The history of the Book has been built on the solid foundation of national, local and individual studies of printers, publishers and publishing networks. Though this makes good sense from a practical and logistical point of view, it risks obscuring the essential fact that the production and sale of books was, from the beginnings of print, a trans-national and international trade. Books and texts moved effortlessly across national boundaries. The building of a library, and the economics of the industry, depended on the efficient functioning of an international market, and publishers planned their output with this in mind.

This conference will consider contributions on a variety of aspects on this international and multi-lingual book world. Authors whose books found an international audience, books that travelled, the new vogue for multilingual publication and translation, publishers and wholesalers who build their business around international markets will all be considered; as will the sinews of this trade, transactions, book fairs and accounting practice.

With contributions from:

James Raven, Brendan Dooley, Giovanna Granata, Angela Nuovo, Warren Boucher, Stephen Parkin, Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik, Malcolm Walsby, Valentina Sebastiani, Benito Rial Costas, M R Geldof, Graeme Kemp, Martine van Ittersum, Shanti Graheli, Louisa Hunter-Bradley, Matthew Laube, Caroline Duroselle-Melish, Alina Laura de Luca, Marco Cavietti, Huub van der Linden, Anston Bosman, Nina Lamal, Stefania Gargioni

Bookings: International Exchange in the European Book World 2013

Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World

28-30 June 2012

The Early Modern Book world was characterised by great variety, but also by fierce competition.  Many printers and publishers responded by developing a highly specialised output, utilising skills and expertise that gave them a vital commercial edge, and deterred potential rivals.  Books that required specialised typefaces (music and Greek texts) were inevitably the preserve of a small number of firms; but others took advantage of the sophisticated European distribution network to develop an international reputation for specific genres.  The production of Books of Hours was dominated by a few Parisian firms; in 1541 Georg Joachim Rheticus would carry the precious manuscript of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus 1,000 kilometres across Europe to find a printing centre (Nuremberg) capable of doing it justice.  But much less well capitalised firms could also find their niche in the new genres that underpinned the market: almanacs, calendars and news.

This conference is the latest in the sequence hosted by the St Andrews Book project group, and the first since the launch of the Universal Short Title Catalogue with its unique subject search facility.

Interested scholars are invited to submit papers for consideration on any aspect of book specialisation in the early modern period.  A title and one paragraph synopsis should be sent to the organisers at the address given (sam223@st-andrews.ac.uk).  Papers should be given in English.  A volume based on papers given at this conference will be published in the Library of the Written Word with Brill.

The deadline for the submission of paper proposals is 31 January 2012.

22-23 November 2011.

The St Andrews project group is pleased to announce a scholarly colloquium to coincide with the launch of the Universal Short Title Catalogue: a bibliography of books published in Europe and the Americas before 1601.

The colloquium will hear presentations from the Director and Project Manager of the USTC, Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby, and from four distinguished experts of early print: Ann Blair (Harvard), Ian Maclean (Oxford), Angela Nuovo (Udine) and Alexander Wilkinson (Dublin). All speakers will have had advance access to the USTC database.

The event begins with a launch reception at Lyon and Turnbull, Broughton Place, Edinburgh on Tuesday 22 November, in the presence of representatives of the national book communities represented in the USTC.

The colloquium will be accompanied by exhibitions by conference sponsors Proquest, Brill and Antiquarian Bookseller Christopher Sokol.  Music at the launch event will be provided by the Edinburgh Renaissance Band.

The cost of attendance is £70 (£40 to registered graduate students).  The cost covers the colloquium with coffee and a buffet lunch.  All participants will also receive an invitation to the reception at Lyon and Turnbull.

The colloquium will take place on Wednesday 23 November at the New Club, Prince’s Street, Edinburgh.

Registration is online. Registration is now open, and closes on 31 October 2011.

On-line Registration

USTC_Colloquium_Poster

We are pleased to announce that registration for Documenting the Early Modern Book World: Inventories and Catalogues in Manuscript and Print is now open. The Third Book History Conference will be taking place in St Andrews, on 7-9 July. The conference will discuss book inventories and catalogues in manuscript and print, between the 15^th to the 18^th century (see description below)  with confirmed papers on printers’ and booksellers’ lists, private collectors, discussions of the fate of specific items, the collections of religious institutions. It will cover areas from the Baltic to Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Spain, France, Germany, and the British Isles.

It has become customary in documenting the world of early printed books to rely primarily on surveys of survivors: that is, books that have weathered the buffeting of history to reach the comparative safety of modern library collections.  Most national bibliographical catalogues are aggregates of the holdings of library catalogues; faute de mieux these are taken to offer a reasonable account of the original output.

But the urge to list, catalogue and advertise the wealth of the new printed book culture was just as strong in the first age of books.  Printers made lists of their available stock; owners proudly catalogued their libraries; assessors inventoried collections and stock as part of the settlement of estates, or legal proceedings.  In an age of religious discord, censorship required the publication of lists of forbidden books (though at the risk of advertising their contents); book-sellers’ shelves, private and public libraries were examined for forbidden material.

These various classes of lists contain indispensable material on various aspects of the 16^th century book trade: on cost, retail pricing, second hand values, binding and library practice.  They allow the reconstruction of lost or dispersed libraries.  They also document many thousands of titles and editions that have now disappeared altogether.

For more details contact Natasha Constantinidou: Natasha.Constantinidou@st-andrews.ac.uk or nac21@st-andrews.ac.uk

Conference website

The development of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries led to a vast increase in the number of medical texts in circulation. Nevertheless, the consequences for the dissemination of medical knowledge were complex. In the field of academic medicine print undoubtedly enhanced the prestige of classical medicine, with a vast increase in publication of the works of Galen, many of them previously unknown in the West and now newly translated into Latin. Yet academic medicine was forced to compete in the marketplace with a diverse vernacular literature of very varied quality, offering nostrums and treatments for a range of pains and intractable conditions. The MD 15-16 project aims to probe the importance of printed books in this medical marketplace and the development of medical thought and practice by examining together the whole corpus of medical publishing: Scholarly texts, vernacular handbooks, pamphlets and broadsheet public health orders. Sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, this project will study the production of medical literature in north-western Europe: England, The Low Countries, France and the Swiss Confederation, together with a more focused case study of ownership in 16th century England and Scotland. Together these countries made up one of the three main zones of book production in Europe and served three distinct vernacular communities.

The project nears completion and to celebrate its launch a small symposium will be hosted at St Andrews on the 29th of January. For further information please see the attached flyer or contact Graeme Kemp (gk6@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Colloquium in the Museum Plantin Moretus, 2-5 pm.

The next volumes in the USTC catalogue series Netherlandish Books, will be launched at a reception in the Museum Plantin Moretus on Monday 15 November.

NB. Netherlandish Books.  Books published in the Low Countries and in Dutch abroad before 1601, edited by Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby, is a two volume short title catalogue that draws together information on all editions published in the fifteenth and sixteenth century Low Countries: a total of over 32,000 separate printings.  This research establishes the 16^th century Low Countries as one of the principal production centres of high quality publishing, destined both for the highly literate local population and for export.

The launch event will be preceded by a short scholarly colloquium where the findings of the research project will be explored and explained.  Anyone interested in attending is invited to write directly to Philip John at poj@st-andrews.ac.uk.   Registration is free but places are limited and admission to the colloquium will be by ticket only.

Delegates to the colloquium will also be guests at the subsequent reception and have the opportunity to visit the Museum Plantin Moretus on the following day.

Speakers: Andrew Pettegree (Director, USTC), Malcolm Walsby (Project Manager), Anton van der Lem (University Library, Leiden), Guido Marnef (University of Antwerp).

NB. Netherlandish Books. Books published in the Low Countries and in Dutch abroad before 1601,edited by Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby, will be published by Brill in November 2010.

Documenting the early modern book world: inventories and catalogues in manuscript and print

The Third St Andrews Book Group Conference, 7-9 July 2011

Call for papers

It has become customary in documenting the world of early printed books to rely primarily on surveys of survivors: that is, books that have weathered the buffeting of history to reach the comparative safety of modern library collections.  Most national bibliographical catalogues are aggregates of the holdings of library catalogues; faute de mieux these are taken to offer a reasonable account of the original output.

But the urge to list, catalogue and advertise the wealth of the new printed book culture was just as strong in the first age of books.  Printers made lists of their available stock; owners proudly catalogued their libraries; assessors inventoried collections and stock as part of the settlement of estates, or legal proceedings.  In an age of religious discord, censorship required the publication of lists of forbidden books (though at the risk of advertising their contents); book-sellers’ shelves, private and public libraries were examined for forbidden material.

These various classes of lists contain indispensable material on various aspects of the 16^th century book trade: on cost, retail pricing, second hand values, binding and library practice.  They allow the reconstruction of lost or dispersed libraries.  They also document many thousands of titles and editions that have now disappeared altogether.

The third St Andrews book history conference will engage a wide-ranging discussion and analysis of contemporary book lists, manuscript or printed.  Participants, who will be invited to pre-circulate the lists in question, are asked to propose contributions to Natasha Constantinidou (nac21@st-andrews.ac.uk) by 30 November 2010.

The papers presented at this conference will form the basis for a volume in the Brill book history series, The Library of the Written Word.

Iberian Books (IB), produced by our partner project based at University College, Dublin, has been launched with a conference held in Dublin.

Iberian Books is the first comprehensive listing of all books published in Spain, Portugal, Mexico and Peru or in Spanish or Portuguese before 1601. Iberian Books offers an analytical short title-catalogue of over 19,000 bibliographically distinct items, with reference to around 100,000 surviving copies in over 1,200 libraries worldwide. By drawing together information from many previously disparate published and online resources, it seeks to provide a single, powerful research resource. Fully-indexed, Iberian Books is an indispensible work of reference for all students and specialists interested in the literature, history and culture of the Iberian Peninsula in the early modern age, as well as historians of the European book world.

Iberian Books is available for purchase from Brill.

A conference to be held in Dublin, 20-21 May 2010

With contributions from Artur Anselmo, Thomas Earle, Marinela Garcia-Sempere, Tess Knighton, Terrence O’Reilly, Andrew Pettegree, Malcolm Walsby & Alexander Wilkinson.

The keynote lecture will be delivered by Dr Clive Griffin (Trinity College, Oxford) on ‘La cruz de Cristo: a strange case of printing in sixteenth-century Seville’.

The launch of Iberian Books. A Short Title Catalogue of Books published in Spain, Portugal and Mexico or elsewhere in Spanish or Portuguese before 1601 (Brill, 2010) will take place on 20 May 2010.

To register, or for further information, please contact Dr Alexander Wilkinson or telephone +353 17168151.

There is no registration fee.

http://www.ucd.ie/ibp

Iberia Conference Flyer