SHARP News Volume 17 | Number 4 Article 1 Fall 2008 Volume 17, Number 4 Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news Recommended Citation (2008) "Volume 17, Number 4," SHARP News: Vol. 17: No. 4. Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/sharp_news/vol17/iss4/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in SHARP News by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. et al.: Volume 17, Number 4 SHARP NEWS Volume 17, Number 4 Autumn 2008 tuities from grateful readers. In the crowded plete with anatomically bizarre illustrations SHARP OXFORD BROOKES and quixotic reception at Blackwell’s that fol- of monstrous births and conjoined twins – lowed, where Oxford’s leading bookshop to consideration of “Is there A History of played host to a ‘library’ of SHARPists, it was the Future of the Book?” where Miha Kovac, Teaching and Text perhaps the lack of air-conditioning rather Angus Phillips and Rüdiger Wischenbart Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK than subsidies that most affected authors’ in- came to bury Kindle and celebrate the birth 23 – 27 June 2008 come from book sales. of the redefined digital package for the ex- Scotland, according to Avril Gray, Linda change of a complex body of knowledge – As a small atom, comprising approximately Fleming and David Finkelstein in “Reading a.k.a. ‘Book.’ Outside the sessions discussions 0.1% of the complex body that is SHARP, I Communities in Scotland,” is home to a mot- wandered widely on the difficulties of pro- approached my first conference at Oxford with ley crew of readers. Despite inducements, ducing haggis on a stick; the decreasing size a tinge of apprehension and a strong measure some teenagers remain resistant to the idea, of airline seats; who has the most supervi- of curiosity. I wondered whether this pres- refusing to use ‘the *** book tokens,’ while sors [four, acting as two tag-wrestling teams] sure cooker of bibliophiles would result in a Shetland Islanders – the embodiment of the and which actors would star in Book History: tasty soup, or would too many ingredients noble savage – prove highly literate, voracious The Movie [Bill Nighy is a shoo-in]. spoil the broth? Like a demented variant of and sophisticated readers. Meanwhile in the Having started with the soup, I now move minestrone, what strange ingredients would well-heeled Edinburgh suburb of to a different imagery of nourishment. At- appear in each spoonful, with their differing Morningside, the older members of the li- tending the SHARP conference was like be- flavours, nutritional values and digestibility? brary have, like spies, infiltrated and subverted ing introduced to a new family, made up of For appetisers, the workshop – Exploring library practices by developing a sophisticated wise women of the tribe and patrician elders, British Publishers’ Archives – was held at Ox- code of subtle readers’ marks to record and racy aunts and notorious uncles, raucous sib- ford University Press and offered some fun communicate their literary judgements. lings and competitive cousins. In this multi- and games for those of us who had been trav- Transgressors more hardcore than genteel tudinous mêlée, the only surety is that we all elling since the early hours of the morning. Morningside pensioners were the theme of share the same imprinted DNA, the same Guided by Bill Bell, Robert Fraser and Amy Rosalind Crone’s presentation in “Teaching inky blood. A gathering of such a clan is ex- Flanders, we played sardines in the archives; and Text: Evidence from The Reading Experi- hausting but exhilarating. Like Christmas, it identified mystery objects such as Robert Peel’s ence Database, 1450 – 1945 (RED).” Prisons in is perhaps just as well it only happens on this ‘improvements’ on his speeches for publica- the mid-nineteenth century were regarded as scale once a year. tion; sleuthed our way with some hilarity nurseries of crime and their inmates in need Shane Malhotra through reports from commercial travellers of religious education to reform their criminal Open University, UK and the codes and passwords of setting up natures, if only the prisoners would stop de- ... / 7 branches in India; and ended with a mixture stroying their bibles long enough to read them. of pass the parcel and consequences using the Using entries from RED, Katie Halsey CONTENTS OUP letter books, where distracted publish- showed a hunger for escapist reading during ers mollified anxious authors and disgrun- World War II which was sharpened by the dif- SHARP OXFORD BROOKES 1 tled sellers. It proved to be a gentle introduc- ficulties of censorship, lack of paper and the SHARP AWARDS 2 tion to the ‘ordeal by word’ of a full-blown destruction of libraries and book repositories THE SHARP EDGE 3 SHARP conference. during the Blitz. SHARP CALL FOR NOMINATIONS 4 Juliet Gardiner’s plenary lecture provided a Other sessions spanned the globe, from EXHIBITION REVIEWS 5 rich and textured insight into the plight of Sweden, India, Canada and America to Aus- FIFTY YEARS AFTER ... 9 the author, simultaneously revered as roman- tralian typographical journals, German scien- BOOK REVIEWS 12 tific textbooks and Italian translations. Sub- tic solitary artist and castigated for mercantile IN MEMORIAM 19 jects ranged from book prizes to Wayzgooses ‘pursuit of the last possible ninepence.’ In a CONFERENCE REVIEWS 20 crowded and quixotic market authors subsi- [printer’s outings], from Darnton’s commu- CALLS FOR PAPERS 22 dise their writing by riding the merry-go-round nication circuit to Malaysian filing cabinets. ANNOUNCEMENTS 24 of reviews, creative writing courses and liter- Time shifted from the mediæval to the futur- SHARP COPENHAGEN 25 ary festivals. Perhaps, as Juliet Gardiner con- istic; between Peg Katritzky’s presentation of BIBLIOGRAPHY 28 sidered, their perilous finances should be 350 years of illustrated teaching in Johann NEW AWARD 28 boosted by discounts, tax-exemptions or gra- Amos Comenius’s Visible World’(1658) com- SHARP NEWS UPDATE 28 Published by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, 2008 1 SHARP News, Vol. 17, No. 4 [2008], Art. 1 2 F AUTUMN 2008 SHARP NEWS VOL. 17, NO. 4 the printing press to the coming of steam’ SHARP NEWS SHARP AWARDS from one particular angle – that of commerce. Consummately researched and clearly written, this is a book that the scholarly community EDITOR SHARP DeLong Book Prize will surely value for many years to come. With- Sydney Shep, Wai-te-ata Press 2008 out further ado: I can announce that the win- Victoria University of Wellington ner of the 2007 George A. and Jeanne S. PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand With each passing year, SHARP’s George DeLong Book Prize is James Raven for The [email protected] A. and Jeanne S. DeLong Prize for the best Business of Books: Booksellers and the English REVIEW EDITORS monograph in the history of the book has Book Trade 1450-1850. Fritz Levy, Book Reviews – Europe added another name to its increasingly illus- University of Washington, WA, USA trious roll-call of landmark scholarship in the Shafquat Towheed [email protected] field. Past winners include Ellen Gruber English Department, The Open University Garvey, Adrian Johns, Scott Caspar, Kevin 25 June 2008, Oxford University Press, UK Gail Shivel, Book Reviews – Americas Sharpe, Jonathan Rose, Elizabeth McHenry, University of Miami, FL, USA Janine Barchas, Simone Murray, Heather F [email protected] Andrea Williams, and Rimi Chatterjee. Now in its eleventh year, winning the DeLong Book Simone Murray, Book Reviews – Prize marks an important point in the achieve- SHARP Graduate Student Asia/Pacific ment of an individual scholar, as well as in Essay Prize 2008 Monash University, Melbourne, AUS the develop of book history as a discipline. [email protected] Today, and on behalf of my fellow jurors, The winner of this year’s Graduate Stu- standing here in the offices of the largest uni- dent Essay Prize is Joanne Filippone Overty Lisa Pon, Exhibition Reviews versity press in world – one whose official for her article “The Cost of Doing Scribal Busi- Southern Methodist University history is currently being written – it gives me ness: Prices of Manuscript Books in England Dallas, TX, USA great pleasure to report that scholarship in the 1300-1483.” Overty focuses on a period when [email protected] history of the book is indeed in rude health. manuscript production shifted from monas- This year, we received no fewer than 48 titles, teries and other church institutions to urban Katherine D. Harris, E-Resources Reviews and the standard of research, originality of capitalistic stationers, and she addresses three San José State University, CA, USA argument, breadth of coverage, and quality key questions that have bedeviled historians [email protected] of writing was exceptionally high. Subjects of the early book. Firstly, what was the rela- covered by this year’s books ranged from con- tive cost of labor and materials, and how BIBLIOGRAPHER temporary European comic books, to the much did each contribute to determining a Robert N. Matuozzi book trade in Qing dynasty China, from pub- manuscript’s price? Secondly, how did fluc- Washington State University Libraries lishing nineteenth-century popular science, to tuations in the availability of professional Pullman, WA 99164-5610 USA consuming postcolonial fiction, and from ed- scribes affect production costs, and thus prices [email protected] iting music in Germany, to marketing litera- of manuscript books, especially after the Black ture in Britain. I am particularly pleased to see Death? And thirdly, did increased demand and SUBSCRIPTIONS subsequent specialization in manuscript pro- The Johns Hopkins University Press how scholarship in book history is becoming duction bring about economies of scale, and Journals Publishing Division increasingly international (and transnational), thus lower the price of manuscript books? PO Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211–0966 and also increasingly interdisciplinary, in its Overty succeeds in extracting economic data [email protected] approach.