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Archive for the 'Book History' Category
 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
16th March 2013 in Book History, Events |
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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
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Andrew Pettegree was this week honoured with the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan prize for his book, The Book in the Renaissance. The prize is awarded annually by the Renaissance Society of America for the most notable book in the field of Renaissance Studies.
The prize was awarded to Professor Pettegree at a ceremony at the society’s annual meeting in Montreal. Speaking for the prize jury Professor Deborah Parker said of the Book in the Renaissance:
This magisterial work offers a substantially new perspective on the dawn of printing and the beginnings of publishing as a commercial activity. Although the story begins, as most histories of printing do, with Gutenberg’s technical innovations, the perspective on his achievement and later important developments in printing is highly original. Nothing less than a reconstruction of the industry, this study illuminates beautifully the intricate web of commercial, religious and cultural issues that surround the printed word.
The scope of the book is immense: Pettegree charts publishing initiatives in places as diverse as Wittenberg, Sweden, Bohemia, Constantinople and the New World. He moves with ease from an account of Erasmus’s and Luther’s clever manipulations of the medium to the importance of news ballads and pamphlets on natural phenomena to the technical demands of reproducing music staves. The study is full of insights into the business interests of printers, business models, and the rise of the newspaper, the latter subject traced through Pettegree’s perusal of thousands of edicts, broadsides and pamphlets. In this work, he was aided by the digital archive, the Universal Short Title Catalogue, the project of which Pettegree is the director. Darnton-like in the acuity of its observations, this book has the sweep, learning and importance that makes The Book in the Renaissance a most deserving winner of this year’s Gordan prize. Please join me in congratulating Andrew Pettegree.
In accepting the prize Andrew Pettegree paid tribute to St Andrews book project team, whose work substantially underpins the research of his book. The Book in the Renaissance, which has sold over 5,000 copies since its publication in May 2010, will be published in a paperback edition in September. |
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 Andrew Pettegree’s The Book in the Renaissance was today announced as one of the New York Times’ 100 notable books of the year 2010.
This prestigious annual list comprised 50 works of fiction and 50 non-fiction titles, and Pettegree’s work is one of only a handful of historical titles to make the list. It is also the only book published by a university press.
The Book in the Renaissance offers a revisionist history of book culture in the first 150 years after the invention of print. As with the modern media transformation of the digital age, bold predictions of what the new technology of print would bring to the conservative book culture of the manuscript age proved wide of the mark.
Access the full New York Times list.
The original New York Times Review, by former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky.
25th November 2010 in Book History, Project News |
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The process of technological change is at the heart of the story told in Andrew Pettegree’s The Book in the Renaissance. In a podcast for the series Beyond the Book, Andrew Pettegree discusses with Christopher Kenneally the uncertain future that faced the new technology after Gutenberg unveiled his new invention.
The difficulties that faced the first printers in creating a commercial model for the new printed books inevitably invite comparison with modern technological change. Pettegree explores these issues in interviews with the Boston Globe and The Atlantic. With print, as with the present digital revolution, technological fascination helped energise the first wave of innovation: but it proved far harder to develop a commercial model to exploit the new media, and many went bankrupt in the process.
The Book in the Renaissance is published by Yale University Press.
Listen to the podcast (the transcript is available here)
Read the Boston Globe interview
Read the Atlantic interview
Read the New York Times Review
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Published May 13th 2010
The dawn of print was a major turning point in the early modern world. It rescued ancient learning from obscurity, transformed knowledge of the natural and physical world, and brought the thrill of book ownership to the masses. But, as Andrew Pettegree reveals, the story of the post-Gutenberg world was rather more complicated than we have often come to believe. “The Book in the Renaissance” reconstructs the first 150 years of the world of print, exploring the complex web of religious, economic and cultural concerns surrounding the printed word. From its very beginnings, the printed book had to straddle financial and religious imperatives, as well as the very different requirements and constraints of the many countries who embraced it, and, as Pettegree argues, the process was far from a runaway success. More than ideas, the success or failure of books depended upon patrons and markets, precarious strategies and the thwarting of piracy, and the ebb and flow of popular demand. Pettegree crafts an authoritative, lucid, and truly pioneering work of cultural history about a major development in the evolution of European society.
PRICE: £30.00
ISBN: 030011009X
ISBN-13: 9780300110098
PUB DATE: 13 May 2010
FORMAT: Hardback
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Illustrations: 70 black-&-white illustrations
Number of Pages: 450
Order from Yale University Press
Order from Amazon
Read initial reviews for The Book in the Renaissance.
The New York Times
The Independent
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Svenska Dagbladet
PhiloBiblos
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 Part of the Fonds Ancien of the library of Troyes has been added to Unesco’s “Memory of the World” programme. The nomination recognises the importance of the library of the Cistercian abbey of Clairvaux. The catalogue of the collection was drawn up in 1472 by Pierre de Virey. It listed some 1,790 manuscripts of which 1,018 survive today in Troyes municipal library. The coveted international programme recognises valuable archive and library holdings.
The library of Troyes is well-known for its marvellous collection of early printed books and manuscripts. It is one of the largest collections of French vernacular books in provincial France. The St Andrews project team identified almost 2,000 items during three separate trips to the library in 2000, 2003 and 2004. The library will be particularly pleased with this international recognition as a fire at the start of July has forced the institution to close temporarily. As a result of the damaged caused by the fire, it will not be possible to consult any of the holdings of the Fonds Ancien for a number of months.
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=29008&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
7th August 2009 in Book History |
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Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century will be the first major exhibition to explore the central role played by printed illustrations of subjects from both the Old and New Testaments in one of the most dramatic artistic and religious transformations in European history. Prints are often viewed as merely mimicking or following artistic developments in the more prestigious medium of painting, and, more generally, the visual arts are seen as mirroring societal change.
View The Slideshow
19th June 2009 in Book History |
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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.