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This open access collection of essays examines the literary advice industry since its emergence in Anglo-American literary culture in the mid-nineteenth century within the context of the professionalization of the literary field and the continued debate on creative writing as art and craft. Often dismissed as commercial and stereotypical by authors and specialists alike, literary advice has nonetheless remained a flourishing business, embodying the unquestioned values of a literary system, but also functioning as a sign of a literary system in transition. Exploring the rise of new online amateur writing cultures in the twenty-first century, this collection of essays considers how literary advice proliferates globally, leading to new forms and genres.

On the basis of a newly discovered manuscript this book offers the most comprehensive bibliography of the enormous output of the fifteenth-century scholar Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī – enlarging our view of his scholarly contribution and correcting numerous mistakes in this regard. This book is thus essential reading for all those interested in the writerly world of Damascus and the scholarly world of the late fifteenth century, especially with regard to the Ḥanbalī tradition and ḥadīth scholarship. In particular, linking the titles of his books with the extant manuscripts in libraries around the world opens new perspectives to these scholarly worlds. At the same time this book offers a new framework to studying social history with reference to documents and the material culture of the book.. Readership: All interested in Islamic Studies and especially history of the book and history of libraries. The focus on the Ḥanbalī heritage will appeal in particular to those interested in Ḥanbalism.

Histories of Knowledge in Postwar Scandinavia uses case studies to explore how knowledge circulated in the different public arenas that shaped politics, economics and cultural life in and across postwar Scandinavia, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. This book focuses on a period when the term "knowledge society" was coined and rapidly found traction. In Scandinavia, society’s relationship to rational forms of knowledge became vital to the self-understanding and political ambitions of the era. Taking advantage of contemporary discussions about the circulation, arenas, forms, applications and actors of knowledge, contributors examine various forms of knowledge – economic, environmental, humanistic, religious, political, and sexual – that provide insight into the making and functioning of postwar Scandinavian societies and offer innovative studies that contribute to the development of the history of knowledge at large. The concentration on knowledge rather than the welfare state, the Cold War or the new social and political movements, which to date have attracted the lion’s share of scholarly attention, ensures the book makes a historiographical intervention in postwar Scandinavian historiography. Offering a stimulating point of departure for those interested in the history of knowledge and the circulation of knowledge, this is a vital resource for students and scholars of postwar Scandinavia that provides fresh perspectives and new methodologies for exploration.

The art of printing with movable type made its appearance in Perugia -then as now, the heart of Italy- in 1471, when the city was under the sway of Braccio Baglioni. Perugia was home to an important university which had been attracting students from all over Europe for more than a century. They found hospitality in two colleges, of which the ‘Sapienza Vecchia’, in particular, was accustomed to accommodating students from abroad. The colleges were themselves instrumental in assisting the work of the earliest printers, all of them foreigners; their enterprise flourished for about fifteen years before strong competition from larger printing centres, notably Venice, took control of the Perugian book market. A second phase in local book production started at the turn of the century under the aegis of two major players, the Cartolari family and Bianchino dal Leone. The history of the book in Perugia is characterized by a quality and originality which is not reflected in the modest quantities produced there, and the major bibliographers have always taken an interest in it. All that and more can be found in this book, the outcome of lengthy research based on detailed analysis of all known editions and archival documents, including a number of new discoveries.

This open access Pivot book is a comparative study of six early colonial public libraries in nineteenth-century Australia, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. Drawing on networked conceptualisations of empire, transnational frameworks, and ‘new imperial history’ paradigms that privilege imbricated colonial and metropolitan ‘intercultures’, it looks at the neglected role of public libraries in shaping a programme of Anglophone civic education, scientific knowledge creation, and modernisation in the British southern hemisphere. The book’s six chapters analyse institutional models and precedents, reading publics and types, book holdings and catalogues, and regional scientific networks in order to demonstrate the significance of these libraries for the construction of colonial identity, citizenship, and national self-government as well as charting their influence in shaping perceptions of social class, gender, and race. Using primary source material from the recently completed ‘Book Catalogues of the Colonial Southern Hemisphere’ digital archive, the book argues that public libraries played a formative role in colonial public discourse, contributing to broader debates on imperial citizenship and nation-statehood across different geographic, cultural, and linguistic borders.

Interdisciplinary cooperation enables the two authors to precicly localize and date one of the most lavishly produced manuscript of a medieval German epic during 15th century. With the combination of art-historical and linguistic methods the “Münchener Jüngere Titurel” (BSB, Cgm 8470) – hithero beliefed to be of Tyrolian or Vienese origin – was dated (c. 1430/35) and localised (Regensburg). The exemplary study proves the potential of cooperations within the humanities., In Zusammenarbeit eines Kunsthistorikers und eines Sprachwissenschafters gelingt es, eine der schönsten Epenhandschriften des 15. Jahrhunderts, den Münchener „Jüngeren Titurel“ sowohl zu lokalisieren als auch zu datieren. Die jeweiligen Methoden rücken die mittelalterliche Quelle ganz ins Zentrum und kommen durch in jedem einzelnen Schritt nachvollziehbare Argumente zur Überzeugung, dass der Codex um 1430/35 in Rgensburg entstand. Die Studie will exemplarisch zeigen wie groß das Potential solcher Zusammenarbeiten über enge Fachgrenzen ist.

In the early modern Low Countries, literary culture functioned on several levels simultaneously: it provided learning, pleasure, and entertainment while also shaping public debate. From a ditty in Dutch sung in the streets to a funeral poem in Latin composed to be read for or by intimate friends, from a play performed for a prince to a comedy written for pupils – literary texts and performances often dealt with highly controversial topics of religion or politics, on a local or national, but also on a supranational scale. This volume sets out to analyse the role and function of literary culture in the formation of early modern public opinion, and proposes ways in which a modern scholar might approach early modern works of literature and other traces of literary culture to explore early modern public opinion making. The cases presented in this volume bring the Dutch and Latin literary cultures of the Low Countries in the focus of international debates on the history of public opinion.