Tuesday February 14 (6.00 to 7.30 pm) (University of London's Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU) Seminar Series on Book Collecting 2012 - 'Book Collecting in Modern Times' - Rick Gekoski

Thursday February 16 - Friday February 17 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Friedrich-von-Gärtner-Saal, Germany) Conference - An experimental phase in the history of early printing: Fifteenth-century blockbooks

Friday February 17 (2.15pm) (Wharton Room, All Souls College, Oxford) Seminar on the History of the Book 1450-1800 - Dr Raphaële Mouren (ENSIBB, Villeurbanne): The humanist editor as author

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27 Feb Rome, Urbino, Venice: indexes and commentaries 1469-1499
28 Feb From Urbino to Vienna: a sixteenth-century pioneer
1 Mar Berlin and other capitals: nineteenth-century innovations

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Papers of 20 minutes or proposals for panels of up to three speakers are invited on any aspect of the theme 'news in early modern Europe', for a multi-disciplinary postgraduate conference to be hosted by the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

News in print; manuscript news; the changes in news reporting across the period; reading the news; politics in the news; religion in the news; censorship and regulation; news and the state; sermons and the delivery of news; news and the stage; news ballads; news from capital to provinces / from city to country; the international exchange of news; the reporting of new ideas and discoveries; sensational news; the consumption of news across genders; specialist news; coteries and news networks; secrecy vs sharing; private vs public; current events in literature; news and credit; the relationship between news and history; digital approaches to working with early modern news.

Please send abstracts of papers (max. 200 words) or panel theme with list of speakers and abstracts to Simon Davies (S.F.Davies@sussex.ac.uk) by 31st January 2012. Please http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cems/emnews/ for more information.

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Morning: Bilateral agreements in the mid-nineteenth-century: France, Britain and Belgium

9h30-10h30
Jean-Yves Mollier, Université Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines: De la contrefaçon belge aux accords de 1852-1854.
Laurent Pfister, Université Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines : Internationalisation du droit d'auteur et droit comparé: la convention franco-anglaise du 3 novembre 1851.

10h30-10h45 Discussion

10h45-11h15: coffee break

11h15-12h15
Blaise Wilfert, ENS: Droit d'auteur et stratégie d'éditeur : Hachette, Dickens et la Bibliothèque des meilleurs romans étrangers.
Susan Pickford, Université Paris 13 : Les traducteurs face aux enjeux du copyright au 19ème siècle.

12h15-12h30 : discussion

12h 30: Lunch

14h-15h30:
Michael Winship, University of Texas at Austin: Napoleon Comes to America: The Publishing of Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1827)
Will Slauter, Université Paris 8: Marks of Ownership and Acknowledgment: The Transformation of Newspaper Texts in 19th-Century America.
Ellen Gruber Garvey, New Jersey City University: Mark Twain's Self-Pasting Scrap-Book, the Authorship of Blank Books, and Intellectual Property

15h30-16h: discussion and conclusion : future perspectives for the field

Contacts:
Claire Parfait claire.parfait@univ-paris13.fr
Susan Pickford, susan.pickford@univ-paris13.fr

Getting to Université Paris 13: http://www.univ-paris13.fr/acces-aux-campus.html

Campus map: http://www.univ-paris13.fr/images/stories/plans_des_campus/acces_v.pdf

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20 Jan Dr William Poole: John Fell's New Year Books
27 Jan Mr Mark Purcell (National Trust): The private library in Ireland before the Union
3 Feb Professor Nicholas Cronk: The problem of 'complete works': the case of Voltaire
10 Feb Professor Jane Everson (Royal Holloway, University of London): The Italian Academies 1525-1700: a Themed Collection database and its research applications
17 Feb Dr Raphaële Mouren (ENSIBB, Villeurbanne): The humanist editor as author
24 Feb Professor Mario Infelise (University of Venice): 'Masters of Books'; state censorship in Venice during the Counter-Reformation
2 Mar Ms Gaye Morgan: Bookbinding in Oxford in the long sixteenth century
9 Mar Ms Susanna Berger: Early Modern French and Italian illustrated philosophical thesis prints and broadsides

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The 'Research on Authorship as Performance' project at Ghent University invites proposals for 20-minute papers as well as for complete panels, for a conference on the theme of 'Reconfiguring Authorship'. This three-day conference will explore facets of authorship in the Anglophone world from the Middle Ages to the present; confirmed keynote speakers include Richard Wilson (Cardiff), Margaret Ezell (Texas A&M), Dame Gillian Beer (Cambridge), and Paul St Amour (Pennsylvania).

The conference program will include keynote talks and concurrent sessions as well as a conference dinner and an optional museum excursion on the final day of the conference.

Proposals
The Romantic concept of the solitary genius (if indeed such an entity ever existed) has for decades now been the subject of intense critical scrutiny and revision. Recent work in the burgeoning field of authorship studies has turned to the analysis of cultural formations of 'authoriality' as they developed historically in a variety of geographical locations, in relation to cultural networks and social change, to transformations of the media, as well as to changing perceptions of gender and personhood. The notion of authorial agency is therefore now submerged within an elaborate tissue of critical feedback, textual instability, editorial intervention, and accidents of publishing, branding, and spin. And yet the Author persists, as a nomenclature, as a catalogue entry, as a biographical entity, as a popular icon, and as an assumed agent of creativity and innovation. As a result, current studies of authors and authorship have to contend with the complex issues of authorial authority, independence or interdependence, and self-fashioning in a large variety of historical and discursive settings.

'Reconfiguring Authorship' aims to showcase the latest, most exciting developments in authorship studies by providing a venue in which to debate theoretical and historical understanding of the complex ideological, technological and social processes that transform a writer into an author. For that purpose, we take a wide view of the notion of 'authorship' and the figure of the 'author' to include a broad range of approaches and topics. Possible topics that participants might discuss include (but are by no means limited to):

Proposals for 20-minute papers are due via email (authorship.conference@gmail.com) by March 31, 2012, and should take the form of a 1-page abstract accompanied by a short CV; in the case of complete panels, proposals should consist of an abstract and short CV for every panelist together with a short CV for the chair (if different). We aim to inform participants in late April.

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Seminar convenors: Giles Mandelbrote (Lambeth Palace Library, London); Dr. Keith A. Manley (The National Trust / Institute of Historical Research); Professor Simon Eliot (Institute of English Studies); Professor Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary); Professor Henry Woudhuysen (University College).

Meetings will take place monthly during term-time on Tuesdays at 5.30p.m.. Meetings will normally take place in Senate House (enquire at South Block Reception), but rooms will vary. The November meeting will be held elsewhere, details below.

The seminars are jointly sponsored by the Institute of English Studies, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Library & Information History Group of CILIP.

Information concerning the Institute of English Studies may be found on its website, or email ies@sas.ac.uk.

11 Oct Peter Hoare (Nottingham) and others: 'The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland - Five Years On: a Review'. With an appreciation of the late Professor Robin Alston by Ian Willison, CBE.--room not yet allocated; enquire at Senate House Reception on the night--Professor Alston was the progenitor of both the Cambridge History and the current seminars in library history, as well as the List of British Libraries before 1850, and was involved in many other book history-related projects.
1 Nov Dr. Jane Grant (Centre for Institutional Studies, University of East London): `From Small Beginnings: the History of the Women's Library'--This seminar will take place at The Women's Library, Old Castle Street, London E1 7NT, next to London Metropolitan University's Calcutta House, and located behind Aldgate East Underground station. If you are planning to attend, please email keith.manley@sas.ac.uk . A further notice of this meeting will be issued separately nearer the date.--This talk will examine how the Library has grown from a few shelves of books in a former pub in 1926 to the world class institution it is today. It will also demonstrate the huge investment of time and effort which women have put into the library's development.
6 Dec Mark Purcell (National Trust): 'The Invisible Library: Books, Book Rooms and Inventories at a Northamptonshire Manor House'-- Room not yet allocated; enquire at Senate House Reception on the night--First founded as an Augustinian Priory in the twelfth century, Canons Ashby was for over 400 years the home of the Dryden family. The history of libraries on the site is complex and many-layered, but one thing is striking: the near invisibility of books in the pre-nineteenth century documentary record. The paper will discuss the reasons which may underlie this, and will explore the pitfalls of relying on inventories when writing the history of domestic libraries.
14 Feb Alessandra Panzanelli (University of Perugia): An Unpublished Treatise of Librarianship in the Italian Renaissance: De Bibliothecis disponendis et informandis, by Prospero Podiani (Perugia ca. 1535 - 1615)--This treatise, written in Perugia in about 1570, is concerned with the way of arranging an encyclopaedic collection and, at the same time, arranging the knowledge contained in its books.--CHANGE OF DATE
6 Mar Fr Peter Harris (Dean of Tower Hamlets): An English Island in Castile: the slumbering treasures of the Biblioteca of the Royal and Pontifical College of St Alban, Valladolid -- The College, founded under the patronage of Philip II in 1589, still educates English and Welsh students for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Its Biblioteca is an extraordinary survival of 9,000 vols, containing a wealth of English as well as Continental imprints. The activities of the Inquisition are also a unique aspect of the collection.
3 Apr Elizabeth Evenden (Newnham College, Cambridge): Selectivity and Survival: Matthew Parker and the Role of the Codex in Early Modern England -- This paper will discuss Matthew Parker's great searching out of manuscripts and the fate of these manuscripts once they came into the Archbishop's hands. It is the story of the selection, the survival, and the loss of texts from the great libraries of pre-Reformation England, and of books saved, moulded and created to form the history of the English nation and the English Church
1 May Dr. Karen Attar (Senate House Library): The University of London Library during the Second World War -- While London's Senate House is best known for the period 1939-1945 as the home of the Ministry of Information, the University of London Library continued to operate there. This paper describes its operations during the war years, from regular library activity such as acquisitions to wartime precautions, air raids, and its relations with the Ministry
12 Jun Dr. David Shaw (Canterbury): Interpreting the Benefactors' Book: a documentary and bibliographical account of Canterbury Cathedral Library in the seventeenth century -- The Catalogus Benefactorum, established in 1628 to record the names of donors to the Cathedral Library, is a confusing and incomplete document. Other library records exist from the 17th century which help give a fuller picture of the growth of the library, including the confiscation of the collections and the demolition of the library building in the Commonwealth period, and its re-establishment in the 1660s. -- This meeting will be held in the Guard Room at Lambeth Palace. Intending visitors are asked to contact in advance mary.comer@churchofengland.org.
3 Jul Professor Alistair Black (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign): 'The necessity of clear expression': home-grown writing, organisational learning and the library staff magazine in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century -- Unlike staff magazines in private enterprises, which pre-date them by two decades, library staff magazines of the early-twentieth century were more truly the product of employees, operated as they often were by staff associations. The library staff magazine provided opportunities for employees to write -- as a pastime, as a form of organizational learning and networking, as a contribution to labour solidarity, and, finally, as a vehicle for personal professional advance and identity formation, though one which contained an element of 'othering,' of the public as well as junior and female staff.

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The London Rare Books School (LRBS) is a series of five-day, intensive courses on a variety of book-related subjects to be taught in and around Senate House, University of London.

The courses will be taught by internationally renowned scholars associated with the Institute's Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, using the unrivalled library and museum resources of London, including the British Library, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Senate House Libraries, and many more. All courses will stress the materiality of the book so you can expect to have close encounters with remarkable books and other artefacts from some of the world's greatest collections. Each class will be restricted to a maximum of twelve students in order to ensure that everyone has plenty of opportunity to talk to the teachers and to get very close to the books.

The courses planned for 2012 are:

Week 1: 25 June - 29 June
1. The Book in the Ancient World
2. Children's Books, 1470-1980
3. European Bookbinding, 1450-1820
4. A History of Maps and Mapping
5. An Introduction to Bibliography
6. The Medieval Book
7. The Printed Book in Europe, 1450-2000

Week 2: 2 - 6 July
1. The Early Modern Book in England
2. The History and Practice of Hand Press Printing, 1450-1830
3. The History of Writing; a wider view
4. An Introduction to Illustration and its Technologies
5. Modern First Editions; Dealing, Collecting and the Market
6. Reading, Writing and Sending Texts, 1400-1919
7. Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600: palaeography, codicology and contextualisation

Each course will consist of thirteen seminars amounting in all to twenty hours of teaching time spread between Monday afternoon and Friday afternoon. There will be timetabled 'library time' that will allow students to explore the rich resources of the University's Senate House Library, one of the UK's major research libraries. The evening programme will include an opening reception and talk, a book history lecture, and a reception hosted by a major London antiquarian bookseller.

Postgraduate credit is available for these courses at the Institute, which is one of the ten member-Institutes of the University of London's School of Advanced Study. In order to achieve the award of credit a student will have to complete and pass a 5,000 word essay within two months of the course (an extra fee to cover marking and other costs will be charged).

The fee will be £600 which will include the provision of lunch, and coffee and tea throughout the week. A small number of bursaries are available.

A range of different sorts of accommodation will be available including cheap student housing close by Senate House; Senate House is next to the British Museum in the heart of Bloomsbury.

Further details and application forms can be found at: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/cmps/events/courses/LRBS/index.htm

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There are still some openings for further participants in the 'From Text(s) to Book(s)' international and SHARP-sponsored conference that we will be hosting on 21-23 June 2012 at Université in Nancy, in France, just before SHARP Dublin. We therefore invite you to send your proposals to 21 - 23 June 2012
href="mailto:monica.latham@univ-nancy2.fr">monica.latham@univ-nancy2.fr and 21 - 23 June 2012
href="mailto:david.ten-eyck@univ-nancy2.fr">david.ten-eyck@univ-nancy2.fr before January 20th. A provisional programme will be available in Spring 2012.

Currently, sixty or so speakers, including our four keynotes, have confirmed their participation in the conference. We have listed their names and affiliations on the updated conference web page, which you can find at the following address:

http://idea-udl.org/programme-from-texts-to-books/

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The atmosphere will be informal, as will the presentations. We hope and expect that many of the talks will be illustrated by actual examples.

The sessions will be held in the University of London's Senate House (Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU) and will run from 6.00 to 7.30 pm, usually on the second Tuesday of the month. All are welcome.

Full details can be found at: http://events.sas.ac.uk/events/visitor_events.php?page=ies_seminars&func=res ults&aoi_id=358

14 Feb 'Book Collecting in Modern Times' - Rick Gekoski
13 Mar 'Book Collecting and the Web' - Natalie Galustian, Justin Croft, and others
17 Apr 'Collecting ephemera' - Valerie Jackson-Harris
8 May 'Collecting Bindings' - Edward Baynton-Coward
12 Jun 'Collecting Pre-Raphaelite Books and Illustration' - Paul Goldman
10 Jul 'Collecting Counter-Culture' - Carl Williams
9 Oct 'Collecting Autographs and Manuscripts' - Julian Browning
13 Nov 'Book Collecting: The Financial Nuts and Bolts' - Jolyon Hudson
11 Dec 'Science, Illustration and the Royal Society' - Roger Gaskell

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