SHARP News
Volume 23 | Number 4 Article 1
Fall 2014 Volume 23, Number 4
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SHARP News Volume 23, Number 4 Autumn 2014
ogy for occluding everything from material Social Sciences. No concurrent panels were Conference Reviews constraints to political objectives. run, ensuring that delegates could trace the- Conference panels showcased initiatives matics from one panel to the next. Sessions across Canada working towards the preserva- were well attended, and emerging scholars Current Directions in Book tion of cultural identity and knowledge. While had the pleasure of receiving questions from the conference sub-theme championed “bor- some of the most estimable colleagues in History: ders without boundaries,” Amy Hildreth Chen the profession. The BSC/SbC highlighted Borders without Boundaries and Kendall Roark reminded their audience its commitment to early career scholars in 2014 Annual Meeting of the Bibliographi- that restrictions on archival holdings, which awarding its first Emerging Scholar Prize to cal Society of Canada/La Société biblio- scholars often find irksome, are in place to Rachel Bryant for her paper “Towards the graphique du Canada (BSC/SbC) protect families and donors. In fact, the idea (In)digitization of the Archive: Preserving, Brock University, St. Catherine’s, Ontario of “boundaries” emerged as an important Sharing, and Protecting Indigenous Knowl- 26–27 May 2014 thematic throughout the conference, from edge in New Brunswick.” the exclusion of immigrant languages from Like many good conferences, conversa- In his keynote address, “The Bibliographic early twentieth-century Ontario libraries tions spilled over into the wine and cheese Study of Born-Digital Texts,” Alan Galey (Elizabeth Hanson) to the underground trans- reception. In a long corridor of a modern of the University of Toronto challenged national publishing practices of Bolsheviks glass building on Brock’s campus, the del- conference attendees with three assertions: (Andrea Hasenbank). Notably, Pierre Hébert egates of the BSC/SbC conference discussed first, book history is defined by its method- coyly engaged with the conference sub-theme, new directions for the community. The ologies, not its objects; second, texts are not delivering a paper entitled “‘Censure sans modern architecture fit the conversation, as born, they are made; and third, the print vs. frontières…’: L’ècrivain le plus censuré du many delegates expressed an interest in digital digital binary rarely leads anywhere interest- Québec, Louis Dantin, a passé toute sa ‘vie humanities training to address the growing ing. He concluded with a provocation about littéraire’…à Boston.” need of bibliographers to study e-books. As moving bibliography beyond books. Using In recognition of Dr. Hébert’s outstand- the conference drew to a close, this scholarly video games as an example, he asked how ing service to Canadian bibliography, the conversation became peppered with the chat- the bibliographical method might be useful BSC/SbC awarded him the Marie Tremaine ter of friendships forged by years of meet- for understanding new territories of cultural Medal. An expert on the history of censorship ing to discuss common interests. The next production. in Québec, Hébert has published five books meeting of the BSC/SbC will take place the These assertions, offered in the final ses- on the subject. He has published another day before the commencement of SHARP sion of the conference, epitomize a range of fourteen on topics ranging from narratology 2015 (7–10 July), in Montréal-Sherbrooke, collective concerns tabled over the two-day to book history. Hébert serves as co-direc- Québec. annual meeting. During the question period tor of the Groupe de recherches et d’études Kristine Smitka of a panel entitled “Digital Curation: Are We sur le livre au Québec (GRÉLQ) and the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada Fulfilling our Obligations to Future Genera- president of the Association québécoise pour tions? How Does ‘Digital Curation’ Relate to l’étude de l’imprimé (AQÉI). His acceptance the Curatorial Practices Employed by Special speech eloquently moved between French Collections Libraries?,” BSC/SbC President and English, demonstrating his talent for Linda Quirk pointed out that discussions community-building. Cradling the Tremaine Contents about digitization all too quickly rely on the Medal medallion in the palm of his hand, this buzz-word “access.” However, “preserva- year’s winner posed with past winners Sandra Conference Reviews 1 tion,” she argued, “is always the first step Alston (1988), Patricia Fleming (1992), and Annual Report 3 in the archival process. What is the point of Carl Spadoni (1999) for a commemorative Exhibition Reviews 5 access, if there is nothing there?” In warning photo. For many in attendance at the AGM, Book Reviews 8 us to address the mantra of “access” with this photo honoured the impressive achieve- DHSI Reports 21 caution, Quirk foreshadowed Galey’s call to ments of BSC/SbC’s members. Editors in Review 23 dispense with the term “born-digital,” which To the BSC/SbC’s credit, the conference Call for Nominations 23 effaces the labour of the coders who build managed to offer the intimacy of a special- Bibliography 23 digital texts. Throughout the conference, ized conversation amidst the bustle of the delegates decried the pied piper of terminol- Canadian Congress of the Humanities and The Last Post 24
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Language Speaks Us: in the forms in which activism and critical SHARP News College English Association- thinking have been criminalized by state in- stitutions, and posed some captivating ideas editor Caribbean Chapter Annual about the use of texts to mobilize social ac- Sydney Shep, Wai-te-ata Press Conference tion. Melissa Saywell’s paper was a provocative Victoria University of Wellington University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez take on use of language in the construction PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand 6140 14–15 March 2014 of gender and alternative masculinities in [email protected] “Drag Comedies.” Editorial Assistant – 23.4 The Caribbean Chapter of the College Many panels opened intriguing sets of Sara Bryan English Association (CEA-CC), primarily research questions about the utilitarian and Publication Assistant, Wai-te-ata Press based on the island of Puerto Rico, has been aesthetic role of print and e-media in colonial review Editors devoted to the study of the diverse cul- discourses. A panel with German Vargas, hari Joanna Howe, Books – Europe tural materials that fall under the umbrella of stephen kumar, and Amine Zidouh inter- Bath Spa University, UK “English” for over forty years. In March the preted how the emergence of literature, criti- [email protected] association’s annual meeting brought academ- cism, and institutionalized uses of language Clayton McCarl, Books – Latin America ics from the Caribbean and throughout the often hinge upon epistemic questions that can University of North Florida, FL, USA world to the University of Puerto Rico-May- provoke political discord. The multilingual [email protected] agüez for the Language Speaks Us conference. discourses in literary texts can function as a Jeffrey Makala, Books - North America The attendees were a combination of senior counterbalance, democratizing these means University of South Carolina, SC, USA faculty and graduate students, and the panels of communication by infiltrating them with Erin A. Smith, Books - North America spanned a diverse range of themes includ- more organic forms of cultural material. University of Texas at Dallas, TX, USA ing political propaganda, performance art, A session with Astrid Sambolin, Jennifer reviews_usa@sharpweborg pedagogical approaches, cultural migration, Moore, and Marta Viada Bellido de Luna Susann Liebich, Books –Australasia/Pacific Puerto Rican publications and those of the examined the role of language in the forma- James Cook University, QLD, AUS diasporas, and the links between e-media and tion of collective identity, remapping the con- [email protected] traditional print, among other topics. ventional uses of second-language pedagogy Abhijit Gupta, Books – South Asia Scholarly meetings in the Caribbean often away from a discourse of dominance (and Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India have a diverse range of languages, critical therefore subject-formation) and toward a [email protected] approaches, and historical themes, which poetics of inclusive and more participatory Lisa Pon, Exhibitions combine for a unique intellectual experience. uses of conversation in second-language Southern Methodist University, TX, USA While the language of our conference is Eng- teaching models. [email protected] lish, there are usually panels on multilingual James Penner, Rubén Mendoza, and Rick Molly Hardy, E-Resources texts, patois, and publishing in the region (and Mitchell collaborated on an examination of American Antiquarian Society, MA, USA elsewhere). dystopian realities in The Living Theater’s [email protected] The event began with a panel including Paradise Now. Their arguments reconsidered bibliographer David Bartholomae (author of “Inventing the audience participation, lost audio record- Cecile M. Jagodzinski the University,” perhaps the most cited work ings, and subject-formation in the work of the Lancaster, NY, USA ever published on English composition), who experimental theater. These performances, as [email protected] discussed writing and revision in multicultural the presenters demonstrated, mix nontradi- classrooms. The question-answer period be- subscriptions tional combinations of moving image and use The Johns Hopkins University Press gan a lively dialogue on the role of language of text for a thought-provoking take on the Journals Publishing Division and print text in digitized publishing, peda- cultures of New York in the 1960s. PO Box 19966, Baltimore, gogy, and other forms of communication. One of the more interdisciplinary panels MD 21211–0966 The conversational nature of the panel set involved David Logue, a biologist; Gala [email protected] a tone of open discussion and exchange of Porras-Kim, a linguist; and Benjamin Shultz- ideas that continued throughout the confer- Figueroa, a specialist in film. The papers c ence panels and social events. reconsidered the nonverbal reproduction of SHARP News [ISSN 1073-1725] is the quarterly Some papers tested the boundaries of thought for animals and humans through newsletter of the Society for the History of Author- language as a medium and the frontiers that conversational analyses of whistling and ship, Reading and Publishing, Inc.. The Society takes separate genre: Luis Vega’s paper, for instance, metaphor. They argued that nonverbal com- no responsibility for the views asserted in these was a piece of performance art that played munication warrants as much attention as pages. Copyright of content rests with contribu- with traditional approaches to visual art, po- traditional texts, in part because the medium tors; design copyright rests with the Society. Set etry readings, minidramas, literary criticism, allows the speaker to represent, and some- in Adobe Garamond with Wingdings. flash fiction, and newspaper reports, turning times unsettle, emergent conceptions of COPY DEADLINES: 1 March, 1 June, into an improvised metatheater that involved social power. The concealed nature of the 1 September, 1 December everyone present at the panel (and a great discourse (whistle and metaphor) allows the SHARP WEB: deal of laughter!). In the same panel, Joelle message to be magnified, thereby enriching http://sharpweb.org Mendoza mapped out the role of language its limits. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol23/iss4/1 2 et al.: Volume 23, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 23, no. 4 Autumn 2014 d
These panels were complemented by year’s conference. If you wish to stand, please poet Natasha Sajé’s keynote session, which, contact Carole Gerson, chair of the Nominat- Finances in addition to a poetry reading, was a reflec- ing Committee:
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... / 3 Society and Regional Liaisons As most of you will know, it has been our Niklander – considered over fifty books, and Eleanor also manages about two dozen regular practice to submit paper and panel selected at last Old Books, New Technologies. The liaisons with affiliated societies in various proposals for the annual SHARP conferences Representation, Conservation and Transformation disciplines and interdisciplinary groupings, using an online system. This is something that of Books since 1700, by David McKitterick of many of which host SHARP-sponsored conference organisers themselves have always Trinity College, Cambridge. panels. These include major North American had to organise. However, from next year The Book History editors award a prize for scholarly organisations such as MLA, AHA, SHARP itself will be providing the online the best graduate student essay. Last year, and ASECS. The work of liaison officers system for receiving and reviewing proposals this was won by Brigitte Beck Pristed for is vitally important to increasing SHARP’s for the annual conferences. Each conference her article “Glasnost Noire: The Soviet and reach beyond our own annual and focused will still appoint its own programme com- Post-Soviet Publication and Reception of conferences. Often they can propose a mittee to select proposals and draw up the James Hadley Chase.” This year’s winner was SHARP-sponsored panel to be held in the programme, but our hosting of this system Albert A. Palacios for his article “Preventing context of a larger conference; they also will enable members to retain the same log- ‘Heresy’: Censorship and Privilege in Mexican circulate brochures and sometimes host in details year-on-year and will allow us to Publishing, 1590–1612.” receptions to bring SHARP to the attention maintain an archive of proposals. Contact
the concept and to provide more information The Soul of a Man: Exhibition Reviews on the role of the state, church, synagogue, Toussaint Louverture and the mosque, and other institutions in the social, moral and legal production and regulation Haitian Slave Revolt Archiving Public Sex of public sex. In addition, a brief historical Boston Public Library, University of Toronto Art Centre overview of the development of mores for Boston, Massachusetts 29 April – 28 June 2014 public sexual conduct and the development 17 June – 30 September 2014 of laws in the East and in the West for the Under the auspices of academe, “Archiv- regulation of openly erotic encounters would Eighteenth-century maps of the Carib- ing Public Sex” is a rare opportunity for those have been helpful. bean, banned books from the Enlightenment, who may be inhibited by bourgeois conven- This is particularly true in the ethnically detailed letters on colonial politics, and ad- tions to consider the unknown pleasures of diverse community of Toronto. It is regret- ditional documents resist the presentation public sex in a safe and sanitary environment. table that an exhibit mounted on public sex of a single narrative within the Boston The artifacts, posters, flyers, photographs, in Canada should totally exclude French Public Library’s recent exhibition. Instead, books, ephemera, and films screened in the language materials, especially since French the multiple viewpoints of slaveholders and back of the exhibit hall may give some the literature and cinema has been so influential in insurgents tell different sides of the story of same uneasy feeling that our grandparents the domain of sexuality. Unfortunately, events the Haitian Revolution, and piece together an experienced when going through the door of in the Francophone province of Quebec, or image of its leader, Toussaint Louverture. a Times Square sex show. To an older genera- for that matter, places outside of Toronto, Organized in collaboration with the tion, public sex is made to seem comfortable have been totally ignored. In the 1960s not Haitian-Americans United Inc. and Haitian in the venue of a university museum. every province in Canada had its “Stonewall” Artists Assembly of Massachusetts, the show The diverse array of multi-media materials moment. highlights the Boston Public Library’s impor- that constitute the exhibit was drawn from The real strength of this exhibit is that tant collection of Haitian and West Indies the Sexual Representation Collection (SRC) it shows us examples of incredibly inter- materials, which includes over 10,000 books located in the Marc S. Bonham Centre for esting materials, including well preserved and manuscripts. Although visitors are often Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of manuscripts, books, correspondence, posters, lured to the Central Library by its famous Toronto. Curated by Nicholas Matte, Cura- photographs, videos, and sex toys. In the past, murals and open-air courtyard, people seem tor of the SRC with University of Toronto archives of marginalized areas of sexuality equally drawn to the dark, intimate space of students Lisa Kadey, Jessica Martin, and Ana have not been heavily collected in research the Rare Books lobby, where the exhibit is Martins, the exhibit challenges its viewers to libraries, but such archives have grown in housed in ten cases and lit from above. Four contemplate how sexuality and sexual practic- importance to support the emerging academic main wall texts trace Toussaint’s journey from es have been defined by social, economic, and discipline of sexual studies. bondage to a brilliant military and diplomatic artistic conventions in the recent past. The Similar collections includethe Canadian career that gave way to the world’s first black exhibition thus narrates the impact of these Gay & Lesbian Archives in Toronto, Human republic. changes on our understanding of sexuality Sexuality Collection at Cornell University, Born a slave in the French colony of today. As a joint project of the University’s Jean-Nickolaus Treffer Collection in Gay, Saint-Domingue in 1743, Toussaint Bréda departments of Sexual Diversity Studies and Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans-gender Studies was originally named after the plantation on Museum Studies, this initiative is a powerful at the University of Minnesota Library, Kinsey which he grew up. In outlining his biography, pedagogical device worthy of emulation. Institute Library & Special Collections at In- the exhibit’s first section notes that Toussaint In effect, the exhibit employs a peep show diana University, Magnus Hirschfeld Archive learned to read and write while working in mentality, which is both its strength and for Sexology in Berlin, and Pride Library at the plantation house. This fact becomes weakness. Viewers are given a glimpse into a the University of Western Ontario. Hopefully particularly significant in relation to the variety of public sex activities, such as bond- in the future the University of Toronto will letters on view, some written in Toussaint’s age, cruising, group sex, kink, pegging, and be able to provide finding aids and digital fac- own hand and addressed to international of- movie theater, bathhouse, and bathroom sex, similes of items in the Sexual Representation ficials, including a United States consul. His through the works of winners of the Femi- Collection so that researchers can explore this correspondence is signed with “Louverture,” nist Porn Awards, the Morpheous Bondage fascinating resource in more detail. a name change marking his later identity as Extravaganza, and leaders of the sex-positive The old adage that “sex sells” is con- a revolutionary and statesman. The French feminist movement such as Annie Sprinkle firmed by the presence of exhibit sponsors word for “opening,” the title “Louverture” and Tristan Taormino. Unfortunately omitted ScotiaBank and Manulife Financial. Perhaps referred to his battlefield prowess, as he are the implications of the internet and social these companies will support cataloging and played critical roles in the 1790s slave upris- media that fuel newly fashionable public sex digitization initiatives to expand access to this ings that would transform Saint-Domingue activities, such as “hogging,” in which a group truly wonderful collection. into Haiti. of men cruise for obese women and “dog- The second section of the exhibit is dedi- ging,” a phenomenon in which people meet in Melissa McAfee cated to the early history of Saint-Domingue, public parks to engage in sexual encounters. University of Guelph, Ontario beginning with Christopher Columbus’s 1492 To understand what public sex is, it would description of the island of Hispaniola. Di- be have been useful for the curators to define vided by colonial empires, the western side ... /6
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... / 5 of the island became increasingly valuable to preceding decades made possible the inde- est in a large array of activities and practices the French government, which implemented pendence of Haiti in 1804. As his body grew on the interface between people and books. a plantation economy. Exports of coffee, weaker, his story grew stronger, inspiring the Understanding the book as a site of creative sugar, and other fruits of slave labor pumped biographies that are on view. Here, the library misuse, the exhibition explores the relation- unprecedented wealth into France, depressing has set up a provocative contrast, displaying ship between books and the actions they the island’s natural resources while facilitating books that condemn Toussaint Louverture as prompt. Cormack and Mazzio see the payoff the mother country’s developments in art, a manipulative opportunist next to romantic of this work as part of an effort to understand science, and philosophy. The display includes accounts of his selfless life and martyrdom. the way books shaped models of thought and an 1802 chart showing the rapid importation The exhibition is punctuated by a case informed theoretical speculation in the Early of enslaved people from Africa, who would holding engraved portraits of Toussaint. Modern period. outnumber their white owners twenty to one Across these and similar examples, his skin In five main sections, the exhibition fea- by the end of the eighteenth century. The tone ranges from soft grey to charcoal black; tures pictures and accompanying descriptions swollen ranks of slaves benefitted, but also his eyes, nose, lips, and chin change size and of a variety of non-fiction books from the pe- terrified, the plantation owners, who antici- shape; he gains and loses earrings, hair rib- riod 1500–1700. ‘Section 1: Technologies of pated the crumbling of their way of life in bons, and hats. The exhibition would ben- Use’ focuses on the way a book determines its the face of revolution. efit from a discussion of Toussaint’s elusive own use. The featured items all depict various The exhibition takes its title from a quote physical appearance, such as historian David paratextual elements – like title pages and an- by Toussaint Louverture, “I may have been Geggus has recently written in an online pub- notations – which were “in this period more born a slave, but nature gave me the soul of lication for the John Carter Brown Library, clearly understood to be interpretive guides.” a man.” This sentiment is perhaps most thor-
exhibition suggests that injunctions against “history” evokes “long ago” or “in the distant Hinchcliff’s Fragments is a book-like struc- misuse may ultimately serve as guides for the past,” whereas in reality the past extends right ture, but it unfolds to reveal two glassine very behavior they aim to prevent. up to where the present begins. Books made envelopes filled with endless bits of paper: The online exhibition format admirably yesterday are also a part of “book history.” a treasure trove of printed, hand-stamped, brings this rich material to the fingertips Imagine this reviewer’s delight, then, upon and typewritten ephemera. Maureen Forys’ of anyone with an Internet connection, encountering Bookworks, a recent exhibition edition of Edgar Allen Poe and Stéphane but it also necessarily places limits on the of handmade book-like objects created by Mallarmé’s The Raven/Le Corbeau is an elegant exhibition’s impact. The images are best members of the Pacific Center for the Book notebook-size volume with a simple cloth experienced on a large desktop screen – my Arts. These works are a happy reminder that spine – and a jaunty black feather sticking 13-inch laptop seemed inadequate to the task. “book history” is perhaps more properly, if out at the top. The situation is slightly better on a tablet or more tongue-twistingly, termed “the study The viewer’s inability to handle such mobile, where the viewer can zoom all the and interpretation of all artifacts of written visually striking items does not preclude way in at the expense of seeing the whole communication”: a more permissive, expan- recognition of their pedagogical or canonical image at once. The layout of the page is also sive term whose purview can easily include significance. Virginia Phelps’ AlphaBindary, sometimes a problem, as it is often necessary broadsides and graffiti and (gasp) electronic for instance, is a comprehensive bookbind- to scroll between the text and the relevant im- screens alike. These lovely but intriguing ob- ing curriculum in itself, comprising 50 mini- age. Section 4 in particular suffered from the jects cannot but inspire a deep gratitude for books whose bindings represent techniques online format, as the two-dimensional images having made the time to view them. Many beginning with every letter of the alphabet. mercilessly flattened the fascinating array of scholarly dissertations or theses could be David Lance Goines’ woodcut illustrations pop-ups, flaps, and volvelles discussed. See- written on them, for they are simultaneously of ingredients for Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse ing them in person, even behind thick glass, deeply respectful of the crafts of bookmaking Café Cookbook are printed on luminous white would have allowed a much better view. This and yet push at the boundaries of the classic paper with generous margins, showing off as said, the curators have done an excellent job book-historical question, “What is a book?” much the artist’s clean lines and steady hand displaying this material as fully as the online In short, a show like Bookworks elicits the sort as the chef ’s legendary facility with all kinds format will allow. of joyous appreciation and new analytical of food from fish to flora. And Jenna Ro- The implications of this exhibition’s im- thoughts not always experienced while, say, driguez and Claire Sammons’ from A to Z… plicit argument will no doubt influence future collating yet another 300-leaf folio Bible with an impartial bibliography is a facsimile of – no, scholarship in this field, even if it remains misprinted foliation (and a pigskin binding an homage to – Johanna Drucker’s seminal unclear whether the term “use” is meaning- that won’t open flat) while shivering away in 1977 work of the same name, printed from fully different than “reading” as it is most a too-cold Rare Books reading room. 48 different cases of type as a challenge and broadly construed. Further, the curators are Consider, for instance, Lyall Harris’ Ka- experiment in typographical storytelling. perhaps a bit too eager to see “use” as inher- leidoscope, featuring an actual kaleidoscope Much more could be said of this extraor- ently transgressive and disobedient, rather whose front end spits out an accordion-folded dinary assemblage of media and makers. than understanding it as an act that ranges message, like a sort of ticker tape oracle. Or Perhaps the ideal thing to say, in closing, is between the transgressive and the conven- take Judith Selby Lang’s spectacular Navigate, that the 120 works featured in the exhibition tional. Despite these very minor critiques, the consisting of a dictionary whose words have splendidly reveal the diversity of the PCBA exhibition is well worth exploring, or perhaps been painstakingly lifted off the pages using community. Exhibition Chair Kathleen “using,” as you see fit. measures of transparent tape, which then Burch reports that the show’s contributors in- Ruth M. McAdams cascade away from the book like an upturned clude “bookbinders, calligraphers, collagists, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor mop containing millions of disembodied conservators, graphic designers, illustrators, words. Or look at Lucia Harrison’s Soil Core I, inkers, letterers, librarians, papermakers, pho- which replicates a geologist’s cross-section of tographers, printers, printmakers, sign paint- earth using discs of paper, leaves, and roots ers, stone carvers, typographers, wine makers, c all held together within an open canister-like wood engravers, writers, and zinesters.” All apparatus. Besides this, there are a free-stand- these, I submit, are book historians too. ing paper-and-lace gown (Marcia Weisbrot’s Their collective productivity makes for a rich For Jane at 200); a deck of tarot cards (Chris landscape of contemporary bookmaking that Bookworks: The 15th Triennial Rolik and Nance O’Banion’s Esoterica: A Read- combines history, craftsmanship, and con- PCBA Members’ Show ing Deck); an elegant woodwork board bearing noisseurship with innovation, interpretation San Francisco Public Library pink flamingoes, a single brass key, a copy of and imagination. 21 June – 6 September 2014 Alice in Wonderland, and Scrabble tiles spelling This exhibition was sponsored by, and out the work’s title (Flamingoes and Mustard staged at, the Book Arts & Special Collec- Even the most interdisciplinary of book Both Bite, by B. Alexandra Szerlip); as well as a tions Center of the San Francisco Public historians can sometimes forget that the collection of embroidered eggshells (yes, you Library. term “Book History” can be quite restrictive. read that correctly; it’s Sara Rantz Biel’s Ovum Simran Thadani The choice of the word “book” privileges a Philosophicum). San Francisco certain notion – block, ink, binding, leaves Other pieces are more traditional in ap- – over other forms of written media. And pearance, but still contain surprises. Jennie
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in early modern books, but some might find and Murray G. Hall, cite Bertuch to stress Book Reviews the connection to Milton tenuous. the importance of literary transfer in the late When Acheson turns to “art” in the third eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, chapter, the book regains its momentum. the dawn of the “Age of World Literature” Analyzing the images adorning instructional famously proclaimed by Goethe (7). While the Katherine Acheson. Visual Rhetoric and Early manuals on writing and painting, she makes a international literary transfer of fiction and Modern English Literature. Farnham, UK and provocative argument about the form Marvell nonfiction around 1800 was the topic of the Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. xii, 180p., ill. chose for his politically charged critique of conference, its purpose was a different kind ISBN 9780754662839. £60 (hardback). technology in his poem “Last Instructions to of transfer: the interdisciplinary scholarly a Painter.” In the final chapter, on “nature,” cooperation between literary history, book In Visual Rhetoric and Early Modern English technical illustrations of animals illuminate history, general history, and sociology, which Literature, Katherine Acheson sets out to Aphra Behn’s novel inspired by travel to the editors urge in their introduction (7–9) explore the role of diagrams and technical Surinam. The key distinction here, between – an agenda that is as easy to applaud as it is illustrations in the early modern imagination the “real” and the “natural,” is not always as hard to put into practice. – what she calls, after Elizabeth Eisenstein, clear as the author would claim, but the im- So what did the bees of interdisciplinary “brainwork.” The premise of the book is ages under consideration are fascinating, and book scholarship bring to Vienna? The both promising and ambitious, as the major- there is good reason to believe that Behn had volume features the following contribu- ity of scholarship on the visual aspects of them in mind while composing the work. tions: Robert Darnton on the re-import of early modern print has tended to focus on Overall this book is a welcome addition banned French literature into prerevolution- narrative illustration and artistic and stylistic to the growing number of studies on early ary France; Joseph Jurt on Goethe’s concept advances related to the birth of perspective modern visual culture. Some will question of world literature; Jennifer Willenberg on and verisimilitude. Turning to images that the author’s decision to consider illustrations German readers of English literature; John often make no effort to reproduce visual ex- from the mid-sixteenth to the late-seven- A. McCarthy on Christoph Martin Wieland’s perience, Acheson asks what role such images teenth centuries while only taking literary translations of Shakespeare; Achim Hölter played in the development of early modern examples from the last quarter of the seven- on German literary journals dedicated to representational practice. If such images are teenth century. As the author claims that the foreign literatures; Nikola von Merveldt on not intended to give the reader a visual ap- illustrations were ubiquitous enough to have Joachim Heinrich Campe’s adaptation of proximation of the material communicated in a broad influence on the way early modern Robinson Crusoe for children; Alison E. Martin the book, what kind of representational work English writers conceptualized space, truth, on Gotthilf Friedrich Kunth’s heavily anno- do they do? To work through this question, art, and nature, one might expect a wider tated translation of the British picturesque Acheson examines four categories of illustra- range of literary examples than is offered travel writer William Gilpin; Jeffrey Freedman tion alongside four works of early modern here. Nevertheless, anyone interested in the on the ingenious and devious marketing of literature: military and horticultural illustra- role of visual material in early modern English the French translation of Friedrich Nicolai’s tion and Andrew Marvell’s “Upon Appleton print culture will want to read this book. novel Sebaldus Nothanker; Susan Pickford House,” dichotomous tables and Milton’s Par- on two rival translators of Sterne’s Tristram adise Lost, painting and drawing illustrations James A. Knapp Shandy, Johann Friedrich Zückert and Johann and Marvell’s “Last Instructions to a Painter,” Loyola University Chicago Joachim Bode; Reinhard Buchberger on the and zoological illustration and Aphra Behn’s English “Pocket Library” series of the Vien- Oroonoko. Each chapter is further organized c nese publisher Rudolph Sammer; Rüdiger around a defining concept, “space,” “truth,” Görner on Adam Müller’s appropriation of “art,” and “nature,” respectively. Shakespeare and Edmund Burke for his own The first two chapters, on “space” and Norbert Bachleitner and Murray G. Hall, eds. aesthetic and political agenda; Bill Bell on “truth,” represent the book’s strongest and “Die Bienen fremder Literaturen:” Der literarische Italian bookstores and reading rooms cater- weakest. First, reading Marvell’s “Upon Transfer zwischen Großbritannien, Frankreich und ing to English tourists; Norbert Bachleitner Appleton House” alongside military and dem deutschsprachigen Raum im Zeitalter der Weltlit- on Luise Gottsched, Dorothea Tieck, and horticultural illustrations in printed books eratur (1770–1850). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz other women translators; Christoph Charle with which Marvell was no doubt familiar, Verlag, 2012. 328p,. ill. ISBN 9783447067881. on the export of French drama and opera Acheson demonstrates how aspects of the €72 (hardback). to stages in Germany and Austria; Johan- poem that can sometimes be perplexing – the nes Frümmel on the Austrian censorship juxtaposition of military and natural figures, This book contains the contributions (in of French literature; Murray G. Hall on the for example – may be a product of the shared German, English, and French) to a confer- copyright agreement between Austria and the visual rhetoric of these two forms of techni- ence held in Vienna in 2011. The title, “The Kingdom of Sardinia, the first international cal illustration. The results are quite striking. Bees of Foreign Literatures,” derives from treaty of its kind; and Irene Fußl and Ulrike The second chapter argues less successfully a programmatic statement by the German Tanzer on Josephine von Knorr, a friend of for Milton’s debt to the genealogical tree dia- eighteenth-century editor and publisher Frie- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach and translator gram and the dichotomous table in Paradise drich Justin Bertuch on the value of literary of Byron’s Manfred. Lost. Acheson makes a strong case for re-ex- transfer between national cultures. The edi- Obviously this is more than a brief review amining the role of these ubiquitous images tors of the collection, Norbert Bachleitner can cover. Let me just highlight a few instanc- https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol23/iss4/1 8 et al.: Volume 23, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 23, no. 4 Autumn 2014 d
es of the kind of methodological integration fremder Literaturen” will be useful for special- Australian readers were mainly interested in advocated by Bachleitner and Murray in their ists; few will be attractive and rewarding for English books and that Australian authors introduction. Jeffrey Freedman adroitly com- the curious and intelligent common reader. were dependent on English publishers to bines quantitative and qualitative methods in Book history has always been supported and be published. Bode holds that this view of his discussion of the French translation of advanced by amateur bibliophiles; the future Australian literary history is a result of the Friedrich Nicolai’s satirical novel Das Leben of the discipline (and the flourishing of literary value placed on publication in Britain und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus SHARP) has much to gain from resisting the by Australian literary critics and historians, Nothanker. Nikola von Merveldt’s chapter on temptation of professional exclusiveness and which in itself becomes “an external seal of Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere from cultivating this last type of transfer – the approval that provides a contradictory basis offers an integrative view of a literary text, lively mutual exchange between academic for assertions of national literary quality” its material manifestation in a book, and its experts and lay booklovers. Book nuts of all (55). On the contrary, she convincingly argues embeddedness in social practices, based on walks of life, unite! that her data reveals a thriving Australian Gérard Genette’s theory of the “paratext.” Ferdinand von Münch book publishing industry based on the se- Achim Hölter puts Bertuch’s “bees” citation Colgate University, Hamilton, New York rial novel that forces literary critics “into an in its historical context – the sudden boom uncomfortable proximity with readers and of international literary journals as a new markets” that may lead them to acknowledge medium around 1780 – and connects book c that “internal – close – readings can never tell history to intellectual history by drawing a a novel’s full story” (56). line from the emergence of these (usually The following chapter takes aim at the short-lived) journals to the development of Katherine Bode. Reading by Numbers: Recalibrat- mythologised view of the 1970s as the decade a new critical discourse that would eventually ing the Literary Field. London: Anthem, 2012. when the Australian publishing industry was come to be known and institutionalized as 245p. ISBN 085728454. AUD $99. born, refuting the widely-accepted narra- “comparative literature.” tive that government funding in the 1970s Finally, there is the primus inter pares, Rob- In Reading by Numbers: Recalibrating the and 1980s allowed Australian publishers to ert Darnton. His keynote address provides Literary Field, Katherine Bode mines, models, break the dominance of British publishers a vivid impression of what it means to lug and analyses data extracted from the online in the Australian novel field. Instead, the pounds and pounds of banned books, writ- bibliographical database AustLit in order to data extracted from AustLit shows that ten in France and printed in Switzerland, highlight patterns, connections, and trends trends in Australian publishing history are back across the Alps to their French readers. in Australian literary history that have been far more continuous than previously argued. Nowhere is the materiality of cultural transfer hitherto unseen by critics. Essentially, this Bode rejects a narrative of a flowering local more tangible than in the specifications of book presents readers with a new history of publishing industry decimated by heartless the smuggling trade in the eighteenth cen- the Australian novel. Indeed, by adopting multinationals with, perhaps, the boldest tury: sixty pounds of books per backpack, Franco Moretti’s much heralded and often statement in this book: “Only by abandoning or fifty if the snow gets deep; the smuggler criticised model of a flat and inclusive literary this narrative of a lost time that never really can expect to get twenty-five sols if all goes history, Bode challenges our understanding of was can Australian literary studies develop a well, and nine years of rowing as a galley the development of the Australian novel and more critical relationship with the recent past; slave in Marseille if it doesn’t (16). Darnton forces us to rethink established arguments. only on this basis can we offer an effective adds two further dimensions to the confer- Reading by Numbers is intelligently struc- analysis of the present and a constructive ence theme of cultural transfer. One is the tured, using its first chapter to introduce contribution to future studies of literature transfer between different scholarly media: the reader to the merits and criticisms of and publishing in Australia and of Australian Darnton envisages his projected work on the quantitative approach to literary history. fiction” (103). the book trade in prerevolutionary France Following Willard McCarty, Bode convinc- The fourth and fifth chapters offer a femi- as a hybrid between printed book and digital ingly explains her modelling of data “not nist reading of Australian publishing history website, thus applying the nexus of textual- [as] knowledge as an end product but [as] the by investigating the connections between ity, materiality, and social use creatively to his development of knowledge as an ongoing publishing and gender trends of the novel. own scholarly production. Closely related is process” (24). This chapter is informative Bode argues that the locally published novel the other dimension: Darnton’s motivation and well argued, and offers an excellent in- was dominated by male authors due to the for his experiment (and for structuring his troduction to anyone who wishes to learn British construction of the novel as a female book around the five-month-long journey more about digital humanities approaches form, and that the rise in the late nineteenth of the STN salesman Jean-François Faverger to literary history, particularly the prevailing century of British-published male Australian in 1778, which he intends to describe “fast, debates between Moretti, his supporters, and authors can be attributed to British attempts in picaresque fashion”) is that he is “trying his detractors. Each of the subsequent chap- to enter the colonial publishing market. Fur- to write for the general educated reader, not ters takes a particular truism of Australian thermore, Bode contends that the contem- just for other college professors;” he doesn’t literary history and challenges it based on the porary increase in women writers is a result want to bore his reader (16). I wish more of quantitative analysis of publication trends of of the devaluing of the novel as a literary us had Darnton’s ambition – and his talent to the specific periods in question. form and that increased female authorship pursue it so successfully! The first of these refutes the general has not led to increased critical attention on Most of the contributions to “Die Bienen consensus that in the nineteenth century the female-authored novel. ... / 10
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... / 9 There are two broad themes that inform the local and transnational are endlessly en- Steiner makes the first move in mapping the Bode’s arguments: transnationalism and value. tangled. We are reminded that textual meaning rise of post-war Swedish publishing; Karl In the first instance, she is concerned with the “takes place in a far larger field than the one Berglund answers (finally!) why Swedish physical movement of literature and how the [solely] established between reader and text” crime fiction is so successful; Jan Dlask and novel is produced, disseminated and received (127), and that those cultural and material Lenka Fárová tell a periphery-defying tale of inside and outside Australia. Furthermore, meaning-making contexts in turn are changed Finnish literature in Czech; Monica Wenusch she argues that our understanding of the by the circulating texts – those contexts, provides the German version of Johannes V. development of the Australian novel field is moreover, being scarcely coterminal with Jensen; Petra Broomans tells the unsettling inherently linked to constructions of literary state, region or national-language boundaries. tale of Pär Lagerkvist in the Netherlands; value and that there is a pressing need to So far so good, but this transnational point Anne Myrup Munk writes on how publishers reinsert “non-literary” forms (such as the has been made elsewhere, and the strategies (of Mara Lee) are trapped by social construc- nineteenth-century serialised novel or pulp used throughout the fourteen essays are not tions of femininity and how critics of those fiction in the twentieth century) into histori- unexpected. Genette and McGann, with a constructions are too; Charlotte Berry looks cal analysis. smattering of Bourdieu, are used to explain at Nordic children’s literature published by Ultimately, Reading by Numbers is an absorb- the creation of new meanings across variant Floris (Scotland); Edel Sheridan-Quantz ing reflection on the ways in which empirical editions, due to paratextual change. Trans- shows how late nineteenth- and early twenti- data can lead to a re-evaluation of an entire lation is treated as an aspect of cultural eth-century German picture books were part field. Despite the fact that Bode’s analysis transfer and not as a discipline of textual of a transnational Nordic-British-Germanic focuses on extrinsic factors that many textual equivalence. Agency far beyond authorship industry; Anne Bachmann writes of cultural critics would frown upon, her arguments open is foregrounded for its role in co-production. reputation and media interdependency in up new perspectives from which these same Static centre and periphery constructions are Swedish literature and silent film; Bjarne Tho- researchers can reassess the Australian novel. irretrievably undermined. So far, so much rup Thomsen explains the periodical-borne The author herself is conscious of the limita- the better. But what fascinates with this col- life of transnational sentiments from Selma tions of a solely quantitative, digital approach lection – and it is a fascinating gem – is its Lagerlöf during the First World War; Sofia to literary history yet at the same time stresses demonstration of how cherished beliefs can Kotilainen provides a “history from below” that “quantitative computational analyses are collapse when “Nordic” (whatever that may of the driving of nineteenth-century Finn- arguments, underpinned by interpretation mean) and other realms collide. ish literary culture by peasants in the remote and theorisation” (173). Perhaps, the most It seems that early works by Nobel-win- Finnish countryside; Jyrki Hakapää reveals the striking feature of this book is Bode’s level ning Selma Lagerlöf, such as Christ Legends and intense croisée in the history of the national headed, non-zealous approach to digital hu- The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, despite their Finnish book market, made by forces from manities research, which can only succeed, religiosity and Swedish nationalism, can thrive the Crimea to the Finnish hinterland; and in her opinion, as long as it stays faithful to in the twenty-first-century lists of a successful Anne-Kari Skarðhamar follows the issue of the core principles of humanities research: Scottish children’s literature publisher, Floris, national consolidation versus cosmopolitan scholarship, interpretation, and argumenta- who “bank on the appeal of a nostalgic time aesthetics in the search for an independent tion. Reading by Numbers is an essential read gone by” (146) and deliberately retain certain Faroese literature. And, bounding all these for anyone interested in Australian literary British spelling in US markets to emphasise contributions, is Janet Garton’s history of the history, colonial publishing history, digital the quaintness. The Danish Nobel Laureate journal Scandinavica that reads like a study in humanities research and the history of the Johannes V. Jensen, long held in the Danish book history itself: from its post-war insti- book in general. academy as a giant of literary modernism, had tute-funding, to private desktop publishing Ross Woods in Germany a profoundly different reception, during the lean 1980s, to its enlarged but more Victoria University of Wellington being most admired for his exotic locations modular editorial team from the 1990s, and and mythologies. Another modernist, Pär its current incarnation from 2009 onwards, c Lagerkvist, saw his radical anti-fascist anti-rac- tackling a world where “impact, enterprise ist 1933 play The Hangman performed in the and public engagement” are crucial to UK Netherlands to find it decried as a cross be- research publishing. Elettra Carbone and Jakob Stougaard- tween Music Hall and Scandinavian “Heimat” The only objection one might have is Nielsen, eds. Scandinavica: An International that, as the Norwegian Trygve Gulbranssen’s an unevenness in the English-as-second- Journal of Scandinavian Studies, vol. 51, no. 2 “Björndal cycle” was deemed to, bordered on language use (not only between essays but (2012): “Nordic Publishing and Book His- the literature of “blood and soil.” Such re-in- within). Sometimes native-language quotes tory: Celebrating Scandinavica’s 50-year terpretations show how fragile some beliefs are included, sometimes not, and there are Jubilee 1962–2012.” London: Norvik Press, are, and how constructed – Anglo and Franco issues with translation: Myrup Munk, for ex- 2012. 298p. ISBN 9781909408043. £18.50 canonicity being no exception. I can think of ample, translates uafyrstelige as both “disturb- (paperback). few opportunities, beyond those provided ing” (129) and “inescapable” (130), which, for by such a transnationally-themed journal, to the sake of her argument, makes a significant As the introduction to this special fifty- better demonstrate how conditional the job difference. Throughout, there are punctuation year jubilee edition of Scandinavica makes of literary criticism is. and phrasing issues that reveal distinctly Scan- clear, Nordic literatures and cultures are by Among the essays, there are no duds, many dinavian habits. But even here, the ‘faults,’ if no means restricted to a geographic region; excellent pieces, and several rare nuggets. Ann that is what they can be called, are revealing. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol23/iss4/1 10 et al.: Volume 23, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 23, no. 4 Autumn 2014 d 11
Just as literary meaning and reception is con- sues are clear enough – the story of how print- text than either discipline can achieve on its ditional, so is language use, and the world is ing developed and became part of people’s own (ix) – a perspective SHARP members full of many valid Englishes. No one holds lives cannot be understood simply through an will certainly appreciate. Chartier refutes a monopoly on correctness and, across the isolated focus on the large dominant centres both the Romantic notion of the author as spectrum, this volume of Scandinavica is a of production. It is vital to any history of the sole creator of a text and the notion that the fine reiteration of that wider point. book that local patterns of print production author is “dead,” adopting instead a broader, are not obscured or relegated to a footnote. materialist approach. “It is the very comple- Simon Frost The caliber of research in all essays in the xity of the process of publication that has Aarhus, Denmark, volume is extremely high, with some genu- inspired the title of this book,” he declares. and University of Bournemouth, UK inely outstanding contributions. Nonetheless, “Although every decision made in a printing there are a few issues. While the collection shop, even the most mechanical one, implies c of essays encourages the reader to think in the use of reason and understanding, literary a comparative fashion, there is less evidence creation always confronts an initial materiality of this within the individual essays. Despite of the text…This fact justifies the attempt Benito Rial Costas, ed. Print Cultures and Pe- appearing three years after the publication of to create a close connection between cultural ripheries in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution Iberian Books – a national short-title catalogue history and textual criticism” (x). to the History of Printing and the Book Trade in for Spain and Portugal – not one of the essays The volume contains twelve essays writ- Small European and Spanish Cities. Leiden: Brill, on Spanish printing appears to have exploited ten over a ten-year period, some given as 2012. xxiv, 424p., ill. ISBN 9789004235748. it. More curiously, while there is much to lectures and some originally published in €105 / US $146 (hardback). admire in this volume, it would be remiss French and Spanish in a variety of journals. of any reviewer not to mention pronounced Part I, “The Past in the Present,” is mainly It is simply not true, of course, that smaller copy editing issues. Grammatical problems concerned with historiography. In addition to centres of printing have been neglected by and awkward sentence structures are by no examining the ways in which the practice of scholars of early modern book history. There means infrequent. This is a pity, because it history has changed in recent decades, Char- are too many specialist bibliographies and detracts from some solid and genuinely excit- tier also reflects on the ways in which texts studies that testify to the contrary. What is the ing research. have changed, particularly as digitization has case, however, is that the role of these towns Excellent in conception, if a little rough in brought previously inaccessible texts into the and cities in the national and international execution: both the editor and contributors purview of general readers. Part II, “What marketplace of print has not been the subject should be congratulated on this remarkable is a Book?” engages fundamental questions of any broad consideration or treatment. and thought-provoking volume. Brill’s Library about the nature of texts and their creation That has now changed. In Print Cultures and of the Written Word Series has done much that are set out in the essay “The Powers Peripheries, Benito Rial Costas has compiled over the past few years to consolidate its of Print”: “How should we think about the an edited collection of ambition and learning, reputation as one of the most influential early relations between print…and other forms of drawing together the work of no fewer than modern book history series currently available. the publication and diffusion of the written seventeen leading researchers in the field. The This latest addition does not disappoint. word…? How are we to situate the powers case studies in the volume explore smaller proper to the book in relation to those of “peripheral” printing centres across Europe, Alexander S. Wilkinson other written objects, given that if not all not least in Britain, Italy, Hungary, the Low University College Dublin books are printed, not all print objects are Countries, Denmark, and France. There is books? And, more fundamentally, what is a a particular emphasis, however, on Spanish c book?” (59) And Part III, “Texts and Mea- examples, with seven articles dedicated to the nings,” digs more deeply into the significance Peninsula, covering printing in Antequera, for literary interpretation of considering a Cuenca, Híjar, Huesca, Épila, Barcelona, Roger Chartier. The Author’s Hand and the given text’s materiality. Segovia, and Santiago de Compostela. Printer’s Mind. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Although disciplinary bias may play some The resulting volume is impressive, dis- Cambridge, UK & Malden, MA: Polity Press, role in my response as a reader, I found the playing a range of methodological approaches 2014. xiv, 242p. ISBN 9780745656014. £55 / essays in Part III by far the most focused across a range of subjects – evidence of a US $67.80 (hardback). and interesting. “Paratext and Preliminaries” growing and increasingly dynamic interest demonstrates, primarily through an analysis in the handpress book. By bringing together In this new volume, Roger Chartier ex- of editions of Don Quixote, how the non-aut- studies of printing across Europe, the volume plores the materiality of texts largely through hor-generated (although occasionally author- taken as a whole also underscores the fact the publication history of Cervantes (and, to revised) elements of a particular version of that print cultures might best be understood a lesser extent, that of Shakespeare). Char- a text can illuminate its meaning for the first within a transnational and comparative tier acknowledges that “[s]ome readers may and subsequent generations of readers who framework that challenges assumptions and find it surprising that a historian would risk engage with that particular version. Chartier encourages us to ask new questions. In com- venturing into literature,” but he robustly de- makes a good case for the value of reprinting mon with most edited collections, the reader fends his “audacity” by demonstrating that a all paratext in modern scholarly editions. The is left largely to make these connections and combination of historical and literary critical essays “Publishing Cervantes” and “Publish- comparisons themselves. Yet, the broader is- approaches yields a richer understanding of a ing Shakespeare” were particularly enjoyable. ... / 12
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... / 11 Each provides a relatively quick and delightful described by Dane or the ultimate results. the physicality of printed books and manu- introduction to the complexities of publishing The most enjoyable section of this part is scripts and surrounding social practices. The and editing a major canonical writer – in these “An Editorial Propaedutic.” The outcomes published essays explore the social materiality instances, the canonical writers. Although are interesting because the data underscore of early modern texts in three sections – one most of Chartier’s book is directed towards how quickly text can be manipulated from each for letters, printed books, and manu- a scholarly audience, the liveliness and acces- person to person. scripts – demonstrating the significance of sibility of these two essays suit them for use The final section of the book is entitled, materiality as a mode of reading and exploring in undergraduate courses in either history or “Ironies of History and Representation: the “bibliographic rhetoric” (3) expressed by literature, where they would serve very well as Theme and Variation.” This section is the the physicality of the texts (apart from their an engaging introduction to the significance synthesis of the first two parts. It combines content). The volume examines the produc- of the history of print culture. Dane’s philosophical meanderings on the field tion, circulation, consumption, reception, along with examples of his own research. and influence of an exceptionally wide range Solveig C. Robinson Section highlights include a further discus- of artefacts, attesting to the interdisciplinary Pacific Lutheran University sion of making lists in bibliography which dialogue fostered by material readings, par- compliments part two of the volume. “The ticularly between print and manuscript stud- Nature and Function of Scholarly Illustration ies, bibliography, codicology and history of c in a Digital World” is enjoyable for its philo- the book, paleography and diplomatics, and sophical theories on digital images and their social and cultural history. In fact, this book is Joseph A. Dane. Blind Impressions. Philadel- relationship to the works they represent. The “the first book of this nature to bring together phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. book ends with an engaging look at reality and material readings of manuscript, print, and 228p., ill. ISBN 9780812245493. US $65. history using the art world and Bob Ross in orality in early modern culture” (1). particular to underscore the idea that what The volume’s essays lay the groundwork The present volume is a recent work that we see is not reality. for conceptualizing material reading practices, tackles the histories and mysteries of printing Overall strengths of the book include even as they offer detailed case studies of and bibliography. The book is conveniently the diverse topics covered, from criticism on artefacts ranging from the canonical to the divided into three parts. The first part, “What printing and bibliography, general musings non-traditional, with special insights into is Print?” identifies trends in the field includ- on the field and examples of Dane’s research. women’s writing and the “gendering of ma- ing matters of opinion on paleography and Weaknesses include some philosophical me- terial forms” (2). The introduction by James typography and the importance of the circa anderings which may be confusing for any Daybell and Peter Hinds, editors as well as 1800 time period in printing histories, and novice reader or those not interested in the contributors to the volume, is exemplary in finally ends with a philosophical discussion minute details of this field. It is clear from the its clarity, compression, and depth. It provides of analytical bibliography and compositorial style of writing and topics discussed that this a compelling rationale for the three-part study. This section excels because of Dane’s work is meant for advanced scholars despite structure of the book along with an excellent vast, thorough knowledge and refined opin- Dane’s statement that he is not writing for summary of each article, placing each in its ions on current philosophies and trends. This practiced scholars. Finally, both a strength and scholarly contexts and suggesting its signifi- section would be most interesting for the weakness for this book may be its non-linear, cance. The introduction also connects these very learned scholars of printing history and conversational, almost blog-like style. For parts to the “material” whole: the “materials, bibliography. It should be noted that this first individuals interested in one person’s opinion practices and processes of literacy as well as part is not indicative of the whole book, for on specific topics this could be engaging, but the technologies and tools of writing” (1) that as Dane states in the introduction, there is no for those interested in-depth arguments or are the volume’s subject. narrative style or thesis for the book. There- research, readers may be left wanting. Section I, “The Material Letter,” com- fore, chapters and parts are free standing and prises three essays that study epistolary readers should feel encouraged to read the Elizabeth Hertenstein practices and protocols operating within early volume in a non-linear fashion and focus on Bowling Green State University, Ohio modern communications systems, focusing specific topics that may be of interest. particularly on the physical characteristics The second part of the book is entitled, c of letters. Cedric Brown’s study of three “On the Making of Lists.” This section is manuscript letters written by men serving comprised of a group of vignettes on Dane’s great ladies demonstrates the importance own research. The first study examines James Daybell and Peter Hinds, eds. Material of social and contextual issues for reading Mead’s Incunabula in the Huntington library and Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social early modern letters, specifically within a gift Dane’s opinion on the structure and value of Practices, 1580–1730. Houndmills, Basing- culture with its reciprocal and complex social said catalog. Dane finds some fault with the stoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. xviii, 278p., obligations. His essay stresses that letters Mead catalog because Mead never outlines ill. ISBN 9780230223523. £58 (hardback). operate within an entire epistolary culture, his philosophy in creating the catalog. The expressed, sometimes cryptically, in complex second study focuses on Dane’s research on This volume emerged from an interdisci- material forms. James Daybell exposes the catchtitles in English books to 1550. The plinary conference that was organized at the manuscript practices associated with secret philosophical outcome of this research is in University of Plymouth by James Daybell and letters, offering analysis of epistolary tech- some ways more interesting than the process Peter Hinds in April 2008 and focused on nologies of concealment (codes, ciphers, https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol23/iss4/1 12 et al.: Volume 23, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 23, no. 4 Autumn 2014 d 13
signs, symbols, invisible ink) as well as the naturally to Jonathan Gibson’s essay detailing information, modes of literate expression, concepts of privacy and the genres (e.g. the how early modern books were constructed registers of action, forms of scrapbook- “books of secrets” genre) within which they by examining, in particular, the practice of ing, carriers of technical instruction, and operated. The practices are particularly im- copying privately compiled miscellanies into complex memory systems. As such, recipes portant for understanding women’s letters and pre-bound books across a wide array of can provide access to a more gender-attuned domestic circles of communication. Finally, genres. Christopher Burlinson’s essay takes and socially-textured understanding of early Andrew Gordon addresses the methodologi- up these questions of the physical construc- modern knowledge cultures. As a “palimps- cal challenges of studying the appropriation tion of textual artefacts by concentrating on est” of “the self and communities in ‘conver- of manuscript letters by examining how formal commonplace books and miscellanies sation’” (10), the recipe lies at the intersection copies of Penelope Rich’s letters circulated constructed by Cambridge students, a study of healthcare, religion, professionalization, within networks of correspondence different that illuminates practices and purposes of epistemology, and commercial authorship. from their original moments of composition, student note-taking. Finally, Victoria Burke “Studying recipes,” the editors write, “helps especially within the wider transmission of turns our attention once more to women’s us to reinvest these quotidian activities of Essex-related texts. manuscript writings, in particular three cal- making, maintaining, and mending with the Section II turns its attention to “The ligraphic arithmetic manuscripts compiled significance they carried for early modern Material Book: Print and Social Practices of by Quaker girls. These unusual materials lead householders” (15). In addition to offering a Reading,” emphasizing “the mediating effects Burke to conclude that they were not merely treasure trove of information about the sheer of print as well as its mediating nature as a frivolous exercises, but function as “markers complexity of making, this volume advances technology of communication” (9). Mark of educational and artistic achievement, finan- a conversation about the tangled methodo- Knights looks specifically at topical single- cial acumen and mercantile honesty” (15). logical issues that arise as we attempt to map sheet images and playing cards circulating This volume of essays is essential reading the production, exchange, and consumption around the Popish Plot (1678) and the trial for anyone interested in the materiality of of popular past forms. of Henry Sacheverell (1710), and uncovers texts in their inception, production, transmis- Essays by contributors survey ways that how print publication was used to influence sion, and reception, offering timely interven- recipe books might serve as valuable but political opinion in the early eighteenth cen- tions into a developing conversation about unexpectedly elusive tools for archeologists tury as well as how it was integrated within an early modern material culture. A key strength (Annie Gray), linguists (Francisco Alonso-Al- increasingly politicized visual culture (show- of the book is its combined theoretical and meida) and literary scholars (Jayne Elisabeth ing the movement from printed engravings to practical thrust: case studies are contextualized Archer), as well as those interested in the his- ceramic tiles and even to silk handkerchiefs). and theorized, genuine questions and avenues tory of medicine (Anne Stobart), food (Gilly Peter Hinds examines John Dryden’s and for future study identified. The essays in this Lehmann), and religious identity (Lauren F. Roger L’Estrange’s construction of them- volume leave readers wanting more – a good Winner). Their disparate questions weave a selves as professional authors to conclude that result – and attest to the range and vitality of methodological inquiry: can we effectively these men negotiated and monitored their current scholarship focused on illuminating use manuscript recipes to reconstruct social literary, authorial personae carefully within the early modern texts and social practices among and medical communities? What is the differ- print marketplace. Within the contemporary both established and emerging scholars. ence between a “network,” a “community,” context of the debate over the relative effi- and a “discourse colony”? What tension ex- cacy of hearing rather than reading sermons, Jeanne Shami ists between the recipe as prescriptive advice Mary Ann Lund examines how paratextual University of Regina, Saskatchewan and as life-register? materials (including dedications, marginalia, The strength of the collection lies pri- title pages, prefaces, contents and index pages, c marily in the scholarly findings it advances and diagrams) affected the reception of these about the materiality of recipes. Particularly originally oral performances in print. Finally, illuminating is Margaret J. M. Ezell’s essay, Gillian Wright uses the print and manuscript Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell, eds. which identifies booksellers and publishers publications of Katherine Philips’s poems Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550–1800. as active agents who visually produce Han- to challenge the gendered division between Manchester: Manchester University Press, nah Woolley as a recipe author. Michelle manuscript and print (female vs. male), 2013. xvi, 272p., ill. ISBN 9780719087271. DiMeo concurs about the impoverishment concluding that the two forms were fluidly £65 (hardback). of author-centered analysis as she dem- related, and that material arrangements within onstrates how attributions, signatures, and these two forms significantly alter the poems’ This collection of eleven essays samples citations have been interpretive rather than political thrust. ways that scholars of different methodological referential acts. In her analysis of a family’s Section III, “Material Manuscripts,” stripes are beginning to mine an understud- fifty-three different scrofula recipes, Stobart features Arthur Marotti’s essay detailing the ied archive: the early modern English recipe. uses the comparison of loose recipes to those composition of the Skipwith Manuscript, a While we may think that we know what a recorded in the household collection as a complex anthology of poetry reflecting the recipe is, this volume vividly demonstrates means of unearthing female skepticism about multiple compilers’ literary tastes as well as that the recipe defies modern expectations. professional medicine. Finally, Sara Pennell, their political and social lives and connections. Rather than existing within the narrow pur- whose previous work has indelibly shaped This detailed study unpacks the secrets hidden view of domestic culinary practice, recipes recipe scholarship, astutely considers ways in its complex layers and groupings, and leads were primary tools for circulating medical that recipes become deracinated from their ... / 14
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... / 13 material environment, whether by travelling has remarked, Doig’s deeply researched a similar discipline was published, and how out of family papers, detaching from cooking work “sheds new light on the emergence other dictionaries incorporate it. The collabo- lessons, or converting into digital formats. and development of the disciplines as well rators of each of the dictionaries are always These essays not only provide noteworthy as their respective boundaries and interrela- clearly indicated (this is especially true of archival “finds” that enrich our understand- tions” (cover). “Medicine and Surgery” – complex diction- ing of women’s history, language, medicine, Panckoucke positioned himself as the heir aries with complicated publishing histories), labour, and household writing, but also of Diderot. As such, he chose to amend the as is the historical context of the subject in convince readers that attention to a recipe’s Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert not relation to the other sciences. This important material incarnation is key to its significant with a Supplément, but with a completely new work thus brings the Méthodique to life through cultural meanings. work. (The Supplément, edited by Jean-Baptiste a consideration of the headwords that facili- Scholarship framed as an introduction to Robinet and published by Panckoucke, repre- tate transmission between the subjects and a subject, however, has pitfalls. Contributors sents the publisher’s first move towards the their dictionaries. sometimes emphasize what cannot – rather Méthodique – that is, towards building an ex- Doig has captured in this book the very than what can – be claimed on the basis of haustive Encyclopédie that would both correct spirit of Panckoucke’s massive encyclopaedia, the archive. Some essays tentatively offer sur- and complete that of Diderot.) Panckoucke’s as referenced in the recent workshop “Panck- veys that leave the reader hungry for crisper approach was to take every subject or class oucke: Encyclopédie Méthodique” at the National polemical argument, in-depth analysis, or a from the Système figuré des connaissances humaines Centre for Scientific Research in France. She hermeneutically richer framework of analysis. and to make them into separate dictionaries. demonstrates with perspicacity and depth not Archer offers a refreshing corrective to this Doig studies with great precision the subjects only how the great Méthodique was written, but last problem by taking seriously the intellec- of each particular work. more importantly, how it should be read and, tual, affective, and imaginative dimensions of Doig first explains her methodology, in turn, understood. practice and writing. “Operating at the inter- which “consisted of textual comparisons of Martine Groult face between mind and matter,” she writes, articles in every volume of the Méthodique Centre Jean Pépin, CNRS, Paris “the recipe expressed the human desire to with the same articles in the Encyclopédie and remodel the material world” (121). in the Supplément” (2). Her primary purpose Reading and Writing Recipe Books cautions was to clarify the execution and originality c scholars not to become so fascinated with the of Panckoucke’s ambitious encyclopaedia. content of recipes that they fail to understand The contextualization of every discipline Jason D. Ensor. Angus & Robertson and the Brit- how the recipes’ material features evidence strengthens the analyses that indicate the ish Trade in Australian Books, 1930–1970: The critical social contexts. Exploring the recipes’ subject’s continuity, modification, and evolu- Getting of Bookselling Wisdom. London: Anthem incarnation as life-registers, conduits of com- tion as brought to light through Panckoucke’s Press, 2013. xii, 256p. ISBN 9780857285669. munication, and complex sources, this volume innovative approach, the objective of which £60. invites us to widen our understanding of early was public instruction. modern knowledge cultures. It is necessary to insist here on Doig’s main Australian booksellers often struggled to Wendy Wall point, which is to focus on the headwords for get anything more than remainders sent from Northwestern University, Illinois a comparative methodological analysis. With Britain in the nineteenth century. Booksell- this method it is possible to group several ers and publishers like George Robertson c dictionaries together and to analyse them of Melbourne (no relation to the Robertson transversally. Ten chapters analyse minutely in the Sydney-based Angus & Robertson) the contents of every science or art included found it necessary to open London offices Kathleen Hardesty Doig. From Encyclopédie in the Méthodique: mathematics and physics; by the mid-nineteenth century to facilitate the to Encyclopédie Méthodique: Revision and Ex- medicine, anatomy and chemistry; agricul- distribution of British books in the colonies. pansion. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2013. ture and the natural sciences; history and At the beginning of the twentieth century, xiv, 314p., ill. ISBN 9780729410779. £65 / geography; theology, philosophy, grammar, even though the Australian market for Eng- €85 / US $115 (paperback). and literature; law and political economy; the lish-language books published in Britain was military arts; the fine arts, architecture, and by then the second largest after the United Kathleen Hardesty Doig is an eminent music; the mechanical arts; and finally, miscel- States, colonial firms still found it necessary specialist in Enlightenment encyclopaedism. laneous subjects, including encyclopaediana, to engage the British trade directly in London. Her recent book focuses on Charles-Joseph hunting, and peaches. The conclusion is fol- In his detailed history of Angus & Robertson, Panckoucke’s Encyclopédie Méthodique and is the lowed by a list of dictionaries, a bibliography Jason D. Ensor examines the impact of the only work available that analyses the totality and an index. firm’s London office on the bookseller and of this monumental Encyclopédie. It is also The order of analysis is thus neither that publisher’s international aspirations and at- the first to compare the genealogy of the of the subjects supplied by Panckoucke in tempts to sell Australian literature overseas. Méthodique with its predecessors – Diderot the Prospectus nor that of the alphabet used Angus & Robertson’s presence in London and d’Alembert chief among them – as a by and since Goujon; it is a question of tar- started in 1913 with the opening of the Aus- means to understanding Panckoucke’s original geting within the subjects the headwords as tralian Book Company (ABC), run by Henry vision for his work. As Robert Morrissey, ways of treating transversally the stakes of George, who worked on commission for the General Editor of the ARTFL Encyclopédie, Panckoucke’s endeavour, of studying when Sydney firm. In 1937, Angus & Robertson https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol23/iss4/1 14 et al.: Volume 23, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 23, no. 4 Autumn 2014 d 15
purchased ABC, and this office would initially Tim Lacy. The Dream of a Democratic Culture: the book is far better proofed than one now focus on the distribution of British books to Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books Idea. New expects. There is at least one indubitable er- Australia, as well as the more difficult task York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ix, 324p., ill. ror: Figure 6.1 (132) is a photograph that the of selling Australian books to the British ISBN 9780230337466. US $95 / ₤60. caption dates 1974 and that depicts William public. Where Ensor’s study shines is in his Benton, Britannica publisher, who is noted, fascinating account of “Operation London” Lacy’s book is justified on mountains of correctly, immediately opposite at top of that would see the London office start to books, the Everest of them Great, but it only page 133, to have died March 1973. publish “books of a universal appeal” after somewhat indirectly concerns them. Lacy Three chapters (3, 4, and 6) of eight World War II and use “the sale of popular writes: “This book – which is part limited largely concern GBOTWW as an editorial and American and British titles in the United historical biography, part intellectual and publishing project. While Lacy did not find Kingdom to catalyse the sales of Angus & cultural history, and part history of American definitive numbers, Adler believed “about a Robertson’s Australian books” (8). Examining education – explains…inconsistencies, ironies, million” of the 54-volumes sets were sold be- the history of the firm from 1930 to 1970, and paradoxes related to great books, Adler, tween 1952 and 1976 (133); a marketing study Ensor’s study of the Angus & Robertson col- and his contemporaries. In so doing, a positive Britannica commissioned in 1962 found, lection at the Mitchell Library reveals a firm assertion becomes apparent: … those mid- among other things, that while only 1 per that wanted to raise the profile of Australian century intellectuals who promoted the great cent of purchasers reported they would tell literature internationally and convince a skep- books idea, shared an implicit, cosmopolitan their friends not to buy a set, only 1 per cent tical British trade that there was a market for dream of cultural democratization” (6). Still, claimed to have read the entire set – though Australian works outside of Australia. The these people and ideas remain of interest pri- 76 per cent reported they had read “the en- establishment of a London office placed the marily because of the mounds of books piled tire works of one to seven authors, or parts firm in a position to be able to compete in high behind them. Regrettably, not least for of single authors” (92). Snippets like these an international arena dominated by larger SHARPists, the books get but a microtome – there are others – are fascinating, but they American and British companies. of Lacy’s attention. float above clouds like Himalayan peaks. As Ensor focuses on the twentieth century, Readers casually aware of Adler (1902– he does not connect Angus & Robertson’s 2001), the 50-plus books he authored from Sidney F. Huttner actions to the history of other booksellers his first in 1927 to his last in 2000, many The University of Iowa Libraries who paved the way for the Sydney-based focused on Aristotle and St. Thomas (though company. This historical context would have his most durable title is How to Read a Book: c been beneficial for those readers unfamiliar The Art of Getting a Liberal Education (1940; with the history of the Australian and colonial revised with Charles Van Doren 1972)), or book trades. He notes that Angus & Rob- the nine-plus collections he edited, including Isobel Maddison. Elizabeth von Arnim: Beyond ertson’s London office developed reciprocal two editions of the Great Books of the Western the German Garden. Farnham, UK and Burl- relations with Harrap and other British firms. World (1952, 1990) and Propædia: Outline of ington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. xxiv, 278p., ill. Readers might have found it useful if Ensor Knowledge and Guide to The New Encyclopædia ISBN 9781409411673. £60 / US $114.95 had situated the London office’s actions in Britannica 15th Edition (1974), may wonder why (hardback). terms of the history of Australian bookmen Lacy’s “positive assertion” isn’t, simply, well, like George Robertson of Melbourne and apparent from the git-go. The reasons, Lacy Jennifer Walker. Elizabeth of the German Gar- Edward Petherick who had first engaged argues, are two: over time, the Encyclopedia den: A Literary Journey. Brighton, UK: Book in reciprocal arrangements with British and Britannica corporation surrounded the Great Guild Publishing Ltd., 2013. xvi, 488p., ill. American firms in the nineteenth century. Books set with “cottage industry” apparatus ISBN 9781846248511. £20 (hardback). For readers unfamiliar with the minutiae of and marketed the combined products with Australian bookselling and publishing history, hard-sell salesmanship that compromised Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) was historical context would have helped to make initial, disinterested, progressive principles; the author of nineteen highly popular and clearer what Angus & Robertson, under the and Adler, in his 90s, in the 1990s, seemed critically appreciated novels published over c direction of Hector MacQuarrie and John to, or did, lapse into marginal racism and a forty-year period, from her first best-sell- Ferguson, did that was unique. right-wing political warriorship that undercut ing success Elizabeth and her German Garden Still, scholars of colonial book and pub- his otherwise life-long investment in educa- (1898) to her final elegiac novelMr Skeffington lishing history will find much to admire in tion and liberal goals. Those whose cultural (1940). She was both a literary celebrity and, Ensor’s study. He places the history of Angus memories begin in the 1990s may remember according to L. P. Hartley writing in 1934, & Robertson’s London operation in terms of this version of the man, and in this Lacy found “among the most important novelists of to- the development of the transnational trade in tension to drive a dissertation (which his book day” (Maddison, 4). Yet, until very recently, English language books in the twentieth cen- initially was). she has been barely noticed by academia. tury, as well as offering “a historical primer to Lacy makes extensive use of a few uncon- These two excellent new studies are therefore the contemporary transformations underway vincingly flexible concepts, (e.g., “community extremely welcome. within the Australian book trade” (x). of discourse,” “cottage industry”), and there Maddison’s monograph is the first book- are occasional sentences that left me puzzling length academic critical study of von Arnim, Alison Rukavina whether there was meaning in them or a word and Walker offers a comprehensive literary Texas Tech University, Lubbock or words had gone missing along the way; but biography; both shed new light on why von ... / 16
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... / 15 Arnim has been neglected and give highly daughter writing under the pseudonym Leslie sighted recognition of an emerging, collective, persuasive arguments for her re-assessment. de Charms in 1958, and the second by Karen and militaristic German consciousness that The titles of both these books point to Usborne in 1986, Walker’s book gives by far was mobilising for war” (60). one of the key problems for von Arnim: iden- the best sense yet of Mary the person. In the third chapter, Maddison examines tity. Her first novel, Elizabeth and her German Walker demonstrates that von Arnim, the fascinating relationship between von Garden, was a witty, whimsical, first-person usually associated with Germany, was really Arnim and her cousin Katherine Mansfield account by the fictional character “Elizabeth” an international writer. She was a relentless, and suggests how Mansfield’s writing was of her life on an isolated country estate in restless traveller, and had homes in France, influenced by her elder relative. Chapters on Pomerania. This first book was published Switzerland and the USA, as well as in Eng- the novels Vera, Love, and Expiation follow anonymously, and then the author – showing land and Germany, over the years. She was that cleverly contextualise von Arnim’s fiction a strong sense of marketing – instructed her also intensely sociable while needing solitude within contemporary Fabian thinking about publisher to publish her subsequent books in order to write: a constant stream of visi- the institution of marriage, and stress the as “by the author of Elizabeth and her Ger- tors stayed at her Chalet in Switzerland, for complexity of von Arnim’s writing. The final man Garden.” This lengthy identifier, whilst example (including Katherine Mansfield, H. chapter addresses the film adaptations ofMr establishing a literary brand, was problematic G. Wells, Augustine Birrell, and Frank Swin- Skeffington and The Enchanted April. in several ways. nerton), but von Arnim had a separate Little Maddison’s book includes an appendix The reviewer for the London Mercury noted Chalet in which to write, with the inscription that lists all the manuscript material held in in 1923 if von Arnim “should take for her- “I hate the common herd and keep them out” the Countess Russell Papers in the Hunt- self ” a “more convenient title … she might over the door (Walker, 132–3). ington Library, California, collated by Gayle not be more popular, but she would almost Von Arnim’s novels, often read as auto- Richardson. This is a splendid addition that certainly receive more consistently solemn biography, “are close to her life, but do not will aid further research, and ought to be more and respectful treatment from critics” (Mad- reveal it” (398). Walker’s extensive research, common in scholarly books of this kind. dison, 27). Over her long career, her novels which occasionally could have benefited from The study of literature in the early twen- changed and developed until in 1921 the some editing, brings to life the “remarkable tieth century has a tendency to be fixated comic approach clearly visible in Elizabeth and and formidable” woman who hides behind on certain established movements: the New her German Garden blossomed into the satiric the persona of “Elizabeth” (398). Woman, the fin de siècle, or modernism, for tour-de-force Vera. This novel, based on von In Isobel Maddison’s book, the papers in example. These studies of von Arnim not Arnim’s disastrous second marriage to Lord the Huntington Library are also skilfully used, only bring back to critical consciousness a Francis Russell (brother of Bertrand Russell), building the context of von Arnim’s work fascinating writer, but also demonstrate the was described by John Middleton Murray as and demonstrating the range of people who richness and range of fiction to be found in “Wuthering Heights written by Jane Austen” read and enjoyed her novels, such as George the period if we look beyond these catego- (Maddison, 106). This macabre novel was a Moore, Max Beerbohm, and Virginia Woolf rizations. very long way indeed from the German Garden, (9–10). The proliferation of quotations from Erica Brown but on the cover was a constant reminder of contemporary letters, books, and reviews is a Sheffield Hallam University that first popular success. strength of the book, demonstrating just how The name “Elizabeth von Arnim” is a con- important von Arnim was to the literary cul- struction of Virago, who began reprinting her ture of the period. However, Maddison also c novels in the 1980s and who have several in highlights the struggle to locate an appropri- print today. Von Arnim was born in Australia ate literary category for von Arnim’s “hybrid Kate Narveson. Bible Readers and Lay Writers in to an English father and Australian mother writing” which is so problematic for a literary Early Modern England: Gender and Self-Definition and was named Mary Annette Beauchamp; reputation: “her fiction moves deftly between in an Emergent Writing Culture. Farnham, UK the family moved to England when she was outright social satire, the country house novel, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. x, 236p., three. The surname “von Arnim” was that of the romance and the gothic genre” (5). Mad- ill. ISBN 9781409441670. £60 (hardback). her first husband, Prussian Count Henning dison explains von Arnim’s “increasingly criti- August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, who died in cal neglect” through ideas about middlebrow With a sure hand, Kate Narveson surveys 1910. One of the intriguing aspects of von culture, though she is careful not to define her the whole circuit of reading and writing strat- Arnim is that she gradually adopted the name writing as middlebrow, but rather as “caught egies surrounding Scripture literacy among “Elizabeth” in her personal life. within a series of shifting discourses that the laity in early modern England. She brings A great strength of Jennifer Walker’s bi- helped shape its reception” (9). to life the private devotional writings of lay ography is the attention paid to this strange After a chapter on von Arnim’s contem- men and women, crediting them with agency change of name; “Elizabeth,” in Walker’s porary critical reception which considers and purposeful composition. insightful analysis, is not simply a pseudonym the whole of her career, Maddison’s book is Part One, “From Reading Skills to Writing but a fictional creation separate from Mary. organised thematically. In the second chapter, Practices,” explicates the ways in which Bible Basing her book on Mary’s journals, held at the early “German” novels, which can be read reading was a skilled practice for the laity. the Huntington Library in California, Walker as simply charming comedies, are analysed Chapter One, ‘Reading the Bible,’ reaches into is at great pains to look behind the authorial as part of a genre of British “anti-invasion an exciting range of written materials (mostly persona. Although there have been two previ- literature”; Maddison persuasively contends manuscript) for evidence of lay applications ous biographies of von Arnim, the first by her that von Arnim “was arguing for the clear- of clerical advice. Nicholas Byfield, for one, https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol23/iss4/1 16 et al.: Volume 23, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 23, no. 4 Autumn 2014 d 17
recommended the practice of “conferring sharp questions about what writing means cies, constitute one of the main sources of place with place” in the Scriptures, and Narve- and what constitutes a “book”. Narveson primary evidence for Nuovo’s book. son surveys the range of responsive practices, amply demonstrates the method by which Throughout, the author offers significant from note-taking to extracting and common- the laity gained confidence in their interpre- new detail regarding the operations of pub- placing (involving divisions under topical tive skills. Such skills had the potential to lishers and booksellers and contextualizes “heads”), and store-housing of godly phrases disrupt “the church’s knowledge economy these findings in relation to long-standing and precepts. Chapters Two and Three tease and the assumptions about authority implicit Italian mercantile practices. Venice and its out of these Bible-reading practices impli- in it” (200). Women fully participated in this entrepreneurial culture naturally garners the cations for the developing sense of self, “quiet revolution brought about by ordinary lion’s share of attention, with its innovative presenting the material book as a talismanic layfolk writing” (215). They authored their merchant-bookmen in principal roles. These artifact by which one might leave a lasting own godly identities, leaving in manuscript men, as Nuovo reaffirms in her epilogue, impression. In Chapter Four, Narveson tests compilations among family papers a host of “became agents for the transmission of her assertions with case studies of Richard testifying evidence. knowledge because they were first and fore- Willis, Nehemiah Wallington, and Anne Venn. Kathleen Lynch most successful businessmen who succeeded Each had a different motivation and worked Folger Shakespeare Library as entrepreneurial publishers, driven by the in different genres, but all conceived of the most advanced economic rationality of their texts they wrote as their books, and Narveson time” (423). elucidates the terms of authority by which c This book appears as volume 20 of the they make those claims. series The Handpress World, edited by Part Two explores “The Registration of Angela Nuovo. The Book Trade in the Ital- Andrew Pettegree in Brill’s general series, Gender.” Chapter Five scans the discursive ian Renaissance. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Library of the Written Word. Here, Nuovo horizons that distinguish male and female de- Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013. xviii, 474p., expands and revises her original study in Ital- votional readers. The markers of male author- ill. ISBN 9789004245471. €136 / US $189 ian, Il commercio librario nell’Italia del Rinascimento ship include evidence of a humanist education (hardback). (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1998; second revised and commentary on history, genealogy, and edition, 2003). She has performed a valuable current politics, Narveson finds. But, as she Angela Nuovo’s book is a survey of the service for book historians and colleagues in also demonstrates with comparative readings financing, production, distribution, and sale economic history, taking on a vast and com- of books by Wallington, Elizabeth Isham, and of books in Italy from the origins of printing plex field often fraught with obstacles, and Grace Mildmay, “gendered differentiation to the early years of the seventeenth century. accumulating and elaborating new and useful existed in complex negotiation with other The first full-length study of the book busi- evidence for nearly two decades. There is still cultural positions,” with some, like status, ness in Renaissance Italy to appear in English, much to discover and understand regarding mitigating gendered differences (145). Chap- Nuovo’s book now figures as the standard the book industry in early modern Italy. The ter Six, ‘The Devotional Page,’ again anchors reference work in the field in any language. scarcity of key documentary sources – the Narveson’s study in the physical properties In recent decades, scholars have illumi- archives and the commercial correspondence of the book. In this case, she compares the nated many aspects of early modern book of publishers, sellers, and printers are almost mise-en-page of the traditional prayerbook with production. The author draws on their find- entirely lost – can be compensated at least the layout of Mildmay’s Meditations, a work ings and her own explorations of institutional in part by analytical bibliographers recover- that seems to have reference to the human- archives, particularly the registers of the Vene- ing evidence from the extant products of ist text (from which Mildmay was excluded tian Senate, to create a wide-ranging narrative the presses. Cultural historians, meanwhile, by virtue of her gender). Narveson finds the rich in detail. The first section examines the can do more to assess the dynamic tension missing link in Thomas Rogers’s Imitation of formation and development of commercial between the material logic of the book trade Christ and the Geneva Bible. The layout of networks, from the early efforts of the Com- and intangible claims of art and literature, a a page is brought alongside elements such as pany of Venice in the 1470s to the extensive tension that defines Renaissance print culture authorial choice, generic conventions, and operations in the following century of the and which the author resolves, perhaps too printers’ practices as a site for distinguishing Giunti, the Gabiano, and other firms. The sec- neatly, in favour of the former. In any case, compositional strategies. ond section, devoted to production, assesses research will proceed more confidently in the Chapter Seven sticks with Grace Mild- the challenges of determining press runs, the future thanks to the solid foundation laid by may’s Meditations to argue further that the organization and management of warehouses, Nuovo in this important work. work is a rhetorical self-presentation, a the emergence of the branch system, and the product of original composition rather than use of privileges and publishers’ devices to Antonio Ricci scriptural collage. “Mildmay mastered ‘scrip- protect the product. The third section, on sell- York University, Toronto ture phrase’ as Bach mastered counterpoint: ing and distribution, discusses the role of fairs, both use their technical idioms with power” retail sales by pedlars and itinerant salesmen, (185). Throughout, Narveson argues against and the management of bookshops. It also current scholarly views that the circuits of includes an engaging chronological survey of interpretative possibilities were prescriptively surviving inventories of bookshops and ware- closed or that gender necessarily informed houses. These documents, found in notarial identity more than, say, godliness. She poses archives and occasionally in acts of magistra-
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William A. Pettas. The Giunti of Florence: A a tremendous insight into the development of ments reflect the efforts of the clergy to use Renaissance Printing and Publishing Family. A the firm and its publishing trends. the Bible’s text to shape the event in a way History of the Florentine Firm and a Catalogue of The second section contains the annals understandable to a populace that had never the Editions. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, of the printing house. Pettas describes each seen the Holy Land. 2012. xvi, 1080p., ill. ISBN 9781584563068. edition in detail, having seen at least one copy As throughout the book, Latin and Mid- US $195 (hardback). in most cases. Copies that are documented dle English texts are translated in full in the by existing literature, but cannot be located, endnotes to each chapter; tables and diagrams After some thirty years, William A. Pet- are also listed. Where possible, provenance further explicate the material. Figure 1, a help- tas returns to the Giunti of Florence. His information is provided; such is the case ful flow chart of the Palm Sunday liturgy that former study has become an indispensable of a volume owned by Jean Racine (293). is, oddly, not referenced in the chapter’s text, is instrument for the study of the renowned The description contains valuable pieces of unfortunately reproduced at an absurdly small Florentine publishing house, and this new information, adapted to the readers’ needs. point size and screened to boot, rendering it publication brings in even more detail and The LOC fingerprint, for example, includes close to illegible. In fact, the size of the font accuracy, with extensive research and a careful Greek characters and makes a clear distinction throughout the book is reminiscent of the census of editions and extant copies. between a lower-case “l” and the number “1”. smallest of the Late Medieval Bibles Poleg The volume is divided in two main sec- The reference apparatus is also impressive, discusses – an unfortunate decision on the tions: an historical overview of the Floren- though a separation between library cata- part of the press, given that the readership tine Giunti, followed by the annals of the logues and bibliographies would have been for the book is more likely to be made up of publishing house. The first part presents a appropriate. In the debate for the existence middle-aged academics than sixteen-year-old chronological discussion of the firm, con- of paper bibliographies in the era of digitisa- friars in a studium. textualising its story within the wider world tion, it is works such as Pettas’s that still find The second chapter moves from the of the early printed book. Occasional detours a solid raison d’être. liturgical to the legal sphere. Poleg examines focus on the Florentine cultural climate, The Giunti of Florence marries historical the physical “textus,” the object that served namely the rise of the Accademia Fiorentina investigation with detailed bibliographical as a seal of oaths in late medieval England. and the promotion of the Tuscan vernacular analysis. Any scholar of the Italian Renais- Combing evidence from juridical proceedings under the patronage of the Medici. Though sance and early modern print culture will find and legal treatises, parish visitation records, the Giunti were not directly involved in the it a valuable addition to their bookshelf. monastic and cathedral library lists and reg- activity of the Accademia, their output was isters, and even romances and the Canterbury influenced by the current trends. Pettas shows Shanti Graheli Tales, Poleg reveals the physical form and that the longevity of the Giunti business was University of St Andrews, Fife meaning of the textus, which served its pur- aided by several factors; the role played by the pose as an oath book primarily through its editors, Pietro Vettori and Vincenzio Borghini c mystique and binding rather than through its in particular, seems to have been essential to textual contents. the survival of the firm. The international Eyal Poleg. Approaching the Bible in Medieval The final two chapters are more closely network of the family, though often not England. Manchester: Manchester University bound than the others. Chapter three surveys regulated by specific agreements, allowed the Press, 2013. xxii, 266p., 8 ill., 7 pl. ISBN a group of late medieval pandect Bibles, con- Florentine output to be sold in Venice, Lyon, 9780719089541. £65 (hardback). centrating on their contents, physical form, and Burgos. This represents the key to the and marks of use (an appendix provides valu- success of the Giunti in Florence and, as the Eyal Poleg’s excellent Approaching the Bible able catalogue data for a group of English Bi- network lost its strength, also the reason for effectively disproves, in a series of four inter- bles). Questioning the scholarly hegemony of its eventual failure. related studies, the commonplace that “while a well-known subset, the “Paris Bible,” Poleg The final chapters in the first section con- the medieval laity had no true knowledge of demonstrates how expanding the definition tain a series of appendices. Some of these, re- the Bible, clergy enjoyed direct access to the of the Late Medieval Bible leads to a new and lated to the materiality of the book rather than ‘naked text’ of the Bible” (203). Grounded better understanding of its role in contempo- to the history of the press, would have been at all points in the physical text vessel and rary religious life. Particularly important is a better placed in the second section – namely, other material ritual implements, the book frequently included paratext, the Interpretation the iconographical apparatus and the chrono- demonstrates the myriad ways in which the of Hebrew Names. Using this as a jumping off logical list of editions. Nevertheless, these later medieval English population, clergy and point for the final chapter, Poleg circles back are vital resources. The reader will find the laity alike, encountered the mediated Bible. to a liturgical celebration, this time Advent, to genealogical trees of the family particularly Chapter one explores the clerical and pop- explain how English sermonizers used their helpful. Selected documents from the exten- ular experience of the Palm Sunday liturgy, pandect Bibles to construct sermons that ef- sive archival research conducted by Pettas using as a framework for the procession the fectively mediated the biblical text for their have been transcribed; one might only have directions from the “Use of Sarum.” Place, listeners in a way unique to that era. wished for further such treats. These sections image, chant, text, and “palms,” whether real Poleg’s study is a must-read for scholars are followed by a “Subject Arrangement of or indigenous imitations, intersected to cre- of liturgy, preaching, manuscripts, and legal the Editions.” This classification might have ate a reification of the Entry into Jerusalem history in England and beyond. been much clearer if displayed through a se- that grounded it in its English setting. Poleg Diane J. Reilly ries of tables or graphs. However, it provides shows that liturgical and paraliturgical ele- Indiana University https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol23/iss4/1 18 et al.: Volume 23, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 23, no. 4 Autumn 2014 d 19
Richard Salmon. The Formation of the Victorian in his exposure of Bulwer Lytton’s models in these aesthetic formulations. The friend- Literary Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge of aristocratic genius. Following is a chapter ship, break-up, and eventual reconciliation University Press, 2013. xii, 290p., ill. ISBN focused on Dickens’s efforts to establish a between Thackeray and Dickens is an in- 9781107039629. £60 / US $95 (hardback). charitable foundation for indigent artists that stance, as is the “masculine discursive space” negotiated the tensions between pensioning around the Punch table so capably recuperated Salmon’s study is structured by one par- worthy claimants unrewarded by the market- by Patrick Leary. Indeed, British writers seem ticular trajectory and two conceptualizations place and instituting begging as a writer’s last more pragmatic than some of their more about nineteenth-century literary profession- resort. In Salmon’s connections between this theoretically inclined Continental cousins. alism. The trajectory is the Bourdieusian one (failed) effort and the concurrent authorial The vigorous advancements of knowledge, of a shift from Romantic genius to Victorian and fictional Bildungsroman narrating literary and the manufacture, distribution, taxing, professionalization as a defense against the apprenticeship, David Copperfield (1849–50), legislating, and financing of print products “disenchantment” resulting from the divi- he builds especially on Mary Poovey’s thesis in Victorian Britain, as well as the creation sion of labour. The conceptualizations are about the connection between housework of the “proprietary author,” were substantial respectively visual and dynamic. The visual and writing: “David’s burgeoning fame must engines of change in what was written and conceptualization concerns imagery of ac- coexist with his enduring commitment to the disseminated. The absence of historians, tive writers initiated in the 1830s both as private sphere and the ideology of inalien- scientists, clerics, and others who could be verbal portraitures or physiognomies and as able domestic labour” (133). Salmon adds entered in the lists of professional authors, series of graphic visualizations accompany- an observant and potentially rich analysis of and of the material and legal forces rarely ing letterpress. Appearing in the press gave the hazy distinction between original liter- in the foreground of Salmon’s narrative, many living authors a status and public rep- ary production and those “copies” (such as makes for a clearer and cleaner ideology. And resentation that went toward creating their Micawber’s Australian paean to David) that professionalization has been understood by print culture identity. But lionizing authors make writing visible when the apparent self- some sociologists and cultural historians as a eventually produced an ironic anti-type: the effacement of the author would occlude the self-interested move, a strategy for claiming static literary icon associated with the dead. struggle, the publicity, and the autobiographi- public respect that was differentiated from, The dynamic conceptualization derives from cal implications. but effectively analogous to, Romanticists’ Clifford Siskin’s work positing the Goethean The succeeding chapter discusses the dis- assertions of exceptionality and worth. Still, paradigm of Bildung as applicable both to the pute about working class writers: for some, a scrubbed version of the messier and more lives of fictional protagonists and to their “moving on up” celebrates a successful ap- complexly interactive development among creators. It too yielded to its anti-types, of plication of labour, while in other cases the competing ideologies at the apogee of nine- authors whose efforts to record their success- work seems to betray class allegiance and val- teenth-century professional writing enables ful “rise” betrayed their class; others whose ues. Then a discussion of Barrett Browning’s students to ground their understanding in celebrated careers were not the product of Aurora Leigh returns attention to the visual in the mixtures of continuity and reformulation concerted, sustained effort; and yet others the analogy of mythopoetic celebrity to an- that characterize the age. whose noble aspirations never received public tique iconic sculpture: the poet’s “own abiding Salmon’s scholarship and theoretical or pecuniary acknowledgement. preoccupation with the mythology of literary applications are extensive and thoughtfully After an introduction to the theoretical Fame…supports a pursuit of visual embodi- arrayed. His close intertextual reading of key arguments and the provision of some useful ment which subtends her ironic awareness of documents is exemplary and illuminating. mapping paragraphs, the succeeding chap- the imprisoning forms which this urge may The book provides a template for courses ters take the story forward chronologically take” (209). Like others before him, Salmon on literary periodization and the compli- through close readings of key texts. Accord- concedes that the analysis of the gendered cated, vexed, developing construction of a ing to Salmon, Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero Wor- differences between the conceptualization of significant profession of mid-Victorian let- ship elaborates on two potentials of authorial male and female professional writers involves ters. Salmon well earns his closing remark, imagery: celebrity or “cultural visibility,” that “more complex questions” and “a more seemingly bold in its antithesis but in actuality is, being seen; and heroic vision, that is, seeing substantial and diverse survey of Victorian the product of subtle and varied intermediate into the heart of things. Carlyle was ambiva- women writers” than this study can provide developments: “By the end of the nineteenth lent about the exchange of Romantic notions (217). Not incidentally, many of those pro- century … the disenchantment of the author of genius for Victorian imperatives to service fessionals published their fiction, essays, and had gone too far: its dialectical bond with and work; he scorned journalists, calling them poetry in transient periodicals; that field is only the hero as man (sic) of letters had been automata, “things for writing articles.” now opening up to consideration. broken” (220). The next chapter considers Thackeray’s This is a deftly woven tapestry of argument, sad Romanticism and melancholy representa- coordinating the private and printed conversa- Robert L. Patten tion of Pendennis’s unheroic life of literary tions of the Victorian era with the theoretical Institute of English Studies, University of London apprenticeship in Grub Street, replicated both reformulations of the past half-century. As in Thackeray’s own life and in Pendennis’s a conspectus of the ideological advocacies novel. Thackeray responds less to Goethe’s regarding literary endeavour advanced in the Wilhelm Meister than to Balzac’s Illusions Per- first half of the nineteenth century it could dues, another novel defining the sordid world hardly be bettered. My own impression is that of bohemian journalism. He is unrelenting personalities played an equally important role
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Germaine Warkentin, Joseph L. Black and second earl had more inward-looking motives his own Lay Sermons with the claim that his William R. Bowen, eds. The Library of the for commonplacing. work “demonstrated the kind of pedantry Sidneys of Penshurst Place circa 1665. Toronto: The book also reconstructs the library’s we’ve come to expect from that author” (I University of Toronto Press, 2013. xiv, physical setting. In 1665 it ran forty-three feet quote from memory). What I intend is not 406p., ill. ISBN 9780802042934. CAN $185 long (eighty feet of books in 1677), while its anonymous and not so much an evaluation (hardback). fireplace, cupboards, wall shelving, and rich of my recently self-published work, What hangings expressed confidence in the value of Happened to Me, but more of a description of This handsome library catalogue was learning for an elite class of courtiers. the process for the benefit of other aspiring conceived thirty years ago, before the as- Since the project first began, online da- selfies. Part of my motivation is to minimize cendency of computerized databases and tabases and digitization have irretrievably the taint of vanity that accompanies the idea digitized archives. It embodies a learned, changed book history. Yet this newest stage of the individual taking on the responsibility but endangered species that may be difficult is not mentioned or addressed. There is little of publishing his or her work. to replicate, particularly in book format. indication of the editors’ methodology and “Self-publishing” is an awkward term and Germaine Warkentin’s team made herculean only one reference to a database. Nor are at best a misleading one in that anyone who efforts to identify over 4,200 separate titles there tables that might analyze the data by has self-published is likely to have had a lot in the Sidneys’ manuscript book list c. 1665. subject or other categories. Precise depth is of help. In my case, I chose an agency called Since the family rarely signed their books and offered for each title, but we miss the wider AuthorHouse (physically located in Bloom- few volumes survived, the task was unusually complexities, along with new questions and ington, Indiana) to provide from a menu of challenging. techniques, which computer studies might services the kinds of assistance I needed to Warkentin’s successful efforts provide a reveal. get the book published from the electronic fascinating analysis of the book-collecting This volume will be prized by Sidney Word document (368 pages, 120,000 words) and reading of the Sidney Earls of Leicester, scholars. Indeed, the project has already in- which I provided at the outset, the basis of especially Philip Sidney’s brother Robert, the fluenced teachers and students through work- the finished book. From their services I chose first Earl (1563–1626), and his son Robert, shops, articles, and conferences. It also leaves their Basic Publishing Package ($960) which the second Earl (1595–1677). Under their us with questions about the future of library prepares the manuscript for publication, pro- guidance, the books developed from a utilitar- catalogues in the digital age. Large labour- vides a variety of typefaces (Garamond in this ian collection into a grand library, like those intensive projects like this one would require case), designs the basic text and photographic viewed on the Continent by family members. teams of scholars and substantial funding. layout, arranges for ISBN numbers, registers We also learn how the collection was dis- Nonetheless, this book serves as a model of the book for on-demand publication through persed and “scattered to the bibliographical high standards and cautions us not to throw its own distribution service or through Ama- winds” (vii), in tandem with the Sidneys’ out learned scholarship with the proverbial zon and Barnes and Noble, and prepares an declining prominence. bath water. It also raises larger issues about e-book version. As part of this package, We may assess this volume by considering how book historians will face the challenges AuthorHouse also provides a fairly thorough how it relates to three successive trends in and opportunities of technological change. review of the text for its own legal protection book history. Its compilers’ high standards as well as a non-critical text evaluation. I also and erudition fulfill the early, traditional focus Susan Whyman used their automated indexing service ($200), on bibliography and meticulous cataloguing, Independent historian as well as a package of author corrections with an emphasis on book ownership. In (i.e., correcting my mistakes) which followed addition, the wide-ranging introduction con- c an initial review of the first set of “galleys” nects the library to more recent scholarship. It ($200). Other services not used for my book places the collection in its social and cultural were copy-editing, proof-reading, marketing, context and firmly links it to the history of Publishing in the Age of the and sales, and a few more esoteric functions reading. The Sidneys’ roles as estate owners, Selfie such as pricing flexibility. soldiers, courtiers, and diplomats from the The reasons for choosing a publishing 1550s to the 1670s are reflected in their eclec- David H. Stam. What Happened to Me: My Life agency rather than a traditional publisher were tic collection that included cookbooks, mili- with Books, Research Libraries, and Performing fairly straightforward: principally, to keep con- tary manuals, works by radicals and women, Arts. Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, trol of the editing process and avoid extensive book sale catalogues, contemporary gossip, 2014. xi, 320p. ISBN 9781491861493 (soft revisions likely to be required by a trade pub- and even guides to library organization, along cover) US $19.95; ISBN 9781491861486 (e- lisher or university press. For assuring strong with a comprehensive collection of standard book) US $3.99. sales, I believed that a traditional publisher learned volumes. More specifically, we see would have insisted on a far more focused the Sidneys’ motives for collecting books and The phenomenon of self-publishing audience than the diversity of my colleagues how and where they read them (pen in hand), has already received some attention from and friends implied. Making money was not a and to what ends, over time. Warkentin also SHARP; the potential for self-reviewing, requirement and was not a constraint. There ties the volumes (often carried in trunks) to to the best of my knowledge, has not. As was also the advantage of speed. It was little their use in compiling thirteen commonplace a recently self-published author, I propose more than three months from original sub- books. In contrast to studies of the reading here to follow the example of Samuel Taylor mission to the first completed copy, a process of Gabriel Harvey and Francis Drake, the Coleridge who once reviewed anonymously that would have taken over a year with the https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol23/iss4/1 20 et al.: Volume 23, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 23, no. 4 Autumn 2014 d 21
traditional publisher. Finally, the on-demand libraries and among other things a rather ran- nature of these productions obviates the need dom collection of stories about such libraries. DHSI Reports for a garage full of copies. (Self-publishing Nothing more pretentious than that. agencies are not generous with free author As the book and its stories grew, so did copies, but author discounts are substantial the potential audience, to include librarians, if enough copies are ordered.) scholars, book historians, musicians, and other Digital Humanities Summer A speaker at the 2013 SHARP Conference performing artists, many of whom would not Institute in Philadelphia reported a high degree of know of one another. So too did the number University of Victoria, British Columbia satisfaction among self-publishers. That was of mistakes and typos strewn throughout, 2–6 June 2014 true in my case as well; unlike several nega- some due to haste in composition, others to tive reviews on the AuthorHouse website, writing from memory: virile for viral, skys for First, a confession: I am not a digital hu- I have few complaints about the service. It skies, Edmund Gibbons for Edward Gibbon, manist. So why, one might well feel entitled seemed well-organized, and the computer George Romney for Mitt, to mention a few. – compelled, even – to ask, would I bother templates used were appropriate to the mate- A substantial number of index entries are applying for a SHARP-sponsored scholarship rial. The staff, although involving a sequence missing. By May 2014 a corrected version to the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in of different people and roles, was invariably repaired and replaced the original version (at the first place? My answer to that question is responsive and knowledgeable about publish- an additional cost of $380), a true challenge actually the same as my confession: I am not ing practices. On occasion I felt a bit rushed to the punctilious bibliographer. The only a digital humanist. I am, in fact, a sociologist, by the process but that may have been self- indication of a “corrected edition” is a date one who is proud to be labeled as such. The inflicted, and certainly abetted the number of on the title-page verso, the date on which that problem is, as I am a Lecturer in Publishing egregious proof-reading errors. The photo- particular copy was produced. I can betray and Digital Media at City University London’s graphs, laid out in an internal section of nine here that any copy dated “05/12/2014” or Department of Culture and Creative Indus- pages, have less than ideal resolution, though after is undoubtedly this corrected version tries, colleagues and students alike are far the originals were far from perfect. With one (and the one reviewed here). But a new list of more likely to take me for a digital humanist exception which could have been avoided, errata is slowly developing and might eventu- than for a sociologist, and the grim, embar- the overall design is handsome, the cover ally require some revision of the text and the rassing reality is that I understand very little attractive, and the inner margins adequate, change date. about the digital humanities. My objective in even generous, for a perfect-bound book. One change from the original version attending DHSI was, therefore, quite simple The exception has to do with footnotes. I caused a major family argument. I had inad- – to learn. wish I had been warned beforehand that vertently (i.e., stupidly) referred to The Rocky Naturally, I would not, after an all-too their programming for footnotes required Mountain Picture Show. My children and some brief week at the idyllic University of Victoria that all of the footnote text be on the same of their cousins found this mistake uproari- campus, presume to be a DH expert now. But page as the footnote reference. The result is ously funny, demonstrating what I claim in the at least I am no longer entirely ignorant. I un- that the preceding page often has extensive book, my utter cluelessness on most matters derstand the core of digital humanities to per- white space, as much as four or five inches. of popular culture. “It’s so David,” these tain to methodologies, new digital tools and If I had been warned prior to submission it selfie-accomplished youths told me, and that strategies for analyzing texts appropriated and should have been easy to convert footnotes to I had to leave it in. Older readers said simply adapted from the applied and social sciences. endnotes, avoiding a problem that couldn’t be that it was wrong (for the equally clueless, it And over the past decade, this methodological solved after the galleys were set. The indexing should have read Rocky Horror Picture Show), turn has had far-reaching intellectual and pro- service was helpful but the results, far from and that it had to be corrected. I regret to fessional implications for humanists across complete, required a good deal of human say that I made the change. Since little in on- disciplines. These basic insights, along with intervention, and the index still lacks entries demand publication is permanent, further everything else I have learned, are thanks to that should have been included. changes are always possible. a formidable program of courses and events, As to the work itself, the original motiva- This memoir seems to the author at least to as well as the expertise and generosity of the tion for these memoirs was as an informal use an appropriate degree of self-censorship hundreds of academics gathered from all over effort to tell my family, children, and grand- but in fact pulls few punches. Some may find the world to partake in them. children some things about myself of which the “coming of age” sections embarrassing. With such a jam-packed schedule, it would they were likely unaware. But as the stories The author certainly does. For any would-be have been impossible to do everything or multiplied, the work grew into something memoirist who thinks that writing an auto- meet everybody. What were the highlights? larger, encouraged by kind friends. Some of biographical work might be an ego trip, that Unquestionably, the single most important them became what I call my self-appointed prospective author is likely to find the experi- activity of the week was the short course. I peer reviewers – colleagues and friends – and ence more humbling than ego-gratifying, but a elected to take “Fundamentals of Program- they were both critical and helpful. And worthwhile endeavor, and one any good story ming/Coding for Human(s|ists),” taught by candid. I also sensed an obligation to help teller owes to posterity. John Simpson of the University of Alberta, preserve some sense of research librarianship and if I had to spend five hours a day every as it was practiced in the transition period David H. Stam day during a week of perfect weather in the to digital dominance. The work is at best a Syracuse University, New York Pacific Northwest in a windowless basement fragmentary contribution to the history of computer lab learning the basics of UNIX ... / 22
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... / 21 and Python, it couldn’t have been with used in a geospatial database. This practical Having thoughtful conversations with other more fabulous people. The evening Birds- component was complemented by on-going researchers in both formal and informal of-a-Feather sessions were also particularly discussions around how, where and why you settings strengthened many existing bonds, interesting for the controversies about career deploy GIS in humanities research. created new connections and expanded my paths, peer review, and professionalization These skills and discussions enriched my research horizons. they generated among audience members. Masters of Information Studies work on how Flora Feltham The Twitter backchannel was so lively, in the concept of ‘place’ is deployed in New Victoria University of Wellington fact, that the #dhsibof hashtag started to at- Zealand’s digital heritage collections. It was tract spammers! Finally, I was pleased to be also invaluable to work we do at the Wai-te- able to give back to the community, albeit ata Press: during the week I put together a c in modest fashion, by organizing an uncon- re-usable GIS layer – a ‘shapefile’ – tracking ference session drawn from my academic the outgoing correspondence from William Thanks to SHARP’s generosity, I attended publishing industry expertise on “Debating Colenso to Robert Coupland Harding. GIS the “Digital Humanities Databases” course, Open Access.” provides striking avenues for data analysis and which introduced the inner workings of data- All in all, DHSI was an invaluable learning visualisation: humanities data with a natural bases and offered me the chance to organize experience and opportunity to network with geographic component can be systematically the data held at the American Antiquarian an entirely new community of scholars with examined in relation to maps (or any other Society (AAS) about people working in the whom I share many substantive interests. geospatial datasets for that matter). book trade in North America and the Carib- While I do not have any DH projects in the The DHSI’s conference component bean from 1640 to 1820. This prosopography offing at the moment, I would not foreclose showcased a huge variety of projects. Many can be found in the Printers’ File, consisting the possibility in the future, subject to re- engaged effectively with cultural objects of 25 drawers of cards in the AAS’s reading search questions for which DH methods we tend to take for granted. For example, room and in the North American Imprints might conceivably be appropriate. It lives up “Beckett Spams Counterstrike,” from West Project files in our online catalog. Culled from to the hype and the promises made on its Virginia University, used avatars to perform biographies, city directories, genealogies, vital website; I would recommend it to any and all Endgame online within real-time Counterstrike records, city histories, newspapers, and AAS SHARPists, even if, like me, they do not self- gameplay. This produced hilarious results, but Records, this information details the work and identify as digital humanists. Go to become also provided new insights into and questions lives of printers, publishers, editors, binders, conversant in this emerging and dynamic about ritual in the online gaming world. and others more tangentially associated with field. Go to become inspired. Digital humanities departs most clearly the book trades. We at AAS are transform- Casey Brienza from her sister disciplines, though, when ing all of this data into an online database, City University London researchers use computational technology and my time at DHSI is already proving to explore existing texts or humanities ques- instrumental to that project. The Database of tions. For example, two DHSI instructors the Early American Book Trades (see
such information together from several tables. eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature I also appreciated that while the workshop and culture, he teaches the history of the book Bibliography presented ideal scenarios for database cre- at USC, is a member of the Editorial Board of ation, the teachers were also willing and able RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts and General to help us think through the tools available at Cultural Heritage, and has published articles on Paul Barry. Breaking News: Sex, Lies our institutions, be they independent research special collections librarianship, exhibition de- & the Murdoch Succession. Sydney: Read libraries or large universities. sign, and the history of books and printing. How You Want/Accessible, 2014. ISBN After working in small groups and indi- Erin A. Smith is Associate Professor of 9781459674745. vidual sessions with our instructors, we spent American Studies and Literature at the Uni- Jason Bird. Born Reading : Bringing up time in the MySQL mainframe. Having down- versity of Texas at Dallas, where she teaches Bookworms in a Digital Age – from Picture loaded the necessary software on our laptops, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American Books to Ebooks and Everything in Between. we copied what Quamen was doing on his literatures and cultures and gender studies. She New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. ISBN projected screen as he explained each step; is the author of What Would Jesus Read?: Popular 9781476749792. this art of imitation, Quamen wisely insisted, Religious Books and Everyday Life in Twentieth-Cen- Jeremy Black. The Power of Knowledge: How helped us to experience the kinetic aspect tury America (forthcoming, University of North Information and Technology Made the Modern of digital work. Programming and building Carolina Press) and Hard-Boiled: Working-Class World. New Haven: Yale University Press, databases are physical activities that rely on a Readers and Pulp Magazines (Temple University 2014. ISBN 9780300167955. certain amount of muscle memory and physi- Press, 2000). Since 2008, she has been SHARP Detlef Bluhm. Bücherdämmerung: Über Die cal discipline for maximum efficiency. liaison to the American Studies Association. Zukunft Der Buchkultur. Darmstadt: Lambert The workshop could not have come at a Schneider, 2014. ISBN 9783650400031. better time for my work as the Digital Hu- Ruskin Bond. Love among the Bookshelves. manities Curator at AAS, not only because we New Delhi: Penguin: Viking, 2014. ISBN Call for Nominations are now organizing the Database of the Early 9780670087341. American Book Trade, but also as we consider Guillermo Cabanellas. The Legal En- ways of linking our data to other book trade SHARP’s Nominating Committee seeks vironment of Translation. Milton Park, UK databases. In the past month, I have spoken and New York: Routledge, 2014. ISBN with others in the business of doing new nominations for the following offices for a two-year term from July 2015 to July 2017 (an 9781138790803 things with old data about the book trade, Marco Caracciolo. The Experientiality and we face many of the same questions asterisk means that the incumbent is standing for re-election): of Narrative: An Enactivist Approach. Berlin: about standardizing vocabularies, not only Boston, 2014. ISBN 9783110278170. for names and places, but also for the labor Thomas Christensen. River of Ink: Es- of the book and related trades. President* (must be a member of the Ex- ecutive Committee or Board of Directors) says on Literature, Art, and History. Berkeley, Vice President* CA: Counterpoint Press, 2014. ISBN Molly O’Hagan Hardy 9781619024267. American Antiquarian Society Treasurer* Recording Secretary* Giles N. Clark and Angus Phillips. In- Membership Secretary* side Book Publishing. 5th ed. Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2014. ISBN Editors in Review External Affairs Director* Director for Publications and Awards* 9780415537162. Director of Electronic Resources* Matt Cohen. Colonial Mediascapes: Sen- sory Worlds of the Early Americas. Lincoln: Molly Hardy, ACLS Public Fellow and Member-at-Large University of Nebraska Press, 2014. ISBN Digital Humanities Curator at the American Nominating Committee (3)* 9780803232396. Antiquarian Society, joins the SHARP News Member, Board of Directors (6) Christopher Coker. Men at War: What team as our new E-Resources Reviews Editor. Fiction Tells Us About Conflict, from the Iliad If you have any digital projects or resources No nominating petitions or signatures are to Catch-22. New York: Oxford University you’d like profiled and reviewed, please con- necessary. Members should also feel free to Press, 2014. ISBN 9780199382972. tact her on
Published by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, 2014 23 SHARP News, Vol. 23, No. 4 [2014], Art. 1 24 c Autumn 2014 SHARP News Vol. 23, no. 4
... / 23 Press, 2014. ISBN 9781937875510. Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. ISBN ku’ualoha ho’omanawanui. Voices of Fire: Beth Driscoll. The New Literary Middlebrow: 9780300204193. Reweaving the Literary Lei of Pele and Hi’iaka. Tastemakers and Reading in the Twenty-First Cen- George W. Houston. Inside Roman Li- Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota tury. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. braries: Book Collections and Their Management Press, 2014. ISBN 9780816679218. ISBN 9781137402912. in Antiquity. Chapel Hill, NC: Univer- Meagan Lacy, ed. The Slow Book Revolution: Thomas H. Hefter. The Reader in Al-Jahiz: sity of North Carolina Press, 2014. ISBN Creating a New Culture of Reading on College Cam- The Epistolary Rhetoric of an Arabic Prose Mas- 9781469617800. puses and Beyond. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries ter. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Korea Unlimited, 2014. ISBN 9781610697156. 2014. ISBN 9780748692743. Myong-gwan Kang. Choson Sidae Ch’aek Brian Lamb. Sundays at Eight: 25 Years Susan Howe. Spontaneous Particulars: The Kwa Chisik Ui Yoksa: Choson Ui Ch’aek Kwa of Stories from C-Span’s Q&A and Booknotes. Telepathy of Archives. New York: New Direc- Chisik Un Choson Sahoe Wa Ottok’e Mannago New York: Public Affairs, 2014. ISBN tions, 2014. ISBN 9780811223751. Heojyossulkka? Soul-si: Ch’onnyon ui Sang- 9781610393485. Eileen Hyder. Reading Groups, Libraries, and sang, 2014. ISBN 9788996870661. Ian S. MacNiven. “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Social Inclusion: Experiences of Blind and Partially Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Direc- Spain Sighted People. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014. tions. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, María del Carmen Álvarez Márquez. ISBN 1409447987. 2014. ISBN 9780374299392. Bibliotecas Privadas De Sevilla En Los Inicios De Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, John J. Thomp- Manuel M. Martin-Rodriguez, ed. With La Edad Moderna. Zaragoza: Pórtico Libros, son, and Sarah Baechle, eds. New Directions in a Book in Their Hands: Chicano/a Readers and 2014. ISBN 9788479561253. Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Readerships across the Centuries. Albuquerque: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall. Notre Dame: United Kingdom University of New Mexico Press, 2014. ISBN University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. ISBN Kevin Birmingham. The Most Danger- 9780826354761. 9780268033279. ous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses. Robert McParland. Mark Twain’s Audience: Joshua Landy. How to Do Things with Fictions. New York: Penguin Press, 2014. ISBN A Critical Analysis of Reader Responses to the New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 9781594203367. Writings of Mark Twain. Lanham, KY: Lexing- ISBN 9780199378203. Rebecca Davies. Written Maternal Author- ton Books, 2014. ISBN 9780739190517. Wendy Lesser. Why I Read: The Serious ity and Eighteenth-Century Education in Britain: Pleasure of Books. New York: Farrar, Straus Educating by the Book. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, and Giroux, 2014. ISBN 0374289204. 2014. ISBN 9781409451686. Sarah Dewis. The Loudons and the Gardening James Ley. The Critic in the Modern World: The Last Post Public Criticism from Samuel Johnson to James Press: A Victorian Cultural Industry. Farnham, Wood. ISBN 9781623563738. UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. ISBN 9781409469223. Argentina “With this hard copy, I thee read.” Well, so Rebecca Mead. My Life in Middlemarch. Craig Epplin. Late Book Culture in Argentina. much for intertextuality… This is to alert all New York: Crown Publishers, 2014. ISBN New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. SHARP Members that 23.4 is the last SHARP 0307984761. ISBN 9781623562700. News that will be delivered in hard copy to United States France your physical letterbox. From 24.1, you will Kim Bancroft. The Heyday of Malcolm Guillaume Berthon. L’intention du poète: Clé- be able to access, read, download, and print Margolin: The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely ment Marot “autheur.” Paris: Classiques Garnier, a .pdf version of the quarterly newsletter Independent Publisher. Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 2014. ISBN 9782812420214. delivered via our sharpweb.org members’ only 2014. ISBN 9781597142878. Marie-Claude Felton. Maîtres de leurs space: as we have been doing over the last two Ann E. Byle. The Baker Book House Story. ouvrages: l’édition à compte d’auteur à Paris au years! Throughout 2015, your SHARP News Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2014. ISBN XVIIIe siècle. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, team will explore new publishing models that 9780801016585. 2014. ISBN 9780729410816. include disaggregating content and placing it Amy Root Clements. The Art of Prestige: The in digital-only spaces, linking our bibliogra- Germany Formative Years at Knopf, 1915–1929. Amherst: phies to reviews, adding comment functions Matt Erlin. Necessary Luxuries: Books, Litera- University of Massachusetts Press, 2014. to commissioned reviews, crowdsourcing ture, and the Culture of Consumption in Germany, ISBN 9781625340924. content, and more. We are treating this as a 1770–1815. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Maura D’Amore. Suburban Plots: Men at research project and will be looking at best Press and Cornell University Library, 2014. Home in Nineteenth-Century American Print practice in the e-domain under the profes- ISBN 9780801453045. Culture. Boston: University of Massachusetts sional guidance of Jason Ensor, our Direc- India Press, 2014. ISBN 9781625340955. tor of Electronic Resources, Claire Squires, O. P. Dwivedi and Lisa Lau. Indian Writ- Jerome Griswold. Audacious Kids: The our Director of Publications, and our new ing in English and the Global Literary Market. Classic American Children’s Story. Baltimore: SHARP News Editor, Padmini Ray Murray. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ISBN Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. ISBN Yours truly will also be involved in this transi- 9781137437709. 9781421414577. tion and we will be encouraging SHARPists Italy Chad Harbach, ed. MFA vs. NYC: The Two to help us test our prototypes throughout the Evelyn Lincoln. Brilliant Discourse: Pic- Cultures of American Fiction. New York: Faber process. So, in going boldly where no SHARP tures and Readers in Early Modern Rome. New and Faber, 2014. ISBN 9780865478138. News has gone before … https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol23/iss4/1 24