Friday February 12 (2.15pm) (Wharton Room, All Souls College, Oxford) Seminar on the History of the Book 1450-1800 - Dr Natalie Ferrand (CNRS, Maison Française): Reading books with eyes wide open: illustrated novels in the Enlightenment

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Hosted by the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies

11:00-13:00 Libraries as relay stations
Eleanor Robson: Libraries and textual mobility in Assyria and Babylonia
Matthew Nicholls: Libraries in the Ancient World
Rowan Watson: Travelling by proxy

14:00-16:00 Anthologies and anthologising
Stephen Quirke: The Spirit of Anthology in ancient Egyptian writings
Michelle Brown: Anthologies in Anglo-Saxon England
Abigail Williams: The shaping of literary taste in the eighteenth century poetic miscellany

Coffee and tea will be available from 10:30

Attendance is open to all but please let us know if you wish to attend by emailing Jon Millington (jon.millington@sas.ac.uk)

Further information to follow. More details about the series: http://www.sas.ac.uk/events/visitor_events.php?page=ies_seminars&func=results&aoi_id=298

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A Joint Conference organised by the Centre for Humanities, Music and Performing Arts at the University of Plymouth and the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen

Call for Papers
This conference investigates the cultural uses of the letter, and the related practises of correspondence in early modern culture. Concentrating on the years 1550-1640, it examines a crucial period in the development of the English vernacular letter that saw a significant extension of letter-writing skills throughout society and an expansion in the uses to which letters were put. The conference aims to enhance our understanding of epistolary culture and to challenge accepted models of epistolarity through the study of letter-writing practices in all their nuanced complexity, ranging from the textual production of letters, their subsequent delivery and circulation, to the various ways in which letters were read and preserved for posterity. The transmission and reception of correspondence is a major theme for exploration, from the various processes by which letters were delivered in an age before the post office, to their copying and dissemination in manuscript form, and publication in print, as well as the oral divulgation of letters through group and public reading. Study of the early modern letter in its material and cultural forms can reveal the complex interplay of material practices of letter-writing with rhetorical strategies of the letter text. Contemporary literary appropriations of the letter on page and stage demonstrate the cultural significance of the letter and its potential resonances.

Proposals are invited for papers that treat the following key areas:

• The materiality of the letter: the physicality of correspondence (paper, ink, seals, folding) as well as the social context of epistolarity (composition, delivery, reading, archiving)
• Correspondence networks; the circulation of letters; postal systems and modes of delivery
• Letters, news and intelligence
• Authenticity, deception and surveillance: forgeries, secrecy, ciphers and codes
• Women's letters and the gendered nature of letter-writing
• Epistolary literacies, social hierarchies and the acquisition and diffusion of letter-writing skills
• Manuscript letters and letters in print
• The letter as a cultural genre and the rhetorics of letter-writing
• Humanistic letter-writing practices and the familiar letter; letter-writing manuals and models; education, pedagogy and learning to write letters
• Categories or types of letters: suitors' letters, letters of petition, love letters, letters of condolence
• Genres of printed letters: prefatory letters, dedicatory letters, address to the readers
• Staging the letter: letters and letter-writing in drama
• Editing and the digitization of correspondence

Proposals for papers, including titles and abstracts (of no more than 300 words) should be sent to James Daybell (james.daybell@plymouth.ac.uk) and Andrew Gordon (a.gordon@abdn.ac.uk) before 1st July 2010.

Confirmed Speakers Include:

Alan Stewart (Columbia University)
Lynne Magnusson (University of Toronto)
Gary Schneider (University of Texas, Pan American)

The Organisers
James Daybell is Reader in Early Modern British History at the University of Plymouth. His publications include Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford, 2006), three collections of essays, Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450-1700 (Ashgate, 2004), Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700 (Palgrave, 2001) and Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580-1730 (Palgrave, 2010) and more than twenty articles and essays in journals and edited collections. Dr Daybell is currently completing a monograph entitled, The Material Letter: The Practices and Culture of Letters and Letter-Writing in Early Modern England (Palgrave 2011)
Andrew Gordon is Co-Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen, and Programme Co-ordinator of the Department of English. He has published articles on various aspects of urban culture in the renaissance from city mapping to the urban signboard, and co-edited (with Bernhard Klein) Literature, Mapping and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2001) and (with Trevor Stack) a special issue of Citizenship Studies (2007) devoted to early modern concepts of citizenship. A monograph entitled Writing the City is forthcoming. His work on manuscript culture has focused principally on letter-writing and included articles on Francis Bacon, the earl of Essex, John Donne, and early modern libels.

For further details please email: james.daybell@plymouth.ac.uk, or a.gordon@abdn.ac.uk.

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Call for papers
For the British Library Seminar on Textual Bibliography in Continental Europe, we are seeking four or five papers of approx. 30 minutes each, one at 11.15 a.m. and the others after lunch, with ample time for discussion after each paper. Papers dealing with any aspect of printing and book production in Continental Eastern and Western Europe are warmly invited, as are papers dealing with other aspects of historical bibliography, editing, and the history of the book and reading. Papers giving an account of work in progress or offers to introduce discussion of bibliographical interest are a long-standing feature of the seminar.

Please let us know by the end of April if you are willing to give a paper.

Barry Taylor (e-mail: barry.taylor@bl.uk; tel: 020 7412 7576); Susan Reed (e-mail: susan.reed@bl.uk; tel 020 7412 7572)

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Speaker: Richard Ovenden, FRSA, FSA, Keeper of Special Collections and Associate Director, Bodleian Library

Richard Ovenden will examine the role of the Bodleian Library over 400 years, and explore the question: Can a University Library also be a national library?

Tea will be available in the Harrods Room, Queen's Building, after the lecture. To assist with numbers and catering, please let us know if you plan to attend by contacting the library on the phone number or e-mail below.

Phone: (01223) (3)34233; E-mail: library@emma.cam.ac.uk

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Call for Graduate Papers
The Centre will be holding its inaugural conference on 5-6 April 2010. The purpose of the conference is to explore a variety of current approaches to material textuality across a range of periods and disciplines.

We are delighted to welcome Leah Price (Harvard) and Peter Stallybrass (Penn) as our plenary speakers. Other speakers include: Chris Cannon (NYU), Paul Chirico (Cambridge), Ian Christie (Birkbeck), Helen Deeming (Royal Holloway), Flora Dennis (Sussex), Juliet Fleming (New York), Heather Glen (Cambridge), Hugh Haughton (York), Rachel Hewitt (Queen Mary), Alfred Hiatt (Queen Mary), Sachiko Kusukawa (Cambridge), Samantha Matthews (Sheffield), David McKitterick (Cambridge), Molly Murray (Columbia), Robin Schulze (Penn State), Sujit Sivasundaram (LSE), Andrew Thacker (De Montfort), David Trotter (Cambridge), Patrick Wildgust (Shandy Hall), Abigail Williams (Oxford), Henry Woudhuysen (UCL) and Andrew Zurcher (Cambridge). Among the themes addressed by the panels are: material modernism; maps from the middle ages to the Ordnance Survey; literary revision/indecision; the materiality (or not) of film; writers' remains and their conservation; music, sound and urban space; the future of reading in the digital age; the printed image; publishing after death; border crossings in the history of the book; the current state of editing; writing and memory.

Conference website: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/cmt/?p=389#more-389

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Michael Suarez, S.J. and Henry Woudhuysen, editors of the Oxford Companion to the Book
The Oxford Companion to the Book: Research and Collecting

Presented by the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles and Bodleian Library Centre for the Study of the Book

Reception to follow in the Divinity School, 5:30 pm. RSVP Jessica Stone (by 28 January) Tel: 01865 354864 jessica.stone@oup.com

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4 Feb (5pm) Professor Patrick Scott (University of South Carolina): Tennyson and the 19th Century Idea of the Book

Contact: giles.bergel@merton.ox.ac.uk

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Claire Bolton
Zainer's imperfect impressions: fifteenth century printing practices

How did the first printers achieve the (almost impossible) task of getting crisp impressions of inked type onto paper, evenly, clearly and repeatedly? Well, quite often they did not manage it--this lecture will illustrate how some of the various faults and imperfections found in early printed books provide clues to fifteenth-century printing methods.

A few years ago she decided to put her practice into theory and began to research fifteenth-century printing practices. This gave her the excuse to spend many happy hours looking at incunables; her resulting PhD thesis will be published by the Oxford Bibliographical Society in 2010.

Attendance is free but please book at www.stbride.org/events.

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Public exhibition to celebrate 400 years since the foundation of Lambeth Palace Library, one of the earliest public libraries in England, founded in 1610 under the will of Archbishop Richard Bancroft. The exhibition draws upon the Library's incomparably rich and diverse collections of manuscripts, archives and books and explores the history surrounding the people who owned, studied or used them as aids to prayer and devotion.

Monday to Saturday: 10.00am to 5.00pm. Further information and booking details at www.lambethpalacelibrary.org

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Peter Stallybrass: What is a book?: books, pamphlets, and playbooks in the history of printing

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The Fifteenth Annual D.F. McKenzie Lecture

Henry Woudhuysen, A.W. Pollard (1859-1944): Friends and Fine Printing

Presented by the McKenzie Trust in association with the Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Library

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The lectures will begin in medias res, with an account of the experience of a literary agent in Frankfurt in the early years of the seventeenth century. After this, the learned book market in Europe will be surveyed in turn from the standpoint of the author or editor, the publisher, the temporal and ecclesicastical authorities seeking to control publication, the seller and the purchaser. The last lecture will examine the causes of the decline of the market in the 1620s.

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At the beginning of the thirteenth century a new type of Bible emerged from Paris and southern England and spread rapidly throughout Western Europe. Innovations in script and parchment enabled the creation of single-volume Bibles, some of which could easily fit a modern pocket; other features, such as the modern chapter division, introduced unprecedented ease of usage. These Bibles became the template for Gutenberg's celebrated 42-line version and have had an influence on printed Bibles ever since. Today, hundreds of these manuscripts survive, bearing witness to one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. The ubiquity of these Bibles has only recently been met by scholarly interest, and questions remain regarding their evolution as well as their place within the medieval university, pulpit and priory.

Hosted by the University of Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland, 'Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible' will bring together experts in medieval liturgy and sermons, art, religion and manuscripts, to examine the material culture of the Late Medieval Bible and its setting. Presentations, discussions and two workshops would draw on the wealth of manuscripts in the University Library and the NLS in analysing variants of text and layout, imagery and addenda.

Contact details: L.M.B@ed.ac.uk

Speakers will include:

• Nicole Bériou (Université Lumière Lyon 2)
• Laura Light (Independent Scholar, Boston)
• John Lowden (Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
• Eyal Poleg (CHB, University of Edinburgh)
• Diane J. Reilly (Indiana University, Bloomington)
• Paul Saenger (The Newberry Library, Chicago)
• Paul Antonio (Calligrapher, London)

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19 Jan (7:30pm, Corpus Christi College) Christopher de Hamel: Medieval Manuscripts from St Albans
3 Feb (5:30pm) Lincoln College Library Visit
4 Feb (4:15pm, Convocation House, Bodleian Library) Lecture and reception to celebrate the launch of the Oxford Companion to the Book (event held jointly with the Bodleian Library Centre for the Study of the Book)
17 Feb (7 pm, St Giles House, St John's College) Annual Dinner followed by the Warden's Meeting (Warden's Meeting to begin around 8:30)
27 Feb (9:50 am, Oxford Station) Excursion to Winchester College Library (more details to follow)
2 Mar (5.15pm) Corpus Christi College Library visit

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The annual subscription is £5.00 (students £1.00). Subscriptions may be paid to the Secretary or the Treasurer.

Chairman: Dr. Lonel Madden
Treasurer: Dr. David Falla, Department of Physics, Aberystwyth University
Secretary: Mr. Timothy Cutts, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

13 Oct (Drwm, National Library of Wales) Dr. David Shaw: The Book Trade, and the University in Early Sixteenth-Century Paris
17 Nov (Drwm, National Library of Wales) Mr. Iwan Meical Jones: Portraying Victorian Wales
19 Jan (Arad Goch Theatre, Bath Street) Mr. Gerald Morgan: Collecting Welsh Ballads
16 Feb (Drwm, National Library of Wales) Dr. John Graham Jones: The Welsh Political Archive
23 Mar ( The Cambria, Marine Terrace) A.G.M. followed by Ms Penny David: Writing about Aberglasney
CROESO CYNNES I BAWB - ALL WELCOME!

Further details at http://users.aber.ac.uk/das/texts/aberbibgr1.htm

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]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#abergrp Ian Gadd 2010-01-11 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#histcomm3 20 March 2010
University of London, Senate House, London

Hosted by the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies

5. Maps and diagrams.

6. Tabulating information.

Further information to follow. More details about the series: http://www.sas.ac.uk/events/visitor_events.php?page=ies_seminars&func=results&aoi_id=298

Main HoBo website

]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#histcomm3 Ian Gadd 2010-01-11 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#histcomm 23 January 2010
Room G16, University of London, Senate House, London

Hosted by the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies

Seminar 1 (11am-1pm): Roads and their cultures
Benet Salway: Roads, tribes, and regional identity in Roman Italy
Frances Wood: Roads in China
Nicolas Barker: Canals and Roads and the Growth of a Provincial Press in the 18th Century
Paul Stiff: Designs on the roads: being modern in 1959

Seminar 2 (2-4pm): Postal systems
Philip Beale: The early Royal Mail in England, the Corsini correspondence and the Merchant Strangers' Post
Iain Stevenson: Henry Fawcett and the people's post office
Peter Sutton: Modernising a postal system: industrial politics and automation in British sorting offices

Attendance is open to all but please let us know if you wish to attend by emailing Jon Millington (jon.millington@sas.ac.uk)

Main HoBo website

]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#histcomm Ian Gadd 2009-12-21 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#readingwriting 4 - 5 June 2010
Edinburgh Napier University

This conference aims to bring together scholars, writers and practitioners to share their perspectives on the significance of reading and writing in prisons.

Writing about imprisonment raises key issues that go beyond an immediate concern with incarceration and its institutions, involving notions of subjectivity, citizenship and nationhood. Scholars and practitioners alike have long been arguing that opportunities for reading and writing in prisons can become a dignifying tool for prisoners to re-evaluate and reconstruct their lives, with positive impact on recidivism rates. The conference will act as a platform for exchange about existing scholarship and practice in the area, with the long-term goal of facilitating future research networks, publications and practical projects.

This event explicitly seeks conversations across the disciplines and between 'theory' and 'practice'. Contributors are invited to address reading, writing and imprisonment in any geographical location, in both historical and contemporary contexts. Some of the questions this conference wishes to address are: what defines the genre of prison literature or prison autobiography and how has it changed historically? How do institutional contexts and penal policies impact on reading and writing in prison? What effect do creative practice, prison education and reading groups have on groups of offenders and, conversely, society at large? What is the role of researchers and universities in contributing to debates around narratives of imprisonment, reading and writing in prison?

Possible topics include:

• Prison literature and prison (auto)biography as a genre
• The history and publishing context of prison writing
• Representations of prison reading and writing experiences
• Gender, class, ethnicity/race and age and their impact on reading and writing in prison
• Writing and political imprisonment
• Prison libraries and reading groups
• Creative writing in prisons: practice and problems

Invited speakers who have agreed to participate (subject to funding) include: Ed Wiltse on student-prisoner reading groups and the object(s) of literary studies; Gowan Calder and Caspar Walsh on creative writing; Jenny Hartley and Rosalind Crone on prison reading in the nineteenth century; Sarah Turvey on prison reading groups; Bashabi Fraser on the imprisoned writer and the nation.

Contributors should submit an abstract of their proposed paper (250 words) and a brief biographical statement to a.schwan@napier.ac.uk by 1 March 2010.

For further information, please contact the organiser:
Dr Anne Schwan
School of Arts and Creative Industries
Edinburgh Napier University
Craighouse Campus, Craighouse Road
Edinburgh EH10 5LG, UK
Email: a.schwan@napier.ac.uk
Phone: (0044) (0)131 455 6131

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]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#readingwriting Ian Gadd 2009-12-21 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#cbs Morison Room, University Library, Cambridge (except where noted)
Wednesdays - 5pm
18 Nov Cristina Dondi: The Venetian Book Trade in the 15th century: material evidence for the economic and social history of the Renaissance
9 Dec Alan Powers: Reynolds Stone
3 Mar Dr Stella Panayotova: Italian illuminated manuscripts in Cambridge: old treasures and new discoveries
5 May Dr David Adams (Munby Fellow): The printing and publishing background to the London Leveller movement, 1640-1649
16 Jun (4pm) (Whipple Museum) Tea, followed by the Annual General Meeting and a visit to the Museum
29 Jun (2pm) Visit to Lincoln Cathedral Library
[Further details of programme to follow]

Tea will be served at 4.30pm before the lectures

For further details, please contact the Hon. Secretary, Cambridge Bibliographical Society, The University Library, Cambridge CB3 9DR

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]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#cbs Ian Gadd 2009-12-14 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/announ.html#chapbooks Applications are invited from eligible candidates for a University of Leicester fees-only PhD Studentship 'National identity, popular culture and eighteenth- century chapbooks'. The successful candidate will be based in the School of Historical Studies. Applications are encouraged from candidates with a background in eighteenth-century studies, book history, or any field of early modern social or cultural history. Applicants will be expected to have completed a relevant Masters degree by 01 October 2010. This studentship offers an exciting opportunity for research in eighteenth-century cultural history through an analysis of eighteenth-century chapbooks. Chapbooks were small, cheap, publications aimed at a popular market, sold by booksellers but also distributed by chapmen and pedlars. They were generally printed on poor paper, often with old type and woodblocks, cost 6d or less and were highly ephemeral. Their survival rate is low, but they were consumed by a far broader section of the population than other more expensive forms of print culture in this period. Their subject was wide-ranging, including ballads, city cries, dreadful, fables, fairy tales, garlands, nursery rhymes and primers and abridgements of novels and works of history or natural history. Their purpose could be moralising, entertainment, didactic or a combination. Chapbooks have already been used by historians such as Tessa Watt and Margaret Spufford in studies of seventeenth-century popular culture, and in particular, popular religious belief, but they have been largely neglected as a genre by historians of eighteenth-century culture. This PhD will build upon an interdisciplinary pilot project on chapbooks undertaken in 2009, funded by the Bibliographical Society, led by Prof Roey Sweet (Historical Studies), Dr Kate Loveman (English) and Dr John Hinks (Historical Studies). The PhD will investigate the ways in which chapbooks articulated a sense of national identity (for example, through recounting historical narratives, or the celebration of national achievements) or reflected themes such as naval or maritime traditions which have already been strongly identified with the expression of eighteenth-century national identity. This research will make an important contribution to the study of national identities in the eighteenth century and, more broadly, the extent of mediation between elite and popular culture during this period. The successful applicant will be guaranteed teaching in the School of Historical Studies for which a fee is paid. They will also be encouraged to able to apply for funds to cover research expenses from external sources, for example, the Bibliographical Society or the Economic History Society. The studentship will cover tuition fees (at the UK/EU rate only) for three years starting in October 2010. Details: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/gradschool/finance/funding/ scholarships/chapbooks. The closing date for applications is 29 January 2010. Interviews will be held in late February 2010. For further details or to apply for this position please contact the Principal Supervisor directly: Professor Roey Sweet School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester Email: rhs4@le.ac.uk Telephone: 0116 252 2592/2837

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]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/announ.html#chapbooks Ian Gadd 2009-12-14 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#LRBS10 28 June - 2 July 2010 and 5 - 9 July 2010
Institute of English Studies, London

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, which is the centre of the University of London's federal system.

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, the University of London Research Library Services, 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.

In 2010, the LRBS will run for two weeks: 28 June to 2 July and 5 July to 9 July. The courses planned are:

Week One: 28 June - 2 July
1. The Book in the Ancient World
2. The Medieval Book
3. The Printed Book in Europe 1450-2000
4. A History of Maps and Mapping
5. An Introduction to Bibliography
6. Children's Books, 1470-1980
7. The Early Modern Book in England: Exploring the Evidence
 
Week Two: 5 - 9 July
1. Type and its Uses 1455-1830
2. European Bookbinding, 1450-1820
3. Modern First Editions: Dealing, Collecting and the Market
4. Mapping Land and Sea before 1900
5. The Italian Book to 1600
6. An Introduction to Illustration and its Technologies
7. Digital Publishing and Book Studies
8. Postal Systems in Britain and Beyond 1500-1968

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. There will also be a full evening programme with an opening reception and talk, a book history lecture, and receptions hosted by major London antiquarian booksellers.

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 in the region of £550 which will include the provision of lunch, and coffee and tea throughout the week. It is likely that a small number of bursaries will be available, details will be provided later.

A range of different sorts of accommodation will be available including cheap student housing (on a bed and breakfast basis) 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/

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]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#LRBS10 Ian Gadd 2009-12-06 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#matbook 26 August 2010 - 2pm
International Committee of Historical Sciences, Amsterdam

ICHS/CISH in the Netherlands follows immediately upon SHARP's annual conference in Finland. SHARP has applied to become an Affiliated International Organization within ICHS/CISH, which meets every five years and brings together historians from around the globe. There will be five 20-minute papers plus a comment. This session will be conducted exclusively in English. In addition to the SHARP session, historians of the book might wish to attend CISH Panel 8 ('The Book in a Transcultural Perspective', Wed 25 August, 9am), organized by Jean- Yves Mollier and Martyn Lyons and conducted in French; and Roger Chartier will participate in one of the Major Theme sessions ('The City as Culture').

Chair and Commentator: Leslie Howsam, University Professor, Department of History, University of Windsor (Canada)

1. David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School (United States): Toward a Grammar of Scribal Publication in Stuart England and Early New England
Abstract: a first step toward a history of scribal publication has been to inventory the varieties of texts that were published in this manner. A second step is to construct a grammar of meanings and functions that surround the practice and made it so flexible. This paper attempts to outline such a grammar.

2. James Raven, Professor of Modern History, Essex University (UK): Printing and Boundaries
One problem with the usage of the term 'book history' is the concentration upon the printing of books and the neglect of other forms of printing with movable type, engraving and other forms of printed textual production (quite aside from the history of prints and printed illustrations). The history of jobbing- printing (and other non-book printing and publication) also highlights other 'boundary problematics' - notably the tension between livres sans frontières and nationally-based 'history of the book' projects. Jobbing printing is in fact more locally and nationally based - in general terms - and its history can provide thought-provoking counterpoints to book history as practised in many quarters. The intersection between print and manuscript also comes under new review.

3. David Vincent, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Professor of History, The Open University (UK): Paul Pry and the Dilemmas of Privacy
Centring on the play of 1825 and its multiple representations through all the media of the period., the paper will focus on the journeys between drama, music, periodicals, poetry, china, signage, public house and ship names of iconographic forms and popular texts in the immediately pre-Dickens era, and the implications of the play and its textual and visual and three-dimensional versions for the beginnings of the modern debate about privacy and its dilemmas.

4. Joan E. Greer, Associate Professor, Department of Art & Design, University of Alberta (Canada): The Artists' Periodical as a Material Site for the Creation and Communication of Artistic Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century Holland: a Consideration of Historical Methods
In this paper I explore the subject of artists' periodicals in late nineteenth-century Holland and investigate to what extent and in what ways the periodical functions as a site for artistic community building and the development of a group identity. The paper introduces and considers the genre of artists' periodicals, examines a potential methodology for its investigation and presents a brief illustrated case study of the periodical De Tuin (The Garden). I examine the material within the framework of the shifting discourses on artistic identity occurring during this period and consider how notions of the solitary artistic genius are disrupted by those of a socially driven community art and to what extent the latter is embodied within the collaborative, labour intensive and applied art form of the artists' periodical. Part of the project is historiographical in nature and will address the material nature of artists' periodicals and the inadequacies of a singular disciplinary methodology in examining this aspect of print culture.

5. Sydney J. Shep, Senior Lecturer in Print & Book Culture, Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand): The material book in/and the archive
The recent 'archival turn' in the humanities has exposed the underbelly of the institutions, sources, and terms of engagement upon which historians rely. Derrida's 'archive fever,' Foucault's focus on the archive's politics of exclusion, postcolonial scholars' examination of archives in the context of technologies of imperial power, conquest, and hegemony, and a general revolt against the positivist claims of objectivity inhering in pre-custodial archive theory and practice have all contributed to a consciousness-raising about what Antoinette Burton terms the "backstage of archives - how they are constructed, policed, experienced, and manipulated." This paper uses the example of reading in the Boer War to challenge book historians to reconsider their relationship to the archive.

ICHS/CISH website: http://www.ichs2010.org/

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]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#matbook Ian Gadd 2009-11-30 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#collartist 11 January 2010 - 6pm
British Library Conference Centre, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB

Taking Lady Eccles' magnificent donation of material relating to Oscar Wilde and his circle to the British Library as its example, the talk will explore the ways in which the creativity of the collector can, in turn, inspire the imagination of the scholar.

Mary, Viscountess Eccles (1912-2003), was one of the foremost collectors of her time, amassing an outstanding wealth of material relating to Wilde which she bequeathed to the British Library. The Eccles Collection of Oscar Wilde comprises almost 2,000 items, including manuscripts (correspondence, works, etc.) printed books (amongst them a number of presentation copies and books from Wilde's own library) and a wide range of ephemera. This talk celebrates the completion of the cataloguing of the collection which is now available through the Library's online catalogues.

John Stokes is Emeritus Professor of Modern British Literature in the Department of English at King's College London. Together with Dr Mark Turner, also of King's College, he is now editing Wilde's journalism for the Oxford English Texts edition of the Complete Works.

The talk will be followed by a drinks reception.

Attendance is free, but please register your name with Teresa Harrington at the British Library: e-mail: teresa.harrington@bl.uk

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]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#collartist Ian Gadd 2009-11-30 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#provresearch 25 January 2010 - 2.15pm
The British Library Conference Centre, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB

Launch event for the publication of Libraries within the Library: The Origins of the British Library's Printed Collections, ed. Giles Mandelbrote and Barry Taylor (London: British Library, 2009).

Dispersed along the shelves of the British Library today are many volumes that once stood side by side in private libraries. Libraries within the Library explores some of the most important printed collections which have been brought together within the British Museum Library since its foundation in 1753, casting new light on the individuals whose personal interests and taste they reflect. The launch of this volume will provide an opportunity to hear papers on recent developments in the field.

Programme
2.15 Welcome
2.30 David Pearson: Learning from collections
3.00 Alison Walker: Halfway there? An update on the Sloane Printed Books Catalogue
3.20 Phil Harris: The Old Royal Library and legal deposit in the 18th century
3.40 Discussion
4.00 Tea
4.30 Stephen Parkin: Finding and losing: the provenance of an Italian Polybius in the British Library
4.50 John Goldfinch: A group of incunables collected in the eighteenth century
5.10 David McKitterick: A view from Cambridge
5.40 Discussion
6.00 Reception

Attendance is free, but please register your name with Teresa Harrington at the British Library (email: teresa.harrington@bl.uk)

Main HoBo website

]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#provresearch Ian Gadd 2009-11-23 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#ptnet2010 6 - 7 July 2010
Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon

Call for papers

Guest speakers: BERNARD CAPP, Professor of History, University of Warwick; GILES MANDELBROTE Curator, British Collections 1501-1800, The British Library

The conference theme is broadly defined and papers are invited on any aspect of the production, distribution and reception of print and manuscript in late medieval and early modern Britain, up to c.1750, and on aspects of book-trade relations within the Anglophone world.

Papers should be of up to 30 minutes' duration. A brief CV (c. 50 words) and an abstract (of c.300 words) should be submitted by 28 February 2010 to John Hinks: jh241@le.ac.uk

Selected papers will be published as part of the Print Networks series, edited by John Hinks and Matthew Day, published by Oak Knoll Press and the British Library.

We can offer up to two Conference Fellowships to postgraduate students who wish to present a paper. Fellowships cover the cost of attending the conference and assistance towards costs of travel. An outline of the research being undertaken, together with a letter of recommendation from a tutor or supervisor, should be sent by 28 February 2010 to John Hinks: jh241@le.ac.uk

For the latest information on the conference visit the British Book Trade Index website: www.bbti.bham.ac.uk (then select 'Print Networks').

The conference (earlier in July than usual) will be held over two full days. We shall meet in the attractive surroundings of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Delegates will need to book their own overnight accommodation, of which there is a wide choice in Stratford. Conference organizer (on behalf of the 'Print Networks' committee): Dr John Hinks, Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH (jh241@le.ac.uk)

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]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#ptnet2010 Ian Gadd 2009-11-23 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#deprave 14 - 16 July 2010
UNESCO Centre for Books, Writing & Ideas, State Library of Victoria & The Centre for the Book, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
• Manuscript, Print and Digital Publications
• Legal, Religious and Cultural Prohibitions
• Histories, Modes and Strategies of Textual Censorship and Subversion
• Immoral, Blasphemous and Seditious Books
• Clandestine and Self-publication, Underground Distribution and Resistant Archiving
• The Cultural Politics of Editing, Publishing, Retailing and Cataloguing

Keynote speakers will include: Prof. Jenny Hocking (Monash University), author of Frank Hardy: Politics Literature Life (2005) and Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter-terrorism and the Threat to Democracy (2004)

Books have long attracted an array of legal, religious and cultural prohibitions. Most spectacularly, specific books have been decried, seized and publicly destroyed by state and religious institutions. Liberal-minded scholars have tended to focus on the trials surrounding celebrated books, from Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) to Spycatcher (1987), as unjustifiable encroachments on authorial free speech. Likewise, there is a long history of conflict over the availability and matter of children's and young adult literature, with schools and libraries regularly responding to public debates on moral, social and political content, including campaigns over allegedly sexist and racist content in Enid Blyton's work and occult themes in the Harry Potter (1999-2007) and Twilight (2005-8) series. The status, content and possible influence of comics and graphic novels remain a lightning-rod for deep-seated cultural anxieties, in both children's and adult markets. But 21st-century prohibitions also extend well beyond fiction genres, with anti-terrorism legislation and bans on euthanasia criminalising possession and sale of specific 'how-to' handbooks, or even their consultation in academic research libraries.

More pervasively, books have been subject to textual interventions that effect censorship by comparatively subtle means, through omissions, excisions and selective glossing, the creation of 'school' and 'family' editions, and by the addition of tendentious paratextual apparatus. There is also a wide variety of mechanisms by which certain books become hidden-by denying state cultural subsidies to the authors of 'unfashionable' subjects, allowing texts to drop out of print, remain un-reviewed or academically neglected. Publishers, librarians and readers may themselves actively collude in such obscuring practices: through misleading cover-designs and blurbs, skewed marketing and publicity campaigns, inaccurate cataloguing, creating restrictive 'closed collections', or through the deliberate mis-shelving of books by library patrons.

But in a world of textual abundance, and with the growing penetration of algorithmic search-engines, can any book remain hidden for long? As the legal jurisdiction of the nation-state struggles to combat piracy and grass-roots file-sharing, as individual activist and corporate mass-scanning projects deliver prohibited texts virtually, and online book retailers offer an ever-growing 'long tail' of globally-sourced book titles, strategies for both prohibiting and evading prohibition are clearly in a critical state of flux.

The Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, The Centre for the Book at Monash University, and The UNESCO Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas at The State Library of Victoria invite proposals considering examples of forbidden, hidden and censored books (conceived broadly) and the issues that stem from them.

Abstracts are sought for both individual papers (20 minutes) and themed panel sessions (3 x 20 minute papers). Please email prospective paper titles, 300-word proposals and 50-word presenter bio-notes by Friday 26 February 2010 to the conference organisers at: BSANZ2010@arts.monash.edu.au

Main HoBo website

]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#deprave Ian Gadd 2009-11-23 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#border 16 - 17 April 2010
Merton College, Oxford

This symposium will explore the literary activities, tastes and book collections of family groups based in or connected to the border regions of northern England and Scotland from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth century. These border regions are taken to including the borders or boundaries (physical or imagined) between Lowland and Highland Scotland as well as the Border between England and Scotland. In particular the symposium will consider manuscripts, especially anthologies or miscellanies, associated with kin groups, and related subjects such as literary interchange between border families, or the way in which crossing borders shaped a family's literary pursuits and interests. Bodies of writing by members of the same family group, or family book collections will also be addressed.

Website: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/conference/doku.php?id=borderfamilies:home

Dr Kate McClune
Fitzjames Fellow in Old and Middle English
Merton College
Oxford OX1 4JD
email: katherine.mcclune@merton.ox.ac.uk

Main HoBo website

]]> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~hobo/hobo/events.html#border Ian Gadd 2009-11-23