. In de jaren 1983–1984 werd het Tipobibliografía Española-project opgericht. Zijn doel was de samen- stelling van zogenaamde typobibliografieën voor Spanje. Dat zijn specifieke bibliografieën van bepaalde plaatsen en regio’s op het Spaanse grondgebied. In 1987 zag de Asociación Española de Bibliografía het licht. Deze vereniging wilde verscheidene experts met elkaar in contact brengen om zo de studie van het Spaan- se boek uit de handpersperiode te bevorderen. Maar de Asociación richtte zich in hoofdzaak op de samen- stelling van bibliografieën en catalogi, en sloot daardoor vele onderzoekers uit die een ander en nieuw boekhistorisch onderzoek voorstonden. Uit de traditionele samenwerking tussen bibliografie, bibliotheekwetenschap en literatuurwetenschap zijn talrijke publicaties voortgekomen. Tegelijkertijd zijn meer en meer historische studies beginnen verschijnen met andere invalshoeken. Deze handelen over de drukpers, de boekhandel en privébibliothe- ken, en baseren zich, in tegenstelling tot het werk van de typobibliografen, naast de boeken zelf ook op verscheidene archiefbronnen. Ze brengen een analyse van het boek binnen een sociale, politieke, economische en culturele context, maar vaak blijven deze studies door de klassieke typobibliografen ongelezen. Het huidige landschap van de bibliografie in Spanje is diepgaand bepaald door haar geschiedenis. Het vak blijft sterk verankerd in opleidingen voor bibliotheek- en informatiewetenschap, en de Tipobibliografía Española gaat nog steeds verder op het ingeslagen pad. De traditionele typobibliografie blijft het landschap overheersen. Maar er is tegelijk ook een groot gebrek aan een theoretisch kader en voorals nog blijft de vraag onbeantwoord welke richting de bibliografie in Spanje in de toekomst uit wil gaan. Parallel daarmee groeit bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 212

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de belangstelling voor nieuwe benaderingen en een nieuw soort onderzoek waarin een bredere geschiedenis van het schrijven, drukken, verkopen en lezen van boeken een belangrijke plaats bekleedt. Soms is dit onderzoek bibliografisch van aard, maar vaak ook niet. Het lijkt erop dat de tegenstellingen tussen het oude paradigma van de bibliotheek- en literatuurwetenschappen en dat van de breder geörienteerde boek - geschiedenis aan het vervagen is. Maar de houding die de diepgewortelde discipline van de Spaanse typobibliografie aanneemt zal voor de toekomst bepalend zijn. Voorals nog is het onduidelijk in welke mate het traditionele vakgebied en de nieuwe boekhistorische stromingen in elkaar zullen overvloeien dan wel verder naast elkaar blijven bestaan.

Stijn van Rossem, Boekgeschiedenis in België. Wie huisvest de thuislozen?

Dit paper onderzoekt de boekhistorische verwezenlijkingen in België (met de nadruk op Vlaanderen) van de laatste tien jaar. Het congres Boekgeschiedenis in Vlaanderen. Nieuwe instrumenten en benaderingen uit 2003 dient hiervoor als toetssteen. Verschillende van de inhoudelijke uitdagingen die de Vlaamse en Nederlandse professoren boekwetenschap toen naar voren schoven zijn in de tien jaar die volgden ver- wezenlijkt. Belgische wetenschappers hebben hun blik verlegd naar een internationale horizon, zowel wat betreft methodiek, onderwerp en de verspreiding van hun onderzoek. De samenwerking tussen Vlaanderen en Wallonië en die tussen België en Nederland intensifieerde, boekhistorische tijdschriften verwetenschappelijkten en buitenlandse autoriteiten vonden de weg naar Antwerpen en Brussel. De Bel- gische ‘renaissance’ werd in belangrijke mate gedragen door een nieuwe generatie boekwetenschappers. Deze bijdrage wil er echter voor waarschuwen dat deze boost evenwel van korte duur zou kunnen zijn. De belangrijkste verzuchting uit 2003 is tien jaar later nog steeds niet opgelost. Boekwetenschap heeft immers nog steeds geen institutionele haven gevonden en verliest zelfs terrein. Binnen de wetenschappelijke bibliotheken is er steeds minder plaats voor onderzoek en ook op de Vlaamse universiteiten zijn cursussen boekwetenschap zo goed als onbestaande; een onderzoeksgroep of een opleiding boekwetenschap bestaat al helemaal niet.

Rikard Wingård, Boekhistorisch onderzoek in Zweden, 2006–2012. Een overzicht

Dit artikel geeft een overzicht van het boekhistorisch onderzoek in Zweden in de laatste zes jaar en van de instituten en infrastructuur die daarbij betrokken zijn. De afdeling voor Archieven, Bibliotheken en Musea en Boekgeschiedenis van de universiteit van Lund is het belangrijkste centrum; in samenwerking met de universiteit van Kopenhagen onderhoudt zij een internetforum voor boekhistorici uit de Scandinavische landen. In het overzicht worden de onderwerpen en resultaten genoemd van belangrijke publicaties, bundels en artikelen uitgezonderd. De conclusie luidt dat de boekgeschiedenis als onderwerp een groei doormaakt, zeker als gelet wordt op de aandacht die ze krijgt van jonge onderzoekers. Een groot deel van de besproken werken zijn proefschriften die tezamen met de andere studies in dit overzicht de meeste deelgebieden van de boekwetenschap omvatten – auteursonderzoek, leesgeschiedenis, druk- en uitgeverijgeschiedenis, geschiedenis van vormgeving, tekstkritiek, bibliografie etc. Hoewel de ambities zeker niet ontbreken, zou- den de mogelijkheden voor onderwijs in de boekgeschiedenis kunnen worden verbeterd: cursussen in ande- bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 213

Samenvattingen 213

re plaatsen dan Lund en een handboek in het Zweeds en toegespitsts op de Zweedse situatie zijn desiderata; voor de toekomstige uitbreiding van het boekhistorisch onderzoek in Zweden zijn ze noodzakelijk.

Peter Kornicki, Recent onderzoek naar de geschiedenis van het boek in Japan

Dit overzicht vat het onderzoek samen naar de boekgeschiedenis in Japan gedurende het laatse decennium. Na een korte introductie van enkele belangrijke nieuwe databases, catalogi en bibliografieën, behandelt de auteur veelbelovende ontwikkelingen op boekhistorisch gebied in de Edoperiode (1603-1868): de bestude- ring van productie en verspreiding van handschriften, van boekconsumptie op het platteland, en van de stroom boeken afkomstig van het Aziatische vasteland. Hoewel Japanse wetenschappers het meeste werk hebben verzet, is een toenemend aantal studies gepubliceerd door Europese en Amerikaanse collega’s. Zij hielden zich bijvoorbeeld bezig met marginalia in medische boeken, met boekhandelscatalogi, met de censuur, en met de sociale gevolgen van het drukkersbedrijf. Nieuwe terreinen worden ontgonnen: schrijfsys- temen, leesgewoonten, de provenance van boeken en het gebruik van papier. Het belang van boekgeschiedenis voor de sociale en politieke geschiedenis is met succes gepropageerd; economische aspecten moet evenwel nog beter worden onderzocht. Hetzelfde geldt voor de boekcultuur vóór het Edotijdvak, hoewel ook hier wel enige vooruitgang is geboekt.

Aina Nøding, Boekgeschiedenis in Noorwegen. Van lezende boeren tot lezers van Ibsen

De belangstelling voor boekgeschiedenis in Noorwegen is gestaag gegroeid in de afgelopen tien jaar, en het is nu een interdisciplinair onderzoeksveld voor academici, bibliothecarissen en archivarissen uit het hele land. Er is tot op heden geen boekhistorische vereniging; samenwerking is georganiseerd in informele nationale en internationale netwerken en interdisciplinaire onderzoeksprojecten. Het onderzoek variëert van kernonderwerpen zoals de geschiedenis van het lezen, de markt voor boeken en bibliotheken, tot censuur, tekstuitgaven en mediageschiedenis, waar boekgeschiedenis één van de mogelijke perspectieven biedt. Studies naar de receptiegeschiedenis en die van het lezen hebben de meeste aandacht gekregen, naast onderzoek naar de boekhandel. In de laatste jaren is er een tendens om over de nationale grenzen heen te kijken en vragen naar receptie, verspreiding en de markt voor boeken in een wijdere, internationale context te zien. Voorbeelden zijn onderzoek naar de contemporaine receptie van Ibsens werken op de Europese markt, censuur, de rol van tijdschriften in de internationale verspreiding van teksten en ideeën, maar ook de geschiedenis van het lezen in Noorwegen vergeleken met andere landen.

Archie L. Dick, Boekgeschiedenis in Zuid-Afrika. Recente ontwikkelingen en vooruitzichten

Dit artikel biedt een overzicht van de boekgeschiedenis in Zuid-Afrika tussen 2010 en 2012. Er wordt ingegaan op belangrijke thema’s in de boekwetenschap in Zuid-Afrika, waarbij enkele relevante onderzoeksprojecten worden besproken. Er wordt een selectie gegeven van de meest relevante publicaties over boekgeschiedenis die in de afgelopen tien jaar verschenen. Daarbij wordt ook aandacht besteed aan de bijdragen bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 214

214 jaarboek voor nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20 (2013)

van wetenschappers die zichzelf niet in de eerste plaats beschouwen als boekhistorici, maar wier werk wel relevant is voor de boekwetenschap en het boekhistorische veld.

Anders Toftgaard, Vorstelijke bibliotheken, boeken voor de gewone man en de komst van het omslag in de literatuurwetenschap. Trends in boekhistorisch onderzoek in Denemarken

Dit artikel geeft een overzicht van de trends in het lopende boekhistorisch onderzoek in Denemarken. Hoe- wel de geschiedenis van het Deense boek al sinds de negentiende eeuw onderzocht wordt, is er sinds het eind van de twintigste eeuw sprake van een opleving. De twee belangrijkste recente bijdragen tot de Deense boekgeschiedenis zijn de dissertaties Menigmands medie (1999) van Henrik Horstbøll en Læsning og bogmarked i 1600-tallets Danmark (2001) van Charlotte Appel. Beide richten zich op het leesgedrag van de ‘gewone man’ en beide combineren belangstelling voor sociaal- culturele geschiedenis en boekgeschiedenis. Sindsdien zijn er verscheidene andere boekhistorische proefschriften en een handboek verschenen en heeft het Nordisk Forum for Boghistorie zich ontpopt als een levendig platform voor de uitwisseling van ideeën. Het omslag heeft zijn entree gemaakt in de literatuurwetenschap, in de zin dat een aantal onderzoekers op het snijvlak van filologie, tekstwetenschap, literatuur- sociologie en boekgeschiedenis de functie van het omslag en paratekst in de literatuurgeschiedenis onder de loep nemen. Het onderzoek naar herkomsten is steeds belangrijker geworden in de Kongelige Bibliotek te Kopenhagen en elders. De oorsprong, geschiedenis en teloorgang van een aantal verzamelingen, zoals bijvoorbeeld die van Slot Gottorp, zijn beschreven in tijdschriftartikelen en bundels. Een echte vernieuwing in het boekhistorisch onderzoek is de infrastructuur die samengaat met digitali- sering. De Kongelige Bibliotek was de eerste bibliotheek die een samenwerking aanging met ProQuest voor de massadigitalisering van oude drukken voor de Early European Books database. Alle Deense boeken van voor 1601 in de collectie van de KB zijn nu online beschikbaar, terwijl alle zeventiende-eeuwse Deense boeken in etappes online komen. Het is te hopen dat de voor het project verbeterde catalogusbeschrijvingen uiteinde- lijk zullen leiden tot een vervanging van de nationale gedrukte bibliografie Bibliotheca Danica. Het artikel besluit met een aantal mogelijke toekomstige onderwerpen voor onderzoek. De auteur con- cludeert dat boekgeschiedenis in Denemarken een levendige discipline is in het spanningsveld tussen geschiedenis, bibliografie en literatuurwetenschap, waar de traditionele bibliografie plotseling de zwakste schakel is.

César Manrique Figueroa, De studie van het boek in Spaanstalig Amerika. Over de consolidering van nationale identiteiten

De boekgeschiedenis in Latijns Amerika, tenminste voor zover ze bekeken wordt vanuit een Westers perspectief, begon onder het Spaanse koloniale bewind dat de Europeanisatie, of liever de Hispanisatie van Latijns Amerika in gang zette. De perifere positie van het gebied ten opzichte van Europa in de vroegmoderne tijd, samen met de verschillende onafhankelijkheidsprocessen van de negentiende eeuw, en de modernisering van de meeste Latijns-Amerikaanse staten in de laatste honderd jaar, bepaalden mede de onderzoekslijnen van de boekwetenschappers. Het huidige artikel biedt een overzicht van de boekgeschiedenis van Latijns Amerika, van Mexico tot Argentinië maar zonder Brazilië, vanaf de koloniale periode tot bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 215

Samenvattingen 215

vandaag. Daarbij komen de onderwerpen en trends aan bod die het boekhistorisch onderzoek in deze immense culturele en geografische regio hebben bepaald. Ten slotte worden de modernisering en profes- sionalisatie van de huidige onderzoekslijnen besproken, en wordt een idee gegeven van de uitdagingen die de toekomst brengt. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 216

De Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) heeft een brede collectie op het gebied van Nederlandse geschiedenis en cultuur. De KB verzamelt van elke in Nederland uitgekomen publicatie een exemplaar, in druk maar steeds vaker digitaal. De wetenschappelijke referentiecollectie geeft toegang tot tienduizenden e-books en digitale tijdschriften. Natuurlijk beschikt de KB over een brede collectie op het gebied van de geesteswetenschappen uit de negentiende en het begin van de twintigste eeuw. Boekwetenschap en boekgeschiedenis zijn altijd een belangrijk verzamelgebied van de KB geweest en u vindt bij ons dan ook een goed gesorteerde collectie.

Voor boekhistorici heeft de KB de belangrijkste toegangen en links op dit gebied bij elkaar gezet. Sommige daarvan, zoals Bibliopolis, heeft de KB zelf opgezet en ingericht met vertegenwoordigers van de boekhistorische discipline. Kijkt u eens op onze website of in de webdienst Historische Kranten waar u kranten uit de afgelopen vier eeuwen kunt raadplegen. Dit jaar is ook de website Tijdschriften 1840-1950 gelanceerd. Tachtig tijdschriften uit deze periode zijn digitaal geheel doorzoekbaar.

Voor A15 per jaar schaft u een KB-pas aan. Daarmee kunt u overal vandaan onze website, catalogi en steeds meer bestanden raadplegen, maar ook ter plekke van alle faciliteiten in de KB gebruik maken.

Openingstijden kb Bezoekadres: ma. en vrij. 10.00–18.00 uur; di. t/m do. 10.00–20.00 uur Koninklijke Bibliotheek za. 10.00–16.00 uur Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5 (tevens navigatieadres) Webadressen: 2595 BE Den Haag kb www.kb.nl telefoon (070) 314 09 11 (ma.-vrij. 9.00-18.00 uur) Boekgeschiedenis www.kb.nl/menu/boekgeschiedenis.html e-mail www.kb.nl/contact Historische kranten kranten.kb.nl Tijdschriften 1850-1940 tijdschriften.kb.nl bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 217

Biographies

Jos A.A.M. Biemans was Curator of Manuscripts of the Amsterdam University Library (UvA) from 1991 untill 2011. In 2004, he was appointed extraordinary Professor of Palaeography and Codicology in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam. Apart from teaching, he is currently engaged in the writing of a new history of the Amsterdam University Library from 1578 to 2015.

Archie L. Dick is Professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria. His main research interests are the history of reading, library history, intellectual history and intellectual freedom. His latest book is The hidden history of South Africa’s book and reading cultures, Toronto 2012.

Peter R. Frank specialises in book research, especially the history of the book in Austria in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Habsburg Monarchy). He is co-founder of the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich. His publications include Von der systematischen Bibliographie (1978); (as co-editor:) Buchwesen in Wien 1750–1850. Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der Buchdrucker, Buchhändler und Verleger, Wiesbaden 2008; he is an editor of the Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich and the series Buchforschung. Beiträge zum Buchwesen in Österreich.

Johannes Frimmel is research assistant for the Buchwissenschaft course at the University of Munich. His publications (as co-editor) include 18th century studies in Austria, 1945–2010, Bochum 2011, and Kommunikation und Information im 18. Jahrhundert. Das Beispiel der Habsburgermonarchie, Wiesbaden 2009.

Murray G. Hall is Professor of German at the University of Vienna. He specialises in publishing history in Austria in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, provenance research, and Austrian literature in the inter-war years. He is co- founder of the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich and co-editor of Buchforschung. Beiträge zum Buchwesen in Österreich. His publications include Der Fall Bettauer. Wien 1978; Robert Musil. Briefe 1901–1942. Hrsg. von Adolf Frisé. Unter Mitarbeit von Murray G. Hall. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1981; Österreichische Verlagsgeschichte 1918–1938. Band I: Geschichte des österreichischen Verlagswesens; Band II: Lexikon der belletristischen Verlage. Wien 1985; Der Paul Zsolnay Verlag. Von der Gründung bis zur Rückkehr aus dem Exil. Tübingen 1994; Handbuch der Nachlässe und Sammlungen österreichischer Autoren. 2nd impr. Wien 1995; (as co-editor): Geraubte Bücher. Die Österreichische Nationalbibliothek stellt sich ihrer NS-Vergangenheit. Wien 2004; (as co-author): ‘… allerlei für die Nationalbibliothek zu ergattern …’. Eine österreichische Institution in der NS-Zeit. Böhlau: Wien–Köln–Weimar 2006. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 218

218 jaarboek voor nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 20 (2013)

Prof. Dr. Christine Haug is Professor of Buchwissenschaft at the University of Munich and director of the Buchwissenschaft programmes. Her main areas of research include the history of the book and publishing trade from the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, especially the clandestine book market in the eighteenth century and the development of sub-markets in the book trade (such as railway bookstores and department stores) as well as author-publisher relationships around 1900 (among others Stefan George). She is co-editor, together with Prof. Dr. Vincent Kaufmann (mcm Universität St. Gallen), of Kodex, the yearbook of the Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft, and co- editor, together with Thomas Fuchs and Detlev Döring (Leipzig), of the Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte.

Peter Kornicki is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Cambridge and Deputy Warden of Robinson College. He is the author of The book in Japan. A cultural history from the beginnings to the nineteenth century (Leiden 1998), co-editor of The female as subject: Women and the book in Japan (Ann Arbor 2010), and works on vernacularisation and the book in East Asia.

Dr. César Manrique has recently received his doctoral degree in history from the University of Leuven (kul). His main research interests are in bibliographical and artistic exchanges between the Southern Netherlands and the Hispanic World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Since 2009 he has been a member of the Vlaamse Werkgroep Boekgeschiedenis. Among his publications related to book history are ‘Los impresores bruselenses y su producción dirigi- da al mercado hispano, siglos xvi-xvii’, in: Erebea. Revista de humanidades y ciencias sociales 2 (2012), 205-226; and ‘From Antwerp to Veracruz. Southern Netherlands books in Mexican colonial libraries’, in: De gulden passer 87 (2009) 2, 93-112.

David McKitterick fba is Librarian and Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. His books include the standard history of Cambridge University Press from the sixteenth to the late twentieth centuries (3 vols, 1992-2004), and the history of Cambridge University Library in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1986). More recent work includes Print, manuscript and the search for order (Cambridge 2003), and Old books, new technologies; the representation, conservation and transformation of books since 1700 (2013). He is one of the general editors of the Cambridge history of the book in Britain.

Frederick Nesta is founder and Executive Director of the Centre for the History of the Book in China. Previously he was University Librarian at Lingnan University in Hong Kong and has had a long career in academic, special, and corporate libraries in New York and London.

Aina Nøding is a postdoctoral research fellow in History at the University of Oslo, and a partner in the research project Diversifying Publics and Opinions, on Dano-Norwegian journals in the eighteenth century. She holds a PhD in comparative literature, with a study on literature published in Norwegian eighteenth-century newspapers (2007). Her interest lies in the intersection of literature, book and media history. Publications include contributions to T. Rem (ed.), Bokhistorie, 2003; H.Fr. Dahl (ed.), Norsk presses historie, 2010 and V. Ystad (ed.), Henrik Ibsen’s writings, 2008-2010.

Dr Roger Osborne has published widely in the fields of book history, print culture and textual criticism. He completed a PhD at the unsw in 2000 and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Australian Studies Centre, University of Queensland, from 2004-2007. He was project manager of the Aus-e-Lit Project from 2008-2011, and, from 2012, is a member of the steering committee of the Australian Electronic Scholarly Editing project. He is co-editor of the Cambridge edition of Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes (forthcoming 2013) and as the 2011 Nancy Keesing Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, he is working towards an electronic edition of Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 219

Biographies 219

Dr Benito Rial Costas is an independent scholar based in Spain and Italy. He received his PhD from the University of Santiago de Compostela in 2006. Since the publication of his Producción y comercio del libro en Santiago de Compostela (2007), he has been engaged in research and writing on printing and book trade in Castile in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. He is General Secretary of the Asociación Española de Bibliografía and Liaison Officer of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. His most recent publication is the edited volume Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe (2012).

Dr Slávka Rude-Porubská is an academic staff member in the Buchwissenschaft programmes at the University of Munich. Her main fields of research are the sociology of literary translating and the contemporary book market and literary scene.

Prof. Wolfgang Schmitz is Professor of Library Science at the University of Cologne, has been director of the Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek in Cologne since 1999 and since 2001 also head of the university archive. His research fields include book and publishing history in the Early Modern Age, especially book printing in Cologne, as well as topics pertaining to the contemporary book and library scene. In addition, he has been Chairman since 2004 of the Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Bibliotheks-, Buch- und Mediengeschichte, Chairman of the Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft, and corresponding member of the Historische Kommission des Börsenvereins in Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig.

Dr Anders Toftgaard is a research librarian at the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at The Royal Library, Copenhagen. He is specialised in French and Italian Renaissance literature and in book history. His most recent publications include the anthology (ed. with M.H. Andersen) Dialogo e conversazione. I luoghi di una società ideale (Olschki 2012), and articles on Montaigne in Les Chapitres oubliés des Essais de Montaigne (ed. P. Desan), Champion 2011 and Revue romane 45 (2010) and on Giacomo Castelvetro in Fund og Forskning 50 (2011).

Stijn Van Rossem started his career as bibliographer for the Short-Title Catalogue, Flanders (stcv). He curated exhibitions on chapbooks and the history of the Dutch dictionary. His fields of interest lie primarily in revolutionary imagery and publishing strategies during the ancien regime. He is currently preparing a PhD on the printing press production and the publishing strategies of the Verdussen family. He also teaches history of graphic design at the School of Arts Ghent (kask) and he is the current president of the Flanders Book Historical Society (vwb).

Adriaan van der Weel is Bohn extraordinary professor of Modern Dutch Book History at the University of Leiden, lec- turing in the department of Book Studies. His research interests in Book Studies concentrate on the digitisation of textual transmission, publishing studies, scholarly communication, and (popular) reading and publishing. He is editor of a number of book series on these subjects, and European articles editor of Digital humanities quarterly. His latest book is Changing our textual minds: Towards a digital order of knowledge (Manchester 2011).

Rikard Wingård is a PhD in literature at University of Gothenburg. His dissertation, Att sluta från början. Tidigmodern läsning och folkbokens receptionsestetik (Bokenäset 2011), on the reading and critique of Volksbücher in the seventeenth century, has been rewarded by the Swedish Academy and The Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg. Currently he is investigating the scribal publication of Swedish novel translations around 1700, and preparing a project on the early modern concept of text. In his spare time, he is also a practicing letterpress printer. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 220

* biblioﬁlie * * werken over typograﬁe en boekkunst * * boekbanden & illustratie * * geschiedenis van de boekkunst * * tijdschriften *

sint antoniesbreestraat 3d / 1011 hb amsterdam telefoon 020-622 77 48 www.minotaurusboekwinkel.nl / [email protected] geopend di t/m vr 13.30-17.30 uur / za 13.30-17.00 uur bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 221

Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging

Het twintigste Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis is een uitgave van de Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging, de eerste landelijke vereniging die zich richt op allen die het oude en het nieuwe boek in al zijn verschijningsvormen een warm hart toedragen. De nbv, opgericht in 1993, is een actieve vereniging met ca. 650 leden, van prominente wetenschappers tot amateuronderzoekers, van journalisten tot antiquaren. De vereniging is statutair gevestigd te Leiden en opereert sinds 1997 onder auspiciën van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde. De nbv organiseert veel activiteiten voor haar leden, alleen of in samenwerking met anderen uit de wereld van het boek. De leden van de nbv kunnen deelnemen aan speciale excursies naar tentoonstellingen, bibliotheken, musea of andere boekvriendelijke instellingen. In de afgelopen jaren heeft de vereniging onder meer de Athenaeumbibliotheek in Deventer, de Bibliotheca Thysiana in Leiden, de bibliotheek Ets Haim-Livraria Montezinos in Amsterdam en Museum het Palthe-huis in Oldenzaal bezocht. De excursies worden, evenals de jaarvergaderingen voor de leden, opgeluisterd met voordrachten van kenners over boekhistorische onderwerpen. De nbv is ook actief in het organiseren van congressen. Al in het eerste jaar van haar bestaan was de nbv medeorganisator van het spraakmakende congres Bladeren in andermans hoofd: over lezers en leescultuur. Samen met de universiteiten van Leiden en Nijmegen organiseerde de nbv een driedaags congres over de fameuze zeventiende-eeuwse uitgeversfamilie Elzevier en in 2004 vond een tweedaags congres plaats met de titel Vrouw en Boek: People’s business bij uitstek. In 2007 waren gebruikssporen in boeken het thema van het congres Licht beduimeld... Onder de titel Aanstormend en gevestigd, boekonderzoek in de Lage Landen organiseer- den de nbv en de Vlaamse Werkgroep Boekgeschiedenis op 9 april 2010 een congres in Utrecht. Ook in klei- ner verband brengt de vereniging mensen bij elkaar om specialistische kennis uit te wisselen. De congres- lezingen worden gepubliceerd in gelegenheidsbundels of het jaarboek. De nbv werkt samen met en ondervindt steun van allerlei organisaties in de wereld van het boek. Zo is de nbv vertegenwoordigd in het bestuur van de Dr. P.A. Tiele-Stichting en was zij ook betrokken bij de bouw van Bibliopolis, de website die is opgezet door de Koninklijke Bibliotheek en die geheel gewijd is aan de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse boek. Dankzij deze goede relaties kunnen leden van de nbv veelal kortingen krijgen voor evenementen of boekhistorische publicaties, zoals de reeks ‘Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse boekhandel, Nieuwe Reeks’. Deze reeks, die mede door de nbv is geïnitieerd, bestaat inmiddels uit acht delen, onder andere over het Journaal van Bontekoe, almanakken in de Gouden Eeuw en de Uitgeverij Stols. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 222

Lidmaatschap

Het lidmaatschap van de nbv staat open voor iedereen. Het lidmaatschapsgeld bedraagt A27,50 per kalenderjaar. De leden ontvangen hiervoor het jaarboek, uitnodigingen voor de ledenvergadering en overige activiteiten en enkele malen per jaar een nieuwsbrief. Voor studenten geldt een contributie van A16,50. Instellingen en bibliotheken kunnen zich voor A38,50 op het jaarboek abonneren. Eenieder die de vereniging op bijzondere wijze wil steunen, kan donateur worden voor minstens A132 per jaar. Het is ook mogelijk een lidmaatschap voor het leven te krijgen, hiervoor betaalt u eenmalig A680. U kunt zich opgeven als lid door een kaartje te sturen naar de secretaris, mevrouw E. (Elisabeth) Meyer, Cornelis van Alkemadestraat 37, 1065 ab Amsterdam. E-mailen kan ook: [email protected]. Stu - dentleden dienen het nummer van hun studentenpas te vermelden. Het lidmaatschap loopt gelijk met het kalenderjaar en wordt stilzwijgend verlengd, tenzij het voor 1 december schriftelijk is opgezegd.

Website en discussielijst

Voor informatie over de nbv kunt u ook onze website raadplegen: www.boekgeschiedenis.nl. Verder wijzen we u op de elektronische discussielijst, nbv-l, waar u terecht kunt met boekhistorische vragen, suggesties, meningen, adviezen, oproepen, tips en ideeën. Via de nbv-website kunt u zich aanmelden voor deze lijst.

Nog leverbaar

De meeste jaargangen van het jaarboek zijn nog leverbaar. Als lid van de nbv heeft u recht op aanzienlijke kortingen op oudere jaargangen. Ze bevatten artikelen over onder meer onderzoek van Middelnederlandse handschriften, het eerste educatieve kaartspel, boeken en lectuur in het Behouden Huys op Nova Zembla, productie en verspreiding van pornografische romans, de achttiende-eeuwse marskramer, moderne lees- kringen, Ik, Jan Cremer als onverbiddelijke bestseller, het fenomeen van de trilogie, enzovoort. Er zijn reeds acht themanummers verschenen, een over censuur in voorschrift en praktijk (1995), een over het behoud van ons geschreven en gedrukte erfgoed (1997), een over elf eeuwen boekcultuur in de Lage Landen (1999), een over boekdistributie (2001), een over ontwikkelingen in boekhandel en uitgeverij in de tweede helft van de twintigste eeuw (2003), een over de rol van de vrouw in de boekhandel (2005), een over de boekcultuur in een digitaliserende wereld (2007), een over de stand van de boekwetenschap: ‘Kopij en druk revisited’ (2010) en een over layout en design van teksten in handschrift, druk of op het scherm (2012). bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 223

De Boekenwereld

De Boekenwereld, al bijna dertig jaar hét blad voor liefhebbers van boek en prent, is geheel vernieuwd. Een blad om u tegen te zeggen. Groot formaat, 96 pagina’s, full colour en in een verjongde vormgeving.

De Boekenwereld verschijnt vier maal per jaar, een abonnement kost € 39,95. Kijk voor meer informatie op www.deboekenwereld.nl of bel (024) 360 22 94. bw_nbv2013_8SW_bw-nbv 2006.4 27-05-13 13:37 Pagina 224

De Zilveren Eeuw

boeken uit en over de periode 1670 - 1830 (ook prenten, handschriften, kranten en tijdschriften)

Rob de Bree lid werkgrwerkgroepoep 18e eeuw

t. 038 453 29 45 e. [email protected] www.dezilvereneeuw.nl ttiwt.www wueenerevlized/moc.re