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Volume 21 | Number 4 Article 1
Fall 2012 Volume 21, Number 4
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SHARP News Volume 21, Number 4 Autumn 2012
Lithuanian architect L. Stuoka-Gucevičius in and perspectives. Lithuania is a small country, Conference Reviews the style of classicism), at the heart of a lovely where the language and literature, the librar- European city, where multiculturalism is built ies, and the publishing industries all need to be celebrated as well as nurtured. Although th into a history of occupation, struggle, and 20 International Book Science – since 1990 – independence. I look forward the range of linguistic skill in evidence was Conference to the publication of the next issue of the remarkable (and humbling to this unilingual Lithuanian Academy of Science, Vilnius journal Knygotyra, where papers or articles Anglophone!) it is possible to generalize: the 27–28 September 2012 developed on the material of papers will be older scholars speak Russian in addition to published. All of them will be furnished with Lithuanian, while the younger ones prefer About the same time as SHARP was abstracts in English. English as their second language. All of them founded to study ‘book history,’ a series of I learned that there is a strong tradition of are anxious not to lose the connection with conferences began at Vilnius University in bibliography and ‘book science’ in Lithuania, the history of their disciplines, much of it Lithuania, where their subject ‘knygotyra’ and in eastern Europe generally, but the created in the national language, but they are translates as ‘book science.’ In September founders and creators of the constituent equally concerned to promote the translation 2012, I was privileged to attend the latest of disciplines were not the names I am used to and circulation of Lithuanian scholarship these conferences, organized by the Institute hearing (people like Darnton and McKenzie, in the English-speaking world. The chal- of Book Science and Documentation of the Greg and Bowers, Martin and Febvre, for lenges of overcoming language barriers in Faculty of Communication, and located at the example). The founders of whom they spoke the scholarship of authorship, publishing, beautiful and imposing home of the Lithua- were German and Polish, as well as Lithua- reading, and the material book are among nian Academy of Sciences. The theme of nian, and the chronological markers were the challenges SHARP also encounters, and this year’s conference was Creators of Scholarly events that were literary and bibliographical this opportunity to consider them from the Disciplines – Book Science, Codicology, Documenta- as much as they were political – such as the perspective of eastern Europe has been most tion, Media Science. Our very gracious hosts closing of Vilnius University by tsar Nikolai enlightening. were Prof. Dr. Habil. Domas Kaunas, and I’s decree in 1832, resistance to the Lithuanian Leslie Howsam Prof. Dr. Aušra Navickienė. My own lecture Press Ban of 1864 to 1904, and the effects of University of Windsor, Ontario addressed the theme by looking forward, the imposition of Marxist-Leninist theories towards the re-creation of our disciplines, in of history (including national histories of the c a talk on ‘Teaching and (Un)learning the His- book and bibliographies) in the 1940s. tory of the Book.’ The other plenary lecturer The conference began with a celebration The Book in Africa was Prof. Dr. Habil. Krzysztof Migoń from of Aušra Navickienė’s birthday, with the oc- Institute of English Studies, London the University of Wroclaw in Poland. His casion marked by the presentation of a slim 20 October 2012 lecture focused on the need for, and benefits and beautifully produced volume comprising of, research in the history of book science. a bibliography of all her writings and ac- This symposium was organized as a col- Other speakers discussed the history of bib- companied by a charming “Ex Libris” book laborative event by Open University, Oxford liographical and book-historical scholarship plate. The pamphlet shows how rich a body of Brookes University, and the Institute of in Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Russia, Croatia, scholarship Aušra has accumulated, and it also English Studies. Organizers should be con- Belarus and of course Lithuania itself. There demonstrates how differently they celebrate ... / 2 were papers on the history of reading, library scholarly accomplishment in Lithuania. For history, and digital humanities as well as someone still in the midst of an energetic Contents presentations of research on several of the career, a bibliography marks achievements founders of scholarly disciplines. to this date, and confidently expects much The two days of stimulating papers, as more to come. Conference Reviews 1 well as plenty of receptions and conversa- The next International Book Science SHARP Business 2 tions, included an opportunity to visit an Conference will take place in Vilnius next Book Reviews 4 extraordinary site – the reconstructed Na- September, and the theme will be one that, as E-Resource Reviews 13 tional Museum Palace of the Grand Dukes I came to understand, is vitally important to Exhibition Reviews 15 of Lithuania. It sits next to the cathedral their contemporary experience: Traditional and Awards 18 (reconstructed in the nineteenth century by electronic publishing in a small country: experiences Bibliography 20
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SHARP News SHARP Business SHARP News Goes Digital
As with our jam-packed Autumn issue of editor Call for Nominations Sydney Shep, Wai-te-ata Press SHARP News, before you receive your hard- Victoria University of Wellington copy of Winter 25.1, we have decided to give The Nominating Committee of the Soci- PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand members a sneak preview by making an elec- ety for the History of Authorship, Reading [email protected] tronic version available through the SHARP and Publishing seeks nominations for the members’ page. This password-protected Editorial Assistants - 21.4 following offices for a two-year term, from e-access in .pdf format is the first stage of a Sara Bryan & Alya Egoz July 2013 to July 2015: [An asterisk means that transition from print to a fully online version Publication Assistants, Wai-te-ata Press the incumbent is standing for re-election.] of SHARP News. As the executive committee review Editors President (must be a member of the Execu- discussed in Dublin, the newsletter eventually Fritz Levy, Book Reviews – Europe tive Committee or Board of Directors) will be made interactive and delivered elec- University of Washington, WA, USA Vice President tronically. While the online format will allow [email protected] Treasurer* us to take advantage of the new opportuni- Recording Secretary* ties afforded by technology, the same quality Millie Jackson, Book Reviews – Americas Membership Secretary* of peer reviews, engaging position pieces, University of Alabama, AL, USA External Affairs Director* and evocative critiques will characterise the [email protected] Director for Publications and Awards* SHARP News of the future. We’ll keep you Director of Electronic Resources posted as we move to the new format. Simone Murray, Book Reviews – Asia/Pacific Member-at-Large* In the meantime, please go to the mem- Monash University, Melbourne, AUS Nominating Committee (3) bers’ only link
SHARP News [ISSN 1073-1725] is the SHARP Tuition Scholarships gratulated on their successful fund-raising. quarterly newsletter of the Society for the History In particular, financial support from OU and of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, Inc.. The Oxford Brookes made it possible to offer On the back of our successful Rare Society takes no responsibility for the views free registration for delegates (always a good Book School, Virginia, tuition scholarships asserted in these pages. Copyright of content thing, especially for PhD students!). British
most obvious delegate for a symposium on I thought it was a great example of the ways book culture together. “SHARP is good for the book in Africa. Yet, I learned a lot not in which a text is mediated, through digital, the coffee breaks,” he said. Expanding on only about African literature and print culture, oral, and print formats. McDonald also said his 2010 article published in Knygotyra, Eliot but also about the spatial expansion of ‘book that it is vital, when we look at questions of argued for book history to be viewed in a history’ as a field. There were at least three the book from an African perspective or via much broader context, as part of the history recurring themes during the discussions, start- African materials, that we talk not just about of communication. ing with the idea that African print culture “print culture,” “oral culture” or “digital cul- This overview of book history was the had an impact on Europe and the rest of the ture,” but about “ideas of print culture,” etc., starting point for discussions on the future world. “We should ask not what book history and the way these ideas relate to each other of publishing studies. Three main problems can do for Africa, but rather what Africa can in complex and changing ways. were identified. First, publishing programs are do for book history,” said Peter McDonald After this excellent panel, the symposium often purely vocational. Their aim is to help (University of Oxford). The second theme ended a bit abruptly with a dinner for invited students find jobs in the book industry, but was the interconnection between print culture speakers only. But on the whole, this was an not necessarily to analyze the functioning of and orality. As Karin Barber (Birmingham informative and well-organized symposium the trade. For Claire Squires, who has helped University) put it, bibles could travel to places on a growing area of book history. develop the research activities of her publish- where missionaries could not go. Finally, many ing program at the University of Stirling, it speakers mentioned the practical difficulties Lise Jaillant is necessary to be close to the industry but of doing research on the book in Africa. University of British Columbia also to retain some kind of critical distance. Robert Fraser (Open University) said that it Caroline Davis (Oxford Brookes) pointed out was complicated to get funding for African the lack of scholarly journals specializing in delegates to travel to the UK, which hinders c publishing studies. She said that it was not collaboration between British universities and always easy to know where to publish and institutions from Nigeria, Ghana, and other to obtain institutional recognition for one’s African countries. Moreover, Beth le Roux Progressing Book History and scholarship. Second, researchers in publish- talked about the difficulties of working in Publishing Studies as Disciplines ing studies are often intellectually isolated, publisher’s archives in South Africa. There Oxford Brookes University and unaware of what others are working on. is no list of those archives, and no complete 24 October 2012 Finally, scholars often focus on the present records. Since so few South African scholars and the future, and neglect the history of the work on book history and publishing studies, This was the second event organized to book trade. This has prompted Beth Le Roux there is also little incentive to make publisher’s support the partnership of Oxford Brookes to prepare a literature review on the history archives more available to researchers. In and the University of Pretoria, and to bring of the book in Africa (published in the 2012 response to those challenges, scholars have scholars together to discuss the evolution issue of Book History). developed innovative ways to study African of their fields. Discussions centered on the The last session took the form of a fo- print culture, often using interdisciplinary institutionalization of ‘publishing studies’ as rum to discuss solutions to the challenges theoretical and methodological frameworks. a research-orientated discipline, with book faced by the discipline. Preparing an AHRC In her PhD dissertation on Kenyan literature, history as a possible model. network bid, organizing subject conferences, Kate Haines (University of Sussex) draws Among the speakers were many veteran and creating a list-serv and an online journal from book history, memory studies and book historians – and I am using the term ‘vet- are possible steps to ensure the future of African literary criticism. Beth le Roux also eran’ on purpose, considering the omnipres- publishing studies. This last session was a employs a hybrid methodology including ence of the vocabulary of war during the talks. success, as everybody was encouraged to archival research, historical bibliography, and For Simon Eliot (Institute of English Studies, contribute to the discussion. It is regrettable, political sociology. University of London), the creation of ‘book however, that no PhD student participated The last panel brought together a scholar history’ as a field was, and still is, a struggle. in panels organized throughout the day. It and two publishers of African literature. James “Book history is a stateless discipline fighting would have been interesting to hear more Currey (James Currey Publishers) and Becky a guerrilla war – attack from the hills and then about the challenges faced by junior scholars Nana Ayebia Clarke (Clarke-Ayebia Publish- run away,” said Eliot (as tweeted by Elizabeth in publishing studies. ers) talked about their work at Heinemann, a Lovegrove under #progressbookhist). Many After the conference, Samantha Rayner firm that played a major role in popularizing enemies were pointed out: historians who (University College London) tweeted some African literature with its African Writers series. look down on cultural history, literary schol- more thoughts on the symposium. It was an The last speaker, Peter McDonald, asked the ars obsessed with textual analysis, and grant energizing day, which will hopefully lead to audience to guess the provenance of a text committees that file “book history” under more discussion on the future of book history on a PowerPoint slide – thus converting the “English.” Eliot described book history as an and publishing studies. pixelated text to oral words. The next slide embattled discipline that still had a long way to showed a photo of the Heinemann paperback go towards full institutionalization. But he also Lise Jaillant edition in which the text was initially printed. mentioned the strengths of book history: its University of British Columbia McDonald talked about the paratextual ele- academic organization (SHARP), its scholarly ments, including the statement on the back journals, its list-serv, and all the conferences cover and the list of other books in the series. and events that bring scholars who work on
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and 1870s to match changing popular senti- Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era makes Book Reviews ment of a mostly rural population, aware of a significant contribution to the study of book the passing of gaucho culture and the need history during this period (subsequent to the for education. invention of printing by moveable print), and Acree illustrates with specific examples thereby explores the fascinating world of Jew- William G. Acree, Jr. Everyday Reading: Print how the daily consumption of popular print ish learning by Christian scholars. Culture and Collective Identity in the Río de la media fomented rebellion, forged collective My interest in Christian Hebraism is re- Plata, 1780–1910. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt identities, enforced partisan prejudices, con- lated to its place in the English Reformation, University Press, 2011. xvi, 247p., ill. ISBN strained movement, stimulated publishing and particularly as reflected in the creation of 9780826517890. US $55. printing ventures, and solidified foundations the Geneva (1560) and King James (1611) for the impressive literacy rates achieved dec- Bibles as well as in the sermons of the Church Everyday Reading is a gutsy book by Wil- ade after decade by Uruguay and Argentina, of England preachers Lancelot Andrewes liam Garrett Acree Jr., currently Assistant two countries cleaved by the Rio de la Plata, (1555–1626) and John Donne (1572–1631). Professor of Spanish in the Department but justifiably comparable. Burnett’s book further enriches a literary of Romance Languages and Literatures at For his purposes, Agree emphasizes scholar’s understanding of the wider, Euro- Washington University in St. Louis. With this significant historical and cultural similarities pean context of these texts, as the English book, a refined version of his dissertation, shared by the two countries. Both countries translators, commentators, and preachers Acree argues that between 1780 and 1910, had formed part of the colonial Viceroyalty readily turned to the works of Continental “everyday reading” had deep and far-reaching of the Rio de la Plata. Both shared military scholars. His is a thorough, eminently read- impact on the battles for independence, na- leaders and soldiers during the wars for in- able study of the creation and dissemination tion-building, political affiliation, assimilation, dependence; they shared educators, authors, of Christian Hebraic knowledge, as printed and gender circumscription in Uruguay and printers, and publishers as well as heroes in “a Christian Hebrew book…that contains Argentina. He proposes that writing, printing, and villains. Both developed cattle and sheep a substantial amount of Hebrew type and and publishing – seeking out receptive mass herding cultures, represented by the figure thus serves as an intellectual bridge between audiences – mutated from revolutionary and of el gaucho, and absorbed a disproportion- the Jewish and Christian worlds of scholar- political weapons in late eighteenth-century ate percentage of European immigrants by ship” (5). Argentina and Uruguay into progressive, even the 1900s. Burnett sets out a clear and fascinat- aesthetic, public concerns at the end of the Acree convincingly demonstrates the ing three-part thesis: firstly, that “the seeds nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth range and effect of every day printed ephem- of early modern Christian Hebraism were century. era on the nature and development of the planted before Martin Luther proposed his The book sets aside the study of exalted public sphere in the region of the Rio de la 95 Theses, but it was the Reformation that literary works, and instead, examines popu- Plata during the long nineteenth century. This made them grow” (271); secondly, that the lar print culture and everyday reading in the readable and engaging work will reward read- Reformation also placed important limits on context of a discipline that expects extensive ers, even those with the scantiest knowledge the kinds of inquiries scholars could pursue investigations to focus exclusively on canoni- of Rioplatense history and culture. in print, limits “reflecting the needs and pri- cal works. To Acree, “everyday reading” goes Acree has opened up a vast topography orities of the confessional churches” (272); beyond the reading of literary works, the yet to be fully described in English. He has and lastly, that “Christian Hebraist writers browsing of newspapers, or the study of text- also provided excitement and impetus for the and their supporters and readers succeeded books, to also include listening to the reading comparative study of everyday reading and in creating an academic culture of Hebrew of texts, inscribing of mandated partisan popular cultures in other South American learning within the Catholic, Lutheran, Re- slogans, role playing of patriotic or domestic countries. formed, and Anglican churches” (276). This scenes, and the handling of currency, postage, Maria E. Gonzalez comprehensive thesis is supported by his and printed collectibles. Rutgers University-Camden chronological, well-documented discussion Acree breaks up the thirteen decades (accompanied by excellent tables, presented ending in 1910 into three periods: firstly, c throughout the book). Its six chapters chart the 1780–1810 run-up to the wars for in- the development of Christian Hebraism (a dependence that prompted innovative uses small point—organizing the chapters by the of printing presses, generated spirit-rousing Stephen G. Burnett. Christian Hebraism in three larger sections delineated by Burnett newspapers and patriotic poetry, and lastly the Reformation Era (1500–1660): Authors, himself would have proved useful). The first provided the nation-defining legal documents; Books, and the Transmission of Jewish Learning. two chapters focus on individual Christian secondly, the spread of cattle culture, the par- Brill: Leiden, 2012. xx, 344 pp., ill. ISBN Hebraists (e.g., Reuchlin, Scaliger, Münster, allel dictatorships of Juan Manuel de Rosas 9789004222489. US $143. Selden), who produced and studied Christian in Argentina and Manuel Oribe in Uruguay, Hebraic texts. The third and fourth chapters and the conforming and oppressive system Stephen Burnett’s book on Christian He- set out the Jewish books studied by Christian of registers, passes, and violent slogans they braism has been published as part of a series Hebrews (by genre, e.g., grammars, Bibles enforced from 1835 to 1852; thirdly, a more entitled Library of the Written Word – most par- and commentaries, Kabbalah; by author, liberal and modernizing period ending in ticularly as part of the subseries The Handpress e.g. Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra), as well as 1910, slowly evolving throughout the 1860s World, edited by Andrew Pettegree. As such, the content of Christian Hebraic libraries. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol21/iss4/1 4 et al.: Volume 21, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 21, no. 4 Autumn 2012 d
Lastly, the fifth and sixth chapters delineate his last chapter, when electronic data bases Jeffrey Freedman. Books without Borders in the Christian Hebraist book market, specifi- such as EEBO and ECCO, etc., digitize one Enlightenment Europe: French Cosmopolitanism cally the production and distribution of these copy of an edition from one library, in one and German Literary Markets. Philadelphia: books as well as the press controls (theologi- form, in a way that is easily taken by users to University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. ix, cal and political) instituted by Reformation- be “the work itself.” 382p. ISBN 97808122-43895. US $79.95. era governments. In addition, these chapters For anyone who grew up reading Fredson are followed by two appendices (Christian Bowers’s Principles of Bibliographical Description Jeffrey Freedman’s study delivers impor- Hebraist Authors; Christian Hebrew Printers (1949), R. B. McKerrow’s An Introduction to tant answers to a critical question: to what and Publishers), which provide easily acces- Bibliography for Literary Students (1927), Philip degree did French letters penetrate Central sible and thorough data. Gaskell’s New Introduction to Bibliography (1972), Europe? Using the business papers of the Burnett’s book updates the scholarship on D. C. Greetham’s Textual Scholarship: An Societé Typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), Christian Hebraism, successfully providing Introduction (1992, 1994), and, more recently, Freedman brings us into close, instructive the evidence crucial to the study of book his- Mark Bland’s A Guide to Early Printed Books contact with this firm’s mixed success in the tory. It also, and most importantly, provides and Manuscripts (WileyBlackwell, 2010) and eighteenth-century German book market. the literary critic and intellectual historian Anthony Rota’s Apart from the Text (Oak Knoll, Book historians already know this publish- with a firm basis for the development of 1998), Dane’s book might seem like a leisurely ing house through Robert Darnton, whose his or her own disciplinary interests. What walk down memory lane. Unfortunately, the work focused on the high and low roads of is more, Burnett’s summarizing conclusions first part of the book, on analytical and de- French print culture. Yet Freedman uncov- about the theological and political aspects of scriptive bibliography, is too simple to deal ers a wholly new dimension to this firm: its the printing and dissemination of Christian with the complex and precise bibliographical eastward trade. There, the STN encountered Hebraic scholarship provoke much thought features of books. To a novice, this might a commercial world vastly different from that for scholars of the different disciplines, and be a blessing, but Dane’s gentle description of France, telling us much about European will certainly make this book a key text in their confuses collation and pagination formulae print circuits. Amidst the many programmatic own, modern libraries. (34), makes a futile attempt to explain the calls for histoire croisée and transnational histo- functions of catchwords, and suggests that ry, here is research whose concrete historicity Chanita Goodblatt one can describe a book before conducting provides solid grounding for thinking clearly Ben Gurion University of the Negev bibliographical analysis. Dane clearly does not about the circulation and reception of texts. put much stock in analytical bibliography. His Book historians will find this cross-cultural explanation of the concept of “ideal copy,” perspective enormously instructive. c whereby a descriptive bibliographer avoids Freedman argues that the STN’s extensive describing a unique copy of a book as if it network in Germany offers a “representative were the typical one, is murkily confused slice of the French book trade” (12). The Joseph A. Dane. What is a Book?: The Study of with attempts to describe what the printers claim is largely persuasive. Between 1774 and Early Printed Books. South Bend, IN: Notre “intended to produce.” His proper disdain for 1785, for example, the publishing house sold Dame University Press, 2012. xvi, 277p., ill. such an idea has nothing to do with Fredson over seven thousand books. Belles-lettres and ISBN 9780268026097. US $30. Bowers’s use of the term. politics comprised nearly half of its sales, Nevertheless, toward pat oversimplifica- with history, travel, Freemasonry, natural sci- Many students experience early books tions, Dane has a laudatory attitude that ences, devotional literature, and other genres only or primarily through electronic access, pervades the book; he insists that inconsist- rounding out its list. If sales of Diderot’s from which much of what a book is, or was, ency and the unexpected defeat notions of encyclopedia and semi-pornographic livres has been removed, left inaccessible. Elec- regularity in book production. Cut and dried philosophiques typified French materialism, tronic access provides users with an image, standardized explanations of “how it was the STN’s marketing of a Huguenot Bible in itself already one remove from its source, of done,” he says, could create an unsound ex- folio and octavo editions checks any cliché one copy of a single form of a work: it is, pectation that any particular book was actually assumptions about cultural transfers. The therefore, not the “work itself ” but only the produced by the standard method. demand for French books, the author further image of a “book-copy,” a unique, possibly But the confusion of the first chapter reminds us, did not necessarily mean a de- eccentric, form of the work. Dane distin- disappears when Dane turns to typography, mand for French authors; the most frequent guishes between a copy of a book (which is illustrations, bindings, and other page-surface orders were often for English translations. always unique) and the shared characteristics specific aspects of the book, which could have Of particular importance is the study’s dem- of multiple copies of a work. He repeats been written only by a person who had spent onstration of widespread diffusion. Although this point for each aspect of books, show- a lifetime examining books and investigating the STN’s markets were predominantly lo- ing how and where unexpected variation the methods for transferring ink to paper. He cated in the west and southwest of Germany, marks a book as a unique rather than typical is especially good (and personable) on the they also extended to the Hanseatic north exemplar. This neglected fact about books provenance of books and the way owners and the Habsburg east. “The German market is particularly important to stress now that leave marks on them. for French books,” writes Freedman, “stood libraries are increasingly thought of as sources above the many political, economic, cultural, of information rather than repositories for Peter Shillingsburg and religious divisions that separated the dif- books, and at a time, as Dane points out in Loyola University, Chicago ferent regions of Germany” (144). ... / 6
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... / 5 The sale of STN’s books, however, did not of communication that connected western addition to an exhaustive critical background come easy. The Neuchâtel press never syn- and central Europe – a topic of much concern Frost provides a fascinating discussion of chronized its operations with the all-impor- for current research on political culture and how the four bi-monthly volumes of the tant rhythms of the Leipzig’s spring fair and intellectual history. The book furthermore first edition ofMiddlemarch were designed to its system of book commissioners, credit, and sheds light on the uneven application and rela- be roughly equal in size despite the length barter. Nor did it fare particularly well with its tive laxity of cultural regulation in eighteenth- variations Eliot’s storyline demanded. These relations with bookdealers, whose insolvency century German states, thus underscoring the sections also contain the intriguing idea of caused consternation and financial loss. stark differences between French and central a “shopper’s republic” (89), and the notion Fine-grained portraits of booksellers in European censorship practices. Finally, the of a “commodity reading” of literature (Ch. Baden, Hesse, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and the research evinced in this study confirms the 6) in which a statistical analysis of the many Rhineland illuminate the heterogeneous world importance of archival research for book his- different appearances of the word “good” of German markets, readers, trade routes, and tory. Exceptions and anomalies abound in the in Middlemarch enable a subtle and clever idiosyncratic book peddlers. The study’s focus German-speaking lands, necessitating such assessment of its cultural “value.” There are on local contexts not only sets into stark relief pains-taking studies as Freedman’s. Written a few historical inconsistencies in these early the broad range of noble and bourgeois read- in crisp prose, this outstanding study should chapters, perhaps: despite Frost’s claims, there ers of French books but also illuminates how appeal to numerous audiences. have arguably been times in history when the Holy Roman Empire’s indistinct legal, Middlemarch was not “recognised indisputably political, and commercial boundaries offered James M. Brophy as a work of great art” (8) but denigrated as printers and bookdealers various opportuni- University of Delaware ideological kowtowing (or even dismissed as ties to vend forbidden books. downright dull). Scott and Dickens’s ‘literary Although the study predominantly exam- forms’ have also often been considered works ines French books in Germany, Freedman c of ‘great art’ despite sometimes being very also looks at how the STN marketed the publicly tied to financial necessity (8). And German Aufklärung for French consump- George Gissing, for one, would surely be a tion. In a well-crafted case study, Freedman Simon R. Frost. The Business of the Novel: Eco- bit surprised to hear that the separation of examines the many lives of Sebaldus Nothanker. nomics, Aesthetics and the Case of Middlemarch. economics and aesthetics was not a recognis- This text began as a popular mock epic by (Literary Texts and the Popular Marketplace able feature of the late nineteenth-century Moritz August von Thümmel, and enjoyed Series, No. 1.) London and Brookfield, VT: literary field in which he wrote and situated four printings. Exploiting the text’s popular- Pickering and Chatto, 2012. 256p. ISBN New Grub Street (38). ity, Friedrich Nicolai, the Berlin bookseller 9781848931947. £60 /US $99. These are minor issues and in no way and enlightened luminary, recast the story in diminish the value of these very thought-pro- a “sequel” that served as an earnest plea for “Relations between economics and aes- voking chapters. Still, for me the book’s sec- religious tolerance. The STN then rendered thetics do exist,” Simon Frost insists a touch ond half is perhaps the stronger: here Frost Nicolai’s Sebald into French, combining this defensively on the opening page of his new seems to sense he is on more solid ground. translation with another pirated translation of book (1), and it is a pity that this sets the He manages a skilful analysis of real reader Thümmel’s work into one volume, offering dominant tone for its first half. The book’s testimonies drawn from a range of sources them coyly, if not fraudulently, as works from defining interdisciplinary premise will come in Chapter Seven. The evidence he provides the same author. When this hybrid work failed as no surprise to many book historians, after in Chapter Eight of Eliot and Lewes’s change to meet expected sales, the STN recycled it yet all, and many literary scholars have been of heart about the publication of selections again as L’intolerance ecclesiastique, a piquant title equally busy investigating precisely these of her prose and verse between 1872 and that promised a salacious roman philosophique. relationships (see, for example, Patsy Stone- 1878 as a result of their different packaging In this guise, the STN then exported this man’s Brontë Transformations: The Cultural Dis- convincingly demonstrates the reality as well repackaged version back to Germany. The semination of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, as the complexity of the relationship between irony of the text’s metamorphosis is mani- Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996, or economics and aesthetics. Also in this final fest: what originated as a German critique of Juliet John’s Dickens and Mass Culture, Oxford: section Frost describes the re-packaging and French culture was recirculated by the STN OUP, 2010). commodification of Eliot as a personality as a French text whose spirit undermined the In almost every other way, however, the and a name after her death, adding a great text’s original aim. The STN, Freedman dem- book provides valuable and original insights. deal to our knowledge of what happens to onstrates, was nothing less than a “creative It takes us on a journey through four key the great author as commodity when s/he agent” in cross-cultural communication. areas of George Eliot’s relationship with is no longer in charge of his/her own image The book is a welcome contribution to her public, each comprising two chapters: (in this case, posthumously, ‘George Eliot’ a number of significant discussions. Freed- Supply (Part I); Demand (Part II); Commod- became – among other things – a bicycle and man’s scrutiny of the STN provides critical ity Reading (Part III) and Business besides a bottle of ketchup). These are only a few of material for assessing the scale and scope Aesthetics (Part IV). The first two sections the book’s many original insights. On balance of transnational print culture in eighteenth- explore the history and theory of commod- it is a worthwhile and interesting study which century continental Europe. This evidence, in ity culture (a term of which Frost is rightly successfully combines the empirical, the theo- conjunction with that available for the growth suspicious) and of reading practices. These retical and the critically pugnacious to offer of translation, points to the thickening webs sections are thoroughly researched, and in a new way of exploring some of the hidden https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol21/iss4/1 6 et al.: Volume 21, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 21, no. 4 Autumn 2012 d
relationships operating in the nineteenth- publishing practices. Especially valuable are Commenting here on each of the articles in century literary marketplace. copies of Chambers correspondence with this treasure house is impossible; I mention Lippincott, Grambo, and Company – and here those that most interested me. Mary Hammond some of the Philadelphia firm’s letters to The volume opens with a German-lan- University of Southampton Edinburgh – because the Lippincott premises guage piece by Rainer Moritz in which he were destroyed by fire in 1861. poses the intriguing question, What is a c I have few reservations about the book. beautiful bookshop? Drawing on his memo- Why the University of Chicago Press chose ries of a small, left-oriented bookshop in his Aileen Fyfe. Steam-Powered Knowledge: William to reproduce illustrative material with little native Heilbronn am Neckar, he describes Chambers and the Business of Publishing, 1820– contrast (the originals often on yellowing other wonderful book emporia from the 1860. Chicago and London: The University paper and written or printed in fading ink) is vast stock of the architecturally stunning Les of Chicago Press, 2012. xvi, 313p., ill. ISBN puzzling. The gray background for old photo- Tropismes in Brussels to the near minimalist 9780226276519. US $50. graphs makes seeing details especially difficult. Bookabar in Rome, in which those whose Second, the subtitle announces 1820–1860 as drug of choice is the printed book can get Steam-Powered Knowledge is a ground-break- the years studied. Choice of the former date is a glimpse of paradise. It would be unfair to ing book. It opens up the archival riches of W. clear enough, as in that year William Chambers dismiss this piece as a mere advertising puff & R. Chambers, Edinburgh publishers, held made his first attempts at printing and publish- for Moritz’s monograph, Die schönsten Buch- at the National Library of Scotland. In doing ing. But the narrative of the American adven- handlungen Europas (2010), for it has a value so, it presents a clear, detailed, informative, tures essentially concludes in 1854, not 1860. in its own right, but it has certainly inspired and insightful account of how this firm, the By then, William Chambers had assumed the me to seek out the earlier text. nineteenth century’s leader in publishing for role of landowner in Peeblesshire. Students of printing in the fifteenth the people, used new technologies to achieve Given the focus of the book, it is under- century are well served in this volume, its goals. Presented essentially chronologically, standable that William Chambers is assigned but my eye was caught particularly by Eric each of the book’s three sections – Organ- so much prominence in the firm’s work. His White’s exploration of the ownership of a izing a Proper System of Publishing, Rail- self-aggrandizing manner and Robert’s self- copy of Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible printed ways and Competition, and Steamhips and effacing one often gave observers the im- on vellum which had for a long time been Transatlantic Business – treats steam as the pression that William was the chief operative in the library of the Benedictine monastery change agent. force. From the beginning of the partnership, of Santo Domingo de Silos near Burgos in In Section One, it is the steam press which all decisions were made jointly (often after Spain. White’s purpose, which he carries off William Chambers – not a risk taker – takes heated discussions); however, by the time admirably, is not to present the results of the risk of adopting, along with stereotype just before and following William’s American original research, but to draw together for plates, as the most efficient and economical trip, Robert directed the firm’s operations in the first time the earlier known provenance tools for supplying education publications at Edinburgh, and he was majority shareholder of the Silensian copy up to its present loca- a profit. The archive’s contents of receipts for until his death. tion in Moscow. Recorded for the first time everything from the cost of advertising post- Aileen Fyfe’s meticulous work with the at Burgos in the catalogue of 1772, where it ers to the invoices for the constructing the dusty bundles of receipts and the virtually had been for an unknown time, it remained printing machine and steam engine to operate illegible pages of the letter books, plus her there until its sale in 1877 to an aristocrat in it document how this profit was achieved. insightful and carefully expressed interpreta- Madrid. From there it passed through various Section Two addresses the impact of tions, provide book historians with an invalu- hands before it was acquired in 1881 by the another steam engine – the railway engine able picture of this most innovative, success- Dresden collector, Heinrich Klemm, who – on the Chambers firm’s work. The firm’s ful, and long-lived publishing firm. unfortunately had it rebound, thus destroying lack of control over this engine affected its any evidence of its earlier ownership. Three publications and its overall organization. Sondra Miley Cooney years later it changed hands again, when the Their publications needed to provide more Kent State University Saxon government bought it to form part entertainment, less education, for railway of its new Bibliothek des Deutschen Buch- readers. Further, the Chambers firm no longer c gewerbemuseums in Leipzig. Although the needed agents representing it in multiple Brit- copy was well-known to Gutenberg scholars ish cities. Instead, it controlled all its opera- Gutenberg-Jahrbuch. Im Auftrag der Gutenberg- by that time, no subsequent survey noted its tions, except for those of a London office, Gesellschaft herausgegeben von Stephan presence in the monastery at Silos before from Edinburgh. Füssel. vol 87, 2012. ISBN 9783447066501. 1878. Another period of obscurity befell the Finally, Section Three, an especially en- 311p. €75. copy after it was carried off by the Red Army grossing one, examines the steamship and as war booty. That act of vandalism was bad its influence on the transatlantic trade. Cor- Any book historian depressed that another enough. But its location in the Lomonosov respondence in the Chambers archive, as well year of his or her life has slipped past should Library of Moscow University was kept as William Chambers’s Things as They Are in find cheer in the thought that each turn of secret for a good number of years. Another America, document the firm’s frustrations the twelve-month cycle brings another vol- important subject for further research is how and successes at marketing its publications ume of the G-J with its intellectual treasure the Silensian copy fits into the pattern of the in a country of shared language but foreign of contributions in a variety of languages. impact of Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible on the ... / 8
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... / 7 pan-European book market. the River Main, near Frankfurt, whose ear- Earle Havens, ed. The Dr. Elliott & Eileen A short piece by Karla Faust on a unique lier prosperity was largely due to the influx Hinkes Collection of Rare Books in the History copy of a farmer’s calendar for 1557, dis- of Huguenot craftsmen around the turn of of Scientific Discovery. Baltimore, MD: The covered during the restoration of a copy the seventeenth/eighteenth century. Among Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University, of Konrad Gesner’s Historiae animalium these was a member of a family of printers, 2011. vii, 105p., ill. ISBN 9780983808602. liber IIII (Zürich: Froschauer, 1558), in the Bonaventura de Launoy, who became associ- US $35. State Library in Berlin, shows not only the ated with the second Hebrew printer in the importance of of paste-downs, whether of town, Israel ben Moses, who was active there In 2010, Johns Hopkins University became manuscript or printed texts, in bulking out the sporadically from 1718/1719 to ca. 1743. By the beneficiary of a striking collection of bindings of early printed books but also the comparing the title page frame of this edi- scientific texts gathered by the late Dr. Elliott fact that a large library throws up from time tion of Sukkah with those on two imprints Hinkes. Although the collection consists of to time a previously unknown minor treasure known to have been printed at Offenbach, only 261 titles, Dr. Hinkes assembled land- of some kind, as I can testify. Heller shows this was also printed there. mark texts in astronomy, biology, chemistry As the compiler of a catalogue of six- Unfortunately he cannot solve the puzzle of and physics. In addition to a list of titles in teenth-century imprints from the German- the initials, FR, which appear under a crown the Hinkes collection, the present volume language areas of Europe in Edinburgh at the bottom of the title page. consists of two articles. libraries, my attention was drawn to Diethelm A much darker aspect of Jewish involve- Earle Havens, the curator of the collec- Eckermann and Gabriele Kaiser’s article on ment in the German book trade is covered by tion, penned the first article emphasizing the the printed output of the multi-talented Le- Philipp Mettauer’s examination of the Nazi highlights in the collection in the context of onhart Thurneysser zum Thurn, an attention contents of the archive of the Hauptverband the history of science from the Renaissance held fast by their assertion in the opening des Österreichischen Buchhandels (Central to the Enlightenment. Among the treasures sentences that putting his oeuvre into chrono- Association of the Austrian Booktrade). Al- in the Hinkes collection are: Anton Fugger’s logical order presents its own difficulties. though some material was burnt on official birth-gift copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle Thurneysser set up the second printing office orders in the last weeks of WWII, further de- with annotations throughout, the copy of in Berlin in 1574 in the former Franciscan struction was prevented by the rapid advance Aristarchus’s Magnitudinibus et Distantiis Solis monastery in the first instance to publish his of the Red Army, which allowed damning et Lunae (1572) owned by historian and own works in a suitable manner and with evidence to remain of the Nazis’ animos- philosopher of science Pierre Duhem, an an appropriately sized print run. Unlike the ity towards Jewish printers, publishers, and annotated copy (by whom? we don’t know) first printing office in Berlin, Thurneysser’s booksellers. Action against these was begun of Georg Peurbach’s tables with a clasped was able to print foreign-language works, immediately after Austria’s absorption into binding bearing the inscription “Liber As- especially using Hebrew and Greek charac- the Third Reich on 12 March 1938. By the trologie,” and a spectacular uncut, unbound ters. The rapid expansion of the business is end of that year some two hundred and fifty copy of the Basel, 1566, 2nd edition of seen in his rapid employment of more than firms had been closed down. An indication of Copernicus’s work De revolutionibus (with a 200 people. A notable feature of his activity the Nazis’ determination to weed out ‘harm- manuscript apologia inserted) that serves as was the enormous quantities of paper which ful’ and unwanted books was the list of over the standard for measurements and colla- he bought from various sources, a necessity 5500 such titles distributed to members of tions of all other copies of the 2nd edition. given the size of his print runs, over 500 for the book trade in that same year. As well as In his article, Havens pays special attention monographs and up to 1200 for calendars. highlighting certain individuals who played a to the Hinkes books as artifacts by noting To the printing office he added in 1576 leading role in the Nazis’ campaign, Mettauer interesting marginalia, unique bindings and block cutting and a type foundry. There then discusses the firm of Amon Franz Göth and important provenance information. Havens follows a description and short discussion Son, which switched from selling religious also includes a welcome discussion of Johan- of 79 monographs and almanacs issued by books on saints and patriotic ones with a nes Bayer’s landmark (but understudied) star Thurneysser’s press between 1569 and 1600. heavy, heroising emphasis on the sacrifices of atlas Uranometria (Augsburg, 1603). As with If, as the authors tell us, this is the first step WWI., to selling militaria after the outbreak any work that uncovers treasures, Havens’ towards a better understanding and evalua- of war. The son, Amon Leopold, had been article invites many questions. For example, tion of Thurneysser’s activity as a printer, I an active member of the Nazi Party since his Havens reports that the copy of Erasmus wish them well. teens and joined the SS in 1933. He took part Reinhold’s Prutenic Tables (1551) in the Hinkes Once again Marvin Heller enlightens us in the liquidation of the ghetto in Cracow be- collection is heavily annotated. But we don’t on another aspect of Hebrew printing, this fore serving in various concentration camps. know by whom. Havens suggests (in note 14, time by re-visiting a most unusual edition of In September 1946 he paid the price for his p. 41) that there are “mathematical augmen- Sukkah, one of the individual treatises of unsavoury activities by hanging. tations to the tables themselves that may be the Talmud. This re-visit has two purposes, Yet again a hearty word of congratulation based on Tycho’s observations” because of to correct the earlier misidentification of the for this fascinating mixture of the light and an inscription on the title page that refers to printing press responsible and to look more shade of book history is due to the publisher, Tycho Brahe. Are the augmentations really closely at the record of the two early Hebrew Harrassowitz, for the high quality of its based on Tycho’s observations? Are there presses in Offenbach, which he identifies as production. similarly annotated copies of the Prutenic Ta- the correct location. W.A. Kelly bles? Havens’ excellent work opens up many Offenbach is situated on the left bank of Edinburgh Napier University avenues for further research. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol21/iss4/1 8 et al.: Volume 21, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 21, no. 4 Autumn 2012 d
For the other article in the book, Johns playwright, and dirty rhymesmith Hans Folz must belong instead to the cherubim who Hopkins University graduate students Hanna (c. 1440–1513) of Nuremberg is a highly wel- banished the first sinners. Elsewhere, Huey Roman and Simon Thode wrote a brief his- come book. Building upon extensive German misses the significance of the crests of the tory of science from the eighteenth century scholarship and a handful of relevant articles seven Electors of the Holy Roman Empire to the present. Aside from a note on a prize in English, Caroline Huey’s book makes a on the title page of Folz’s Das römische Reich copy of James Clerk Maxwell’s A Treatise on major contribution to our understanding of of 1479 (fig. 5, mistakenly repeated in fig. Electricity and Magnetism (1873), there is little how Folz’s self-printed “popular discourse” 17). Sadly, the forty-two reproductions are discussion of the specific copies of printed thematized the eternal conflict between the uniformly poor in quality. In this respect, materials in the Hinkes collection. One is left sacred and profane as a means of fortifying Ashgate has done a disservice to Huey’s to wonder whether there is anything unique the prevailing social order of fifteenth-century argument, to Folz, and to the reader. about the Hinkes copies of the books from Germany. Although Huey’s title invokes Folz’s im- the period. Are there annotations in the mar- Huey’s first two chapters introduce Hans pact on the brave new world of typography, gins? What about the provenance of the off- Folz and his printed oeuvre. Folz published her book is really about German literature, print articles? For example, an image of nine forty-two small-format editions of his own late-medieval culture, Christian-Jewish offprints of Ernest Rutherford articles shows composition between 1479 and 1488, thereby relations, gender politics, and pre-modern that Rutherford wrote “With the author’s becoming the first author to establish a print- medicine. Her principal contribution to the compliments” on the covers of five of them. ing press from which he could circulate his study of early printed books is that she has To whom did Rutherford send the offprints? own works. In four subsequent chapters, Huey introduced the long-overlooked yet fascinat- To their credit, in an ‘Interlude,’ Roman and offers close readings of selected passages (ac- ing publications of Hans Folz to English Thode attend to the physical items in the companied by her own translations) of Folz’s readers with a well-argued, informative, and Hinkes collection. They rightfully conclude bawdy, grotesque, violent, moralizing, and engaging textual analysis. that because of increasing specialization in sometimes funny “carnival transgressions.” Eric White the sciences in the nineteenth century, there Whereas German scholars have relegated Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University was a noticeable shift from the finely-bound Folz’s plays, songs, and verses into isolated cat- books of earlier centuries to loose copies of egories, Huey’s integrated thematic approach c book excerpts and cheap article offprints. allows her to demonstrate that Folz’s works I was personally struck by the beauty of expounded collectively upon four ubiquitous the present volume with its wide margins, dualities of fifteenth-century Christian experi- Sabine Koloch. Kommunikation, Macht, Bildung. attractive font, and full-page illustrations of ence: (1) the carnal body and the pious soul; Frauen im Kulturprozess der Frühen Neuzeit. the treasures to be mined in the Hinkes Col- (2) the Virgin Mary and female transgressors Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011. vi, 478p., ill. lection at Johns Hopkins University. In short, such as Eve; (3) “predatory” Jews and their ISBN 9783050051833. €99.80. not only does the book describe fine books, Christian “victims”; and (4) the human body it is itself a fine book. Kudos to Scott Vile of in sickness and in health. Here readers will Communication, Power, Education. Women the Ascensius Press who designed the book enjoy Huey’s insightful analysis of the ubiq- in the Cultural Process of the Early Modern Era in a classical layout. uitous “Battle for the Pants” as well as many examines the role of women as the producers Derek Jensen less-familiar carnivalesque themes, even as and receivers of textual and verbal commu- Brigham Young University, Idaho they share her “queasiness” whenever Folz’s nication in the German lands; it explores the discourse degenerates into wife-beating or developments in the producer/receiver para- c Jew-bashing. digms as the period progresses and the roles Huey is an accomplished interpreter of late of women in society become less restricted. medieval German literature and culture, but Indeed, knowledge is power, and near the end Caroline Huey. Hans Folz and Print Culture in she is less at home when discussing the physi- Koloch ultimately hits the point that “knowl- Late Medieval Germany: The Creation of Popular cal books that constitute her primary evidence. edge is also for women a source of power Discourse. Farnham, UK and Burlington, Throughout she writes ambiguously of Folz’s and influence” (357). By “cultural process,” VT: Ashgate, 2012. xvii, 166p., ill. ISBN “prints.” She of course means Folz’s editions, she is referring to both the standardizing 9781409406068. US $99.95. as he was not a producer of woodcuts. More forces placed on women by society during the confusingly, all forty-two of her descriptions period and female influence on the alteration Whenever the Anglosphere gains a of Folz’s editions give “page” counts (e.g., “12 of those forces through the textual medium. book-length study of early German texts, pp.”) when the same numbers of leaves are Rather than focusing on novels, Koloch looks particularly one focused on popular genres meant (i.e., 24 pages); this cuts the length of at Fachliteratur or Gebrauchsliteratur – that is, and their social context, its scholarly hori- Folz’s literary output virtually in half. Leaning specialized or functional literature – such as zons are broadened and enriched. Such a heavily on Ursula Rautenberg’s 1999 study of behavior manuals, texts on female education, contribution is especially important in an age Folz’s mise-en-page, Huey sometimes stumbles women’s library literature, Gesprächspiele, and when foreign language departments in many when closer art historical analysis is required. the like, which helped women to participate American universities face budget cuts or She sees the Gates of Paradise depicted in to a certain degree in the male-dominated removal from the curriculum. Thus, the first Folz’s Adam and Eva of 1480 (p. 28, fig. 16) society. She grounds her thesis in the corpus English monograph on the printed oeuvre of as “a doorway” in which “Damocles’ sword is of normative, printed literature largely from the barber-surgeon, Meistersinger, carnival suspended,” but this unusual hanging sword the late sixteenth to nineteenth centuries ... / 10
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... / 9 that is by, about, or specifically addressed to Christina Lupton. Knowing Books: The Conscious- culture of sermon-writing, which Lupton women. ness of Mediation in Eighteenth-Century Britain. claims had become especially vulnerable Her six detailed chapters focus on the Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania in this period to doubt about motives and increasing literacy among women, the in- Press, 2012. xi, 184p. ISBN 9780812243727. sincerity, by reason of the spread of hack creasing offerings in the book market for US $55. authorship. The sixth and final chapter takes the education of women, the entry of female up the print representation of handwritten writers into the educational sector, men writ- Christina Lupton writes about books and forms, with examples from Henry Mackenzie ing for/on the education of women, and the other print matter of the eighteenth century (who collected window-verses) and Thomas overall increase of educated women in society. which show a consciousness of their own Gray (think of those churchyard “uncouth For my own interests, I found her discussion “mediation,” or in other words their character Rhimes”). of the book market and the play between as texts produced through material and social Lupton has assembled a disparate collec- supply and demand from printers and female circumstance. She considers non-literary tion of material which would not seem to readers most helpful and well-argued. Her as well as literary material from the period have much promising affinity, but she makes chapters are well-defined and clearly divided 1750–1780, including novels with talkative out a good case for the unifying characteristic into subsets of literary genres and reader- narrators copied from Fielding and Sterne, of material self-awareness. “Although this is ships, but I would have liked the conclusion “it-narratives” related by guineas or old coats, a historical study,” she says, “focused quite to articulate more clearly the unity of the philosophical debates, sermons, and hand in- tightly on three decades of the 18th century, themes. While most of the referenced litera- scriptions in printed form, like window verses it also aims to do the conjunctural work of ture (primary and secondary) is in German, and graveyard epitaphs. Whereas earlier texts, making clear the relevance of these decades the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts like those of Swift or Fielding, may show an to our own” (x). As a historical study, how- on which she focuses the most attention were intense self-consciousness as to their own ever, Knowing Books is better at making the frequently published in German, French, and literary bearings, the “knowing” texts of this non-historical leap to our own decades. Its English editions (e.g. Madeleine de Scudéry later period can be distinguished by a greater frequent claims about period readers and and Mary Wray), revealing the international preoccupation with their material and social their responses are not based on evidence, quality of this ‘cultural process’ that was not constitution. since there mostly isn’t any, and the contextual restricted to post-Enlightenment Central In her first chapter Lupton argues that framing of the subject material is derivative Europe. These waters are slightly less tested readers of novels controlled by an “intrusive” and thin. We are not given any idea what for the German lands than in Early Modern narrator, like the coach-riding passengers to share of the fiction market was represented France or England, and Koloch’s study carves which they are sometimes compared, would by it-narratives, for example, or any other of a clear path through the waves. experience a kind of powerlessness which the novels chosen for discussion. The book This book emerged from the author’s dis- is nevertheless entertaining: “as readers are is more confident, as also perhaps more sertation, which she submitted to the Univer- openly reminded of the physical constraints at home, on theoretical ground, where the sity of Marburg in 2008. Throughout, Koloch of novel reading, they experience their un- eighteenth-century material can be presented is aware of the limitations of the sources and derstanding of these constraints as a form as a field for the application of contemporary does not push them beyond these bounds, of cognitive one-upmanship” (40). Over the ideas about material objectification, technol- and she repeatedly highlights the instructor past 10 years the eighteenth-century fad of ogy, media, and human agency. vs. instructed dichotomy in the texts. While at it-narratives has produced a disproportionate times the German syntax and grammar might weight of critical discourse, and Chapter Two Thomas Lockwood be tricky for those without a certain level of relates such narratives to ‘cognitive systems’, University of Washington language proficiency, especially with some or books that talk about their own mediated of the compound nouns or more theoretical constitution while also serving as commodi- terms (although the Internet is a great help ties. The emphasis here is on those stories, c in these cases), her language overall is quite like Charles Johnstone’s Chrysal (1760), understandable for those who are less-than- which expose the workings of hack author- fluent. Although focused on German female ship. Lupton sees such texts as promoting Neil Ramsey. The Military Memoir and Romantic readership, Koloch’s book is also relevant in “a reverence for the power of all material” Literary Culture, 1780–1835. Farnham, UK: a pan-European context for anyone inter- (69). Chapter Three, the strongest of the Ashgate, 2011. 269p. ISBN 9781409410348. ested in Early Modern reading practices and book, begins with James Beattie’s attempted US $114.95. the development of the international book refutation of Hume. In that conflict of ideas market. about knowability, Lupton finds an interest on Neil Ramsey theorizes the genre of the John McQuillen both sides in the materiality of writing which Romantic-era military memoir in this recent University of Toronto (she argues) reappears a couple of centuries book to argue two key points: first, that these later in De Man and Derrida, where, as with overlooked texts constitute part of the Ro- Hume and Beattie, this awareness is “a way mantic period’s literary culture, and second, of stabilizing the mood of epistemological that they offer a way to chart Romantic-era doubt their work helped generate” (74). The Britain’s changing attitude toward both mili- clergyman William Dodd, hanged for forgery tary culture and war itself. By identifying these in 1777, is the focus of a chapter about the memoirs – traditionally read mostly by mili- https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol21/iss4/1 10 et al.: Volume 21, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 21, no. 4 Autumn 2012 d 11
tary historians, and then mostly as straight- a vexed and unstable concept in the period about by digital technologies will be equally forward sources of factual information – as a (see, for example, John Treadwell’s Autobio- momentous, perhaps even greater. Although genre in their own right, Ramsey intervenes in graphical Writing and British Literature 1783–1834 long term prediction is not possible, Van Der recent studies of Romantic-era genre forma- (Oxford UP, 2005)). Given the uncertainties Weel argues that studying the changes which tion, as well as in accounts of Romantic-era that swirl around Romantic-era life writing, are happening today can provide insight into authorship and of the period’s life-writing the book’s silence on the generic distinction the mechanisms which are at work. and narrative prose. Because Ramsey uses between memoir and autobiography, and Changing Our Textual Minds is organised in his account of changes in the production and on how the military memoir might relate to six chapters, the first four of which lay the reception of military memoirs to explain how other examples of memoir in the period, foundation and slowly build the framework a marginalized military subculture gave rise to leaves the genre-formation piece of its argu- for Van Der Weel’s discussion, in Chapter a public, national culture of military heroism ment tantalizingly underdeveloped. Ramsey Five, of the characteristics of the digital tex- and commemoration, his book ultimately draws suggestive genealogical links between tual medium which distinguish it from earlier contributes to the history of Romantic-era these military memoirs and fictional private mediums. Chapter One begins with a very military ideology in addition to the history histories such as Scott’s Waverley novels, and brief history of the birth and development of Romantic authorship. the book would be even richer if there were of text and reflects on the causal influences For SHARP members, though, the book is more thoroughly-formulated linkages between of technologies such as writing, printing, likely to be most valuable for its insights into the memoirs and other examples of Romantic and, of course, the computer. In this chapter the evolution of the category of ‘professional life writing. Nonetheless, Ramsey provides a Van Der Weel explains his decision to look author’ in the period. Early military memoirs, cogent and persuasive argument for the ways at his topic from the perspective of book Ramsey argues, were written largely by en- these understudied Romantic texts illuminate studies and to address it in the context of a listed men and drew heavily on the tropes of both Romantic authorship and the period’s historical account. The chapter winds up by sentimental literature of the time; the repre- politico-military history. outlining the difficulties associated with the sentations of suffering that emerged therein study: the absence of an established shared proved “politically problematic, operating as Bonnie Gunzenhauser vocabulary adequate to the task; the problem a disturbing counter-narrative to a hegemonic Roosevelt University of using a medium to study a medium; the national history” (26). This cultural instability “invisibility,” or apparent transparency, of coalesced into critical rejection by the end of c textual mediums which seems to result from the Peninsular War (1814): the perspectives our familiarity with text and writing. Finally, of enlisted men no longer found favor from he touches on the problem of defining exactly an increasingly nationalist reviewing press Adrian Van Der Weel. Changing Our Textual what a medium is. and began instead to form an underground Minds: Towards a Digital Order of Knowledge. The need for a shared understanding of dissident tradition. Soldiers’ memoirs were Manchester: Manchester University Press, key concepts and the words used to describe largely replaced – in the reviewing press and 2011, 241p. ISBN 9780719085550 them is explored more thoroughly in Chapter in the popular imagination – by accounts from 2. Van Der Weel’s historical account begins officers who represented war in picturesque In Changing Our Textual Minds Van Der Weel in Chapter Three, which looks at the history and heroic (or, as Ramsey asserts, “Roman- takes on two Herculean, and ultimately im- of textual transmission from the advent of tic”) terms. Ultimately, Ramsey argues, the possible tasks: to understand text as it is used writing up to the beginning of the digital age, consolidation of a “professional officer in today’s global digital network, and (albeit and continues in Chapter Four, which looks corps” coincided with the consolidation of very tentatively) suggest future scenarios. He at how social and technological factors have the military memoir as the province of the does so without any pretensions. The world interacted in the digital transmission of text heroic military officer-author – a figure who, of networked digital devices is complex, and in more recent times. In this chapter Van Der Ramsey suggests, “can be seen as having a rapidly changing. Van Der Weel recognises Weel introduces the salient properties of the wider influence on an idea of ‘muscular’ au- that prediction is impossible in the face of digital textual medium at the same time as thorship in the Victorian period” (199). such complexity, and even understanding is exposing the ways in which they have been In his extended close readings of five in- flawed. Nevertheless, he takes on this dual socially constructed. fluential texts from the period, Ramsey makes challenge. “Being human,” he says, he “needed Chapter Five explores these salient proper- a compelling case for this officer-author, and at least to have made the attempt” (221). This ties in greater detail. First to be discussed are for how these texts bridge the sentimental book was not written to answer questions but those which are core technological properties prose tradition of the late eighteenth century to stimulate thought and pave the way for a of the computer itself, which Van Der Weel and the heroic-adventure prose tradition new field of enquiry. labels a “Universal Machine” because of the of the early nineteenth. His account of the Van Der Weel argues that the develop- way in which it integrates all modalities (text, military memoir as an emergent genre in its ment of the digital textual medium should sound, images) into one medial environment own right is somewhat less successful, how- be seen as part of a continuum which began and because of its apparently infinite pro- ever. Romantic-era life writing was popular with writing 5500 years ago and then accel- grammability. The second core technological with both readers and writers, but it remains erated with the advent of print. He claims property of the computer identified by Van an underexplored literary mode: Ramsey that this earlier mediation of language has Der Weel is its digital-electronic nature which acknowledges as much, and other recent had profound social, cultural and cognitive leads to digital text being both virtual (it only studies make clear that ‘autobiography’ was effects, and posits that the changes brought becomes visible in the right computing envi- ... / 12
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... / 11 ronment and when electricity is available) and omissions, however, can hardly be regarded Parr; and by Elizabeth Tyrwhit, Anne Lock machine-readable, which in turn means that as criticism, given Van Der Weel’s own as- and Anne Wheathill); meditations by Grace it can be manipulated and is, therefore, not sertions of his book’s limitations. Rather, Mildmay; and translations by Margaret Beau- permanent. Finally Van Der Weel stresses the the questions provoked and absences noted fort and Anne Bacon. While some of the significance of the networked nature of this should be seen as stimuli and directions for contributors centre their attention on close digital-electronic Universal Machine. further research. reading of particular works, or consider the Van Der Weel claims these three core tech- Kay Sanderson role of women in textual transmission (be- nological properties of the computer have led Victoria University of Wellington tween languages, confessions, or generations), to a new kind of information space. In this others investigate the materiality of women’s digital information space the instability of text c writing in ways which will appeal particularly renders the distinction between the original to readers of SHARP News. and the copy irrelevant; all communication Patricia Phillippy, for example, takes her functions from production to consumption Micheline White, ed. English Women, Religion, cue from Russell’s sole printed work, A Way are integrated in a single environment with and Textual Production, 1500–1625 (Women of Reconciliation of the Good and Learned Man few technical or cost barriers to use; continu- and Gender in the Early Modern World). (1605), to read across a variety of textual ous contact between client and server is pos- Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2011. xiv, 252p., ill. forms. Refreshingly ambitious, she argues sible; and the global reach and the speed of ISBN 9781409406518. US $104.95. that a consistent interpretation of ‘recon- transmission of the Universal Machine make ciliation’ runs through Russell’s printed time and distance irrelevant. Also, of course This volume squarely confronts the dif- work, her manuscripts (a letter and poem to access to information has been transformed ficulties for feminist scholarship in dealing Robert Cecil), and the funeral monuments through the possibility of querying the con- with the relentlessly religious focus of so she erected to various family members and, tent of all documents in the space. many early texts by women. Former genera- finally, herself. In Kate Narveson’s reading of The social aspects of the digital informa- tions of feminist literary critics and historians Grace Mildmay’s manuscript meditations, a tion space are next to be explored. Van Der assumed that religious texts by women were consideration of mise en page is central to the Weel suggests that how we read and write at worst evidence of internalized oppres- discussion of Mildmay’s claim to authority. may change – linear reading of a single text sion and at best a straightjacket occasion- And Susannah Brietz Monta documents the gives way to clicking from one short snippet ally escaped by our nimble proto-feminist influence of Anne Howard, Countess of of text to another. He goes on to discuss forebears. But Margaret Ezell, as early as Arundel, who as patron of the Jesuit Robert information overload, the increased frag- 1993, pointed out the error of our ways, and Southwell supported and probably housed mentation of text, the problem of assessing over the intervening two decades energetic his secret press, as well as inspiring his Short the quality and relevance of digital informa- researchers have not only recovered many Rule for a Good Life (1597). Here, as elsewhere tion, and the possibility that texts which are more works by women, notably in manu- in this volume, assumptions about a simple not digitised (notably manuscript texts) will script, but have also developed productive Catholic/Protestant divide in this period disappear from the historical awareness of ways of reading them. Micheline White has are contested; and the activity of women in future generations. here assembled a volume which tackles a mediating across, as well as working within, In this final section I found myself feeling number of little-known texts (Elizabeth confessional divisions is a strong theme. that Van Der Weel’s prognosis would have Evelinge’s translations; Grace Mildmay’s The scholarship collected here rests on been different if the scope of his book had manuscript meditations) as well as revisiting detailed archival work, careful historicizing been wider. For example, although Van Der some already familiar (Mary Sidney’s Psalmes; of textual production, and close attention to Weel refers to records of commerce and Anne Clifford’s diaries and Great Picture; Anne textual sources. The volume will be required administration in respect of ancient texts, his Bacon’s translation of Jewel’s Apologia). Of- reading for all those who work on early discussion of text in more recent centuries fering historicized and theorized readings, modern women’s religious literature, and will and in the present does not include any reflec- the contributors demonstrate that religious be valued not least for its focus on style and tion on the parallel textual world of organisa- writing, translation and paraphrase were language. As well as telling us much about the tional recordkeeping and the methods which not a kind of regrettable ventriloquism, but works discussed and their social and religious are being developed to fix texts and changes rather that they constitute strong evidence of contexts, these essays show that the history to texts in time and space for legal purposes. women’s intellectual independence, literary of the book has its part to play in developing Similarly he omits all mention of the Deep skill and individual authority. methodologies for the study of early modern Web where vast quantities of discursive schol- The essays in Part 1, on ‘Women and women’s religious writing. arly text now reside, the presence of which is Religious Communities,’ encompass Lady increasingly being exposed by popular search Elizabeth Russell’s funerary monuments, Maureen Bell engines. With regard to the idea that texts Mary Sidney’s Psalmes, the Countess of Arun- University of Birmingham which are not digitised will disappear from del’s Catholic patronage, Elizabeth Evelinge’s historical awareness, the experience of many translations, and Lady Anne Clifford’s use archives and manuscripts repositories sug- of religious texts to support and maintain gests otherwise – the availability on the web her claim to inherit the family lands. Part 2, of descriptive metadata has caused increased ‘Reading Intertextual Prose Genres,’ takes demand for physical texts. These and other in a variety of genres: prayers (by Katherine https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol21/iss4/1 12 et al.: Volume 21, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 21, no. 4 Autumn 2012 d 13
While the Help tab provides an extensive ProQuest, Chadwyck-Healey. Nineteenth- E-Resources Reviews explanation for navigation of the website, Century Fiction. Available by subscription. there are no tables of contents, site maps,
Published by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, 2012 13 SHARP News, Vol. 21, No. 4 [2012], Art. 1 14 c Autumn 2012 SHARP News Vol. 21, no. 4
... / 13 click on the volume, chapter, or sentence on Readex and the American Antiquarian Society. even when substituted for ‘F’ in the search, the list, at which point the database will load Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoe- sometimes returned only a small number of the selected book. maker, 1801–1819. Chester, Vermont.
purpose of providing an accompaniment to “clear text.” This attention to authenticity with of stitching and repair. These details of the publication. Aaron Toleos, also a Salem the “two-person, side-by-side, word-by-word, condition are not often seen on display, and State graduate, developed the website and readings of transcripts” lends an authority to these leaves provide deeper insight into the interestingly is also the creator of
Published by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, 2012 15 SHARP News, Vol. 21, No. 4 [2012], Art. 1 16 c Autumn 2012 SHARP News Vol. 21, no. 4
... / 15 more personal labors of love and spirituality placed the Alfonsine Ordinances (Ordenações The information provided on the editions, better reflect the “desire for a medieval past” Afonsinas, from 1446) and are considered to be however, makes no reference to ownership that is the theme of this exhibit. the first ever printed editions of compiled laws and how the editions were used. The different That desire is similarly reflected in the and customs. Containing general and canoni- readers’ interaction with the texts on display framed leaves of the St. John’s Bible; first cal law, customs, court rulings and agreements here are fascinating and I found myself as started in 1998 and completed in 2001, it is with the Holy See, the Manueline Ordinances interested in the users of these books, writ- the first illuminated Bible to be commissioned are produced in neat, handsome editions. ers of these tantalizing marginal notes, as in in 500 years. The text on display shows many The exhibition consists of eight cases, along the books themselves. Case 5 reveals displays affectionate nods to medieval manuscripts, the walkway leading to the Reading Room, impressive woodcuts used in the post-1533 from the script style to the way line skips are to the left of General Inquiries. Positioned editions, with Case 6 moving on to the post- artistically integrated back into the body of to attract those on their way to use the main 1539 editions, allowing you to see the changes the text. While the images on display often collections, but with enough space to allow made in subsequent woodcuts versions of show similar influences, more often they you to pause at length, this exhibition is im- ostensibly the same portada. The final two demonstrate a distinctly modern flair. The pressively presented. The BNP is particularly cases allow you to see further changes in the frontispiece to Genesis is powerfully effective; good at presentation: the cases do not reflect presentation made in the editions produced an amalgam of Hebrew text, satellite views the light and the entire exhibition is set against by Manuel João in the 1560s and 1570s. Once of the Ganges, and Aboriginal paintings that a backdrop of terracotta boards, presenting again the BNP has produced an excellent proves a distinctly modern viewpoint can further black and white facsimiles and original exhibition, detailing an important aspect of coexist with the medieval. It is unfortunate texts, in this way echoing the color scheme of Portuguese history, through the lens of the that the volumes of the St. John’s Bible the exhibition’s poster. history of printing. which were available at the exhibit’s opening The cases and boards take the viewer Elizabeth Evenden reception seem to have been subsequently through the three systems (sistema) of or- Harvard University removed. These volumes offered real tactile dinances. The first printed editions, from pleasure and granted a patron the chance to 1512–13, with corrections being made in 1514, c make his or her own discoveries within the are covered by cases 1–3. Case 1 houses two manuscript. examples of the books produced by Valentin All in all, the exhibit does a fine job con- Fernandes in Lisbon (Book One [in facsimile] Star Quality: necting medieval book culture up through is dated 17 December 1512; the second ex- The World of Noel Coward the modern era. Though specific information hibit, Book Five, is dated 30 March 1512.) The New York Public Library about medieval bookmaking and handwriting This case also houses a copy of Book One for the Performing Arts techniques are omitted (in favor of com- open to a page detailing the impressive use 12 March–18 August, 2012 mentary on book content), a non-specialist of both black and red ink. The second case exhibitions.nypl.org/NoelCoward patron could still see in broadest terms the opens with a real gem, a letter, dated 3 Octo- medieval traditions that permeate all of the ber 1514, which provides interesting details /index.html items on display. Though a specialist may long of payments and prices for the books: “Alvará for deeper analysis, the exhibit excels rather regio, autorizando que a casa da India entren- “Noel would have loved this,” the indomi- in celebrating the beauty and spirituality of gue a Valentim Fernandes especiarias no valor table entertainer Elaine Stritch is reported these handwritten and illuminated works, and de 300$000 reais, para concluir o pagamento to have said when she visited this exhibit reaffirming that such artistry is not solely de divida da impressão dos 5000 livros das last spring. A close friend of Coward’s – she confined to the medieval past. Ordenações, no valor de 700$000 reais.” This starred in his musical, ‘Sail Away’ – she cried case also contains second editions, printed in as she recalled that just before he died, the Melissa Rohrer 1514 by João Pedro Bonomini [de Cremona] English playwright said that he was afraid of University of Missouri–Kansas City (editions dated 28 June and 30 October 1514). not being remembered. There is also a further manuscript letter, de- He needn’t have worried, of course. As c tailing the delivery of what was presumably this luminous exhibition demonstrates, Sir the copy text required for printing the 1514 Noel Coward was, and still is, remembered Ordenações Manuelinas: edition. The third case details further copies wonderfully well. produced by the two printers. Coward’s successes were dazzling. In 500 Anos de Pois/ a radio interview, exhibition curator Brad Manueline Ordinances: The second system is covered on the boards behind the glass cases and it is high- Rosenstein described summarizing Coward’s 500 Years Later lighted by a series of fragments of the 1519-20 career as an “impossible task … he was 14 Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon edition of Jacobo Cromberger, printed in Lis- different people.” Although he was born into 15 March –16 June 2012 bon, impressive beneficiaries of the expertise ‘genteel poverty’, early on Coward brilliantly of the BNP’s conservation department. The created the glamorous persona remembered The ‘Ordenações Manuelinas’ were three subsequent cases deal with the third system, in this multi-media exhibit, which is on systems of legal forms compiled by King beginning with their first edition of 1521. display in the Library’s Donald and Mary Manuel I of Portugal and published in five BNP RES 3308v, like many of the copies Oenslager Gallery on the Library’s Lincoln books between 1512/13 and 1603. They re- on show, manifests considerable marginalia. Center level at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. The https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol21/iss4/1 16 et al.: Volume 21, Number 4 SHARP News Vol. 21, no. 4 Autumn 2012 d 17
space is large and congenial, and the library’s Illuminated: ink on parchment manuscript with a leather interior design keeps it in view from several The Art of Sacred Books folding case, a Qur’an with appendix and vantage points. Rubin Museum of Art, New York City auguries dating from the tenth century, with Coward’s four-decade transatlantic career ink, pigment, and gold on polished paper, 6 April – 3 September 2012 (New York City became his second home held in a papier-maché lacquer painted binding, in the 1920s) was nothing if not productive and a Pathama uppajjaga ha peta manuscript and varied. He gained fame in London and Just as we are getting more and more and covers, with gold ink on black mulberry New York for dramas such as ‘The Vortex’ depressed about the plethora of e-published paper, sporting a black lacquer and gold wood (1924), and social comedies like ‘Private Lives’ detritus, our spirits are lifted by such exhibi- cover, from 1930s Thailand. (1930), and ‘Design for Living’ (1932), which tions as Illuminated: The Art of Sacred Books. The We cannot detail the almost one hundred featured his good friends, Alfred Lunt and Rubin, the only museum in the United States items in this gold and jeweled panoply dedi- Lynne Fontanne. Coward also starred in a that focuses on Himalayan art, chooses to cated to the splendors of religious art. But series of revues, often with Gertrude Law- interpret such art in a cross-cultural context, this lavish array, dating from the early Mid- rence, including ‘This Year of Grace’ (1928), comparing Buddhist works with Christian dle Ages to the twentieth century, is closely ‘Words and Music’ (1932), and the multi-part Gospel lectionaries, Hindu classics, and Is- held together by its central persuasion: how ‘Tonight at 8:30’ (1936). His films ranged lamic manuscripts. This display is one of a material culture draws the believer in. These from the operetta, ‘Cavalcade’ (1933) to the series of comparative studies of these mostly objects clearly reflect the psychologist Wil- patriotic World War II drama, ‘In Which We illuminated sacred works. The intersection liam James’ principle, first put forth in the Serve’ (1942). of cultures invites the viewer to discover the 1880s and a foundational precept of behav- The exhibit includes copies of produc- pervasive universal use of material culture in ioral psychology today, that an object one tion scripts, manuscript letters and telegrams, attracting belief in the divine. The exhibition perceives simply or even aesthetically turns oral histories by friends and colleagues, and is an aesthetic and intellectual delight. into an “object-emotionally-felt.” We also videos of stage productions of later revivals The Rubin gathered these books from the see the role of patronage in the production of his work. There is a handwritten copy of Morgan Library and Museum, the New York of these works and the need of wealth and the lyrics to ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen,’ Public Library, Cornell, Harvard, and other re- rank to illustrate belief through the produc- perhaps Coward’s most famous comic song, search repositories. We are immediately drawn tion of ever more splendid (and expensive!) about which we learn that, because he didn’t to such artistic treasures as a 1696 icon from works of art. Take for instance the early-sev- have pencil or paper with him, he actually the Cathedral of Etchmaidzin from Yerevin, enteenth-century Kangyur supplement of the first wrote it in his head while driving through Armenia, painted with tempera on gesso- Buddhist canon – so very similar to medieval Indochina. Many photos document glamor- covered wooden boards. The silver and gold Christian illuminations – that was sponsored ous vacations with ‘beautiful people’ in places repoussé frame draws our attention and dazzles by the Wanli Emperor (r. 1572–1620), piously like St. Moritz and Jamaica. What Rosenstein us. We move on to a 1494 Gradual, a manu- depicted here. As we can expect from the describes as Noel Coward’s “extraordinary script produced in Haarlem, the Netherlands. Rubin Museum, there is an a series of manu- capacity for friendship” is reflected in a We note the figure of St. Barbara, a martyr scripts from the Tibetan Renaissance (from handwritten letter from actress Vivien Leigh whose legend dates back to the third century the tenth to the thirteenth century), written written during divorce from Laurence Olivier, CE. Especially venerated in the East, Barbara in gold on dark ground, which illuminates when many friends dropped her but Coward secretly became a Christian and eventually and deepens the mind’s aesthetic and reli- remained loyal. suffered excruciating torture for her faith gious emotions during the reception of the Rosenstein admits that “it would take a and was executed at the hands of her father text. We see decorated parts of the Tibetan dozen exhibitions to begin to do justice to a (he was struck and killed by lightning for this Perfection of Wisdom Sutra from the fifteenth figure so fascinating and complex.” Instead, crime). A series of Armenian Gospels from century with numerous miniatures represent- he says, he has taken “the broad view,” includ- the seventeenth to the nineteenth ccnturies ing local architecture, women’s fashions and ing “the very real world of sawdust and tinsel illustrates the techniques of embossing cov- other conventions, as it tells the story of the through which he moved, and the beguiling ers with silver, another effect meant to draw bodhisattva Sadaprarudita as he encounters but equally convincing world he created.” The the viewer in by splendor. Several thirteenth- evil on every path on his journey to receive exhibition is the result of a collaboration with century Tibetan Sutras, with gold calligraphy the teachings of Dharmodgata. the Noel Coward Foundation, the Museum and portraits of such deities as Guanyin, bring This exhibition takes into consideration of Performance & Design in San Francisco, our attention to the reputed fertility powers each facet of the sacred book, including let- and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts of these gods. The gold script on black or ter design, typography, illustration, binding, & Sciences. Although the exhibition’s next blue ground is a determining convention of and paper, on its own journey to explicate destination is not in evidence, much of it has Tibetan sacred books. Just as the Western the importance of material culture in the been made available online, and will, hope- medieval cathedral sculptures exhibited details history of religion. The blending of text and fully, remain so. that were often hidden for “God’s eyes only,” image is exquisite. The Rubin Museum has Ellen Gilbert these richly painted miniatures and virtuoso done an outstanding job in its gathering and Princeton, NJ decorations portray a deeply held religiosity interpretation of these books. that draws the believer into a spiritual world designed to confirm belief. We see a Nigerian Larry E. Sullivan Litanies of the Prophet, a nineteenth-century City University of New York
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Shakespeare: Staging the World The accompanying catalogue has the British Museum, London unusual structure of a scholarly text; the ex- Awards 19 July–25 November 2012 hibits are used as figures to support academic arguments, not enumerated, reproduced, and The Cultural Olympiad, the artistic coun- described. Given the sweeping scope of the Tremaine Medal: terpart to the Olympic and Paralympic Games study, this accommodates the quantity of Call for nominations in the UK, cumulates with a summer block- visual material, maintains the narrative thread, [La version française suit] buster exhibition in a most iconic English and supports the vast amount of research institution, the British Museum, about the across the disciplines. The dizzying breadth The Awards Committee invites nomina- most iconic English writer, William Shake- is complemented by a stream of minutely tions for the Marie Tremaine Medal, offered speare. Rather than revisiting what he wrote, focused textual analysis. Shakespearean quo- by the Bibliographical Society of Canada Shakespeare: Staging the World encompasses tations in the margins of almost every page of (BSC) for outstanding service to Canadian everything he and his audiences saw (or could the catalogue (and near most displays in the bibliography and for distinguished publica- have seen). The exhibition is a tour-de-force of exhibition) are illustrated by real objects, em- tion in either English or French in that field. research in visual culture across a number phasizing a word-by-word interpretation of The Tremaine Medal is accompanied by the of fields; hundreds of diverse artworks and what Shakespeare’s plays would have meant to Watters-Morley Prize, a $500 scholarly award. artifacts, from the commonplace to the ex- a sixteenth-century theatregoer. The majority Deadline: February 28th, 2013. Nominations traordinary, the domestic to the exotic, the of the pairings literally translate a phrase into should include a biographical note and list titillating to the majestic, indicate what life a physical object; the quotation “plain statute- of principal publications, and may include was like in England and abroad at all levels caps” (Love’s Labour’s Lost, 5.2.300) accompa- other supporting documentation. Please send of society during Shakespeare’s lifetime. nies a woolen cap. Some links are less direct nominations and any questions to the Awards The emphasis is on the political, social, and (a lantern that may have been used by Guy Committee at: awards_committee@bsc-sbc. cultural contexts in which Shakespeare wrote Fawkes is associated with “dire combustion ca. Electronic submissions are preferred and in which his plays were first performed, and confused events,” from Macbeth, 2.3.52). where possible, but hard copy submissions not the plays themselves. Other terms are used to introduce everyday may also be mailed to: The exhibition begins with the gold items with which Shakespeare may have been Chair, Awards Committee standard, a copy of the First Folio, and ends familiar, like coins and the skull of female Bibliographical Society of Canada with the ‘Robben Island Bible’, an edition bear that was baited near the Globe, as well 360 Bloor Street W. of Shakespeare’s works that was smuggled as exotic treasures similar to ones to which P.O. Box 19035 Walmer into the South African prison and annotated he may have referred. Toronto, Ontario M5S 3C9 by inmates including Nelson Mandela. In The discussion sidesteps some key issues Canada between these books, which are almost the of current Shakespeare scholarship, such as Additional information about the award only publications of Shakespeare’s plays in his identity, but the illustrated gloss to his and the BSC can be found at:
en format électronique lorsque possible, mais ils peuvent également être envoyés par Stop Press SHARP Philly 2013 courrier à : Présidente, Comité des prix Société bibliographique du Canada SHARP-ists will be delighted to hear that Even if you are not submitting a proposal 360 Bloor Street W. Professor Lydia Wevers of Victoria University to the 21st annual SHARP conference, do P.O. Box 19035 Walmer of Wellington has received a prestigious Royal consider joining us in Philadelphia, Penn- Toronto, Ontario M5S 3C9 Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund three- sylvania, USA for “Geographies of the Canada year grant to study the history of reading in Book,”18-21 July 2013. D’autres informations sont disponibles sur colonial New Zealand and Australia. As she In the introduction to their recent book- le site:
Begin your membership in SHARP, and you will receive the annual Book History, SHARP News, and the SHARP Membership and Periodicals Directory, which is published each sum- mer. Students and unwaged can opt for a rate that does not include a subscription to Book History. We accept Visa, MasterCard or cheques in American currency, made out to SHARP. Please send this form to The Johns Hopkins University Press, Journals Publishing Division, PO Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966 USA. Students and Unwaged Name: ______Cheque enclosed US/Canada: $55.00 $20 Address: Visa Elsewhere: $60.00 + $5 MasterCard $25 + $5 postage postage Cardholder’s Name: ______Institution: ______Exp.date: ______E-mail: ______Research interests: ______Signature: ______
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Exchange. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, South Africa Bibliography 2012. ISBN 9781584563099. Archie L. Dick. The Hidden History of South Africa’s Book and Reading Cultures. Toronto: Francisco de Paula Martínez Vela. Ty- University of Toronto Press, 2012. ISBN pographica: La Historia del Arte de Imprimir. 9781442642898. Sevilla: Point de Lunettes, 2012. ISBN General 9788496508576. Jan Bloemendal, Arjan van Dixhoorn and Spain Elsa Strietman. Literary Cultures and Public Karla Pollmann and Meredith Gill, eds. Ignacio Arellano and Carlos Mata In- Opinion in the Low Countries, 1450–1650. Lei- Augustine Beyond the Book: Intermediality, Trans- duráin. La historia de la Imprenta Nacional de den, NL and Boston, MA: Brill, 2011. ISBN mediality and Reception. Leiden, NL and Boston, Francisco Navarro Villoslada. Pamplona: Edi- 9789004206168. MA: Brill, 2012. ISBN 9004222138. ciones Universidad de Navarra, 2012. ISBN 9788431328214. Cullen, Darcy, ed. Editors, Scholars and the Canada Albert Corbeto and Marina Garone. Social Text. Toronto: University of Toronto William Feindel, Elizabeth Maloney and Història de la Tipografia: L’Evolució de la Lletra Press, 2012. ISBN 9781442610392. Pamela Miller, eds. Sir William Osler: The Man des de Gutenberg fins a les Foneries Digitals. Llèida: and His Books. Osler Library, Montreal, McGill John Davies and John Wilkes, eds. Epigra- Pagès, 2012. ISBN 9788499751214. phy and the Historical Sciences. Oxford and New University: 2011. ISBN 9780771707094. York: Oxford University Press: 2012. ISBN Rowland Lorimer. Ultra Libris: Policy, United Kingdom 0197265065. Technology, and the Creative Economy of Book Alexandra da Costa. Reforming Printing: Manuel Gil and Joaquín Rodríguez. El Par- Publishing in Canada. Toronto: ECW Press. Syon Abbey’s Defence of Orthodoxy 1525–1534. adigma Digital y Sostenible del Libro. Madrid: Tra- 2012. ISBN 1770410767. Oxford and New York: Oxford University ma Editorial, 2011. ISBN 9788492755493. Press, 2012. ISBN 0199653569. France Freyja Cox Jensen. Reading the Roman James Gleick. The Information: A History, a Keri Yousif. Balzac, Grandville, and the Republic in Early Modern England. Leiden, Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books, Rise of Book Illustration. Farnham, UK and NL and Boston, MA: Brill, 2012. ISBN 2011. ISBN 9780375423727 Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. ISBN 9789004233034. Bruce Gordon and Matthew McLean, 9781409418085. eds. Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books, Colin Franklin. Obsessions and Confessions Scholars, and their Readers in the Sixteenth Century. India of a Book Life. New Castle, DE; Camberwell, Leiden, NL and Boston, MA: Brill, 2012. Pavithra Narayanan. What Are You Read- Australia; London: Oak Knoll Press, 2012. ISBN 9789004229471. ing?: The World Market and Indian Literary ISBN 9781584563044. Production. New Delhi: Routledge India, 2012. Brad C. Pardue. Printing, Power, and Piety: Jonathan Green. Printing and Prophecy: ISBN 0415502438. Prognostication and Media Change, 1450–1550. Appeals to the Public During the Early Years of the Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, Rashmi Sadana. English Heart, Hindi Heart- English Reformation. Leiden, NL and Boston, 2012. ISBN 9780472117833. land: The Political Life of Literature in India. MA: Brill, 2012. ISBN 9789004232051. Berkeley, CA and London: University of Cali- David M. Haugen and Susan Musser, eds. fornia Press, 2012. ISBN 9780520269576. United States Are Books Becoming Extinct? Detroit, MI: Green- Joseph J. Felcone. Printing in New Jersey, haven Press, 2012. ISBN 9780737755466. Iran 1754–1800: A Descriptive Bibliography. Worces- Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger, eds. Elaine Julia Wright. The Look of the Book: ter, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 2012. The Early Text of the New Testament. Oxford Manuscript Production in Shiraz, 1303–1452. ISBN 9781929545667. Washington, D.C.: University of Washington and New York: Oxford University Press, Sarah Wadsworth and Wayne Wiegan. Right Press, 2012. ISBN 9780295991917. 2012. ISBN 0199566364. Here I See My Own Books: The Woman’s Build- ing Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Sachiko Kusukawa. Picturing the Book of Mexico Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Nature: Image, Text, and Argument in Sixteenth- Marina Garone Gravier. Historia en Cubierta: Press, 2012. ISBN 9781558499287. Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany. El Fondo de Cultura Económica a Través de sus Por- Chicago and London: University of Chicago tadas (1934–2009). México: Fondo de Cultura Chi Wang. Building a Better Chinese Collec- Press, 2012. ISBN 9780226465296. Económica, 2011. ISBN 9786071605641. tion for the Library of Congress: Selected Writings. Anouk Lang. ed. From Codex to Hypertext: Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012. ISBN Portugal Reading at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. 9780810885486. Jorge dos Reis. Três movimentos da letra: Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts o desenho da escrita em Portugal. Lisbon: Bib- Press, 2012. ISBN 9781558499522. lioteca Nacional de Portugal, 2012. ISBN Matthew McLennan Young. The Rise 9789725654675. and Fall of The Printers’ International Specimen
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