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This article attributes a manuscript in the collection of the KB, the National Library of the Netherlands, to Willem Silvius (c. 1520–1580), an Antwerp printer and a former writing master. The manuscript carries the title Variarum Scripturarum Exempla and contains 44 writing samples in eight different languages. It probably served as Silvius’ personal writing-book, which he used to attract customers when he was working as a writing master in Louvain. In 1562 he intended to publish the manuscript as the first printed exemplar-book in the Low Countries which contained writing models for different languages and settings. Although this publication never materialised, Silvius’ writing-book is a testimonial for the life and the achievements of one of most significant printers of sixteenth century Antwerp.

In 1612, Balthasar I and Jan Moretus II, managers of the Antwerp Plantin Press, were able to buy the copperplates and the stock of Ortelius’s atlas in various languages at the auction of Jan Baptist Vrients’s possessions. The two brothers endeavored to sell what they purchased through various means and sold the copies as if they were new editions. In this article I trace the sale of Ortelius’s Spanish atlas in detail from 1612 to 1641. After an examination of the initial period of occasional sales between 1612 and 1630, I will turn to the unexpected confiscation of some copies of the atlas in Spain in 1630. I will conclude by demystifying the so-called 1641 edition. In this way, the distribution of Ortelius’s Spanish atlas in the first half of the seventeenth century will offer a remarkable overview of the afterlife of this once influential work.

For religious subcultures, the reading of religious books was of great importance, even for Roman Catholics, renowned for their ritual-mindedness and the prevailing limitations in terms of religious reading for laypeople. This article aims to reveal the extent to which the status and role of a subculture affected the printing history and reception of religious books. The Post-Reformation Low Countries – split into the South, where the Catholics were a dominant culture, and the Dutch Republic in the North, where they were a subculture – provides an excellent case study. A very popular meditation book serves as the source for the study, namely Sondaechs Schoole (Sunday school) (1623).

This article discusses and reproduces a unique copy of a hitherto unknown Dutch incunable. It was recovered at a Belgian auction after 164 years and bought by the Athenaeum Library in Deventer, the Netherlands. Thus, the book returned to the city where it was printed by Jacobus de Breda, between 27 October 1495 and 16 April 1496.

THE OXFORD ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE BOOK. EDITOR JAMES RAVEN. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020. 480 P. ISBN 9780198702986. EBOOK ISBN 9780191007507.

Online book fairs are being held in Vietnam to replace traditional offline events that have been shelved owing to the COVID-19 crisis. This study aims to explore book consumers’ perceptions regarding digital book fairs and their evaluation of the first-ever national online book fair held in Vietnam. In-depth interviews were conducted to obtain insights from people who had attended the online book event. The findings provide acceptance of and support for the organization of digital book fairs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Attendees generally appreciated the convenience of the national online book fair and the promotional programmes offered by various publishers and distributors. Furthermore, some attendees enjoyed the novelty of the event and the feeling of being included in the reading community. Nevertheless, most of the attendees highlighted several limitations, especially the lack of social and face-to-face interaction. These findings have implications for online book fair organizers, publishers, and book distributors alike.

According to Homi Bhabha, hybridity in the context of identity where two cultures or languages collide is a third space where new views and stances can emerge. I explored the concept of this third space by writing a novel in English, which is my second language, instead of in my mother tongue, Slovenian. I investigated the effects of language switch on my choice of subject matter, my writing process, and my perception of my work and myself as a writer and as a person. I examined language-related challenges of writing in my second language, the benefits of a new insight a second language offers, and how multilingualism leads to a more fluid identity and a change in perspective.

Launched in 1999, at a time of radical change for the publishing industry, Persephone Books has become a successful independent publisher of neglected female authors mainly from the 20th-century inter-war period. Publishing being an industry primarily shaped by the differential distribution of symbolic and economic capital (Bourdieu, ‘The Market for Symbolic Goods’, in The Rules of Art, Polity Press, 1996, p. 9), competing principles of cultural legitimacy within an increasingly commercial climate clarify the position of modern publishing at the intersection of culture and commerce (Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 27). This article explores how Persephone Books’ understated assertion of publishing’s ‘middle ground’ and commitment to the historically reviled ‘middlebrow’ genre have reconciled the perennial tension between culture and commerce to create a thriving yet unintentional publishing brand.

The article presents a corpus of European fictional narratives, which were continuously printed in at least six European languages from the beginning of printing until the end of the eighteenth century. It analyses the denominations of the works in European literary histories in a comparative way in order to show the impact of the different national traditions in literary history, and provides a survey of the contemporary terms for the works used in European vernaculars. In early modern Europe there was an awareness of the congruence of these narratives and a similar choice of genre attributions in different European vernaculars whereas, as a consequence of the development of nationalism and national studies, the denomination of the genre and their studies has become much more tattered. We therefore propose to use the term ‘narrative fiction’ for the genre and the term ‘fictional narrative’ for the works themselves.

Mistakes, printing defects, reused woodcuts and low-quality paper are often the result of strategies enabled by printers and publishers to offer printed material at a low price while balancing profit/loss in their daily activities. It was precisely due to these strategies that a wider class of population could read, sing, learn and enjoy life in early modern Europe. This essay illustrates the preliminary results of a comparative analysis aimed at investigating the production phase of cheap books and prints all over Europe. With a focus on editorial strategies, printing practices and materials commonly adopted and used in these publications, it demonstrates that European publishers and printers followed very similar patterns while producing cheap products.

This article discusses the prospects of a comparative approach within the field of the dissemination of European popular print. Currently, it is still hard to find studies that address distribution of popular print with a Europe-wide scope. After an introduction about the main concepts, models and approaches, the article discusses some topic related issues, questions, approaches and sources. Social and professional categorisations are explored, as well as the differences between urban and rural distribution, the impact of regional and international networks, the effects of trade regulations and the collaborative features of distribution practices. What became clear is that a wide-ranging study that includes all European countries is urgently needed but not within reach soon, due to a lack of fundamental research and assessible sources. We should therefore first start to collect data systematically and conduct a series of comparative case studies in which we explore important questions and approaches.

As of 1620 Balthasar Moretus I envisioned a new edition of the famous polyglot Bible that his grandfather Christopher Plantin had printed in Antwerp in the years 1568-1572. While he searched for the necessary type, he had the Jesuit Petrus Lansselius stay in Antwerp for several years to prepare a revised text and commentaries. After seven years of preparation it became clear that he would never be able to complete his project. The appearance of the first volume of the Parisian Polyglot in 1628 made it clear that he was too late and that he had to abandon the entire project. With this article I will demonstrate the importance of having strong support for prestigious editions. Even if a publisher had gathered enough financial means and all the type and paper that were necessary for printing his desired publication, without external backing it was extremely difficult to realize his dream.

The article (developing a paper presented at 2010 SHARP international conference) investigates the ways grand Faust editions from the 1850s and 1870s make sense as equivocal cultural objects migrating within and beyond Germany. Scholars have focused on these imposing tomes to herald the play as expression of a nation-centred claim, with Faust as heroic myth. This interpretation relied on costly plates and external characteristics for principal evidence. This article instead draws attention to circulation, transformations and fuller readings of these items, combining first-hand research in many collections. On the one hand, it looks into the editorial versions as adjustable to different audiences and cultures, using editorial data, reception evidence, and image analysis. On the other, it shows how fuller readings of a tome, based on material, symbolic and archival evidence, tell two different stories. This study of a text’s print apparel and circulation, at odds with its significance as a national myth, has implications well beyond this singular work.

This article discusses the survival of Adriaen Koerbagh’s Bloemhof, a controversial work confidently claimed to be rare in bibliographies and in antiquarian booksellers’ catalogues. So far, more than 70 copies have been found worldwide, in libraries and in private collections. Contemporary annotations provide additional biographical information on Koerbagh’s arrest and imprisonment. The reception of Bloemhof in Dutch and—mainly—German bibliographies is also discussed in the article. An appendix with surviving copies has been added.

Autor na podstawie pochodzącego z 1617 r. inwentarza biblioteki bernardynów z Kalwarii Zebrzydowskiej pokazuje w jak sposób można wykorzystać tego typu dokument w badaniach nad historią książki i księgozbiorów. Właściwy opis regestru i jego analiza metodyczna zostały poprzedzone historią księgozbioru kalwaryjskiego. Sam klasztor został ufundowany przez wojewodę krakowskiego Mikołaja Zebrzydowskiego w 1602 r. Bernardyni interesowali się książką i każdy klasztor posiadał bibliotekę. W przypadku Kalwarii istotnym źródłem do poznania najstarszej biblioteki jest inwentarz jej zasobów z 1617 r. Zakonnicy mieli do dyspozycji zasadniczą literaturę potrzebną w ich pracy wewnętrznej i zewnętrznej. Biblioteka znajdowała się w specjalnym pomieszczeniu, a książki były ustawione na półkach według formatu. Za skompletowanie zbioru i jego uporządkowanie odpowiedzialny był Ludwik Boguski (bibliotekarz konwentu w latach 1611–1618). Boguski niemal w całości skompletował bibliotekę, co niewątpliwie wpłynęło na sporządzony inwentarz. Współcześnie, analizując opisy książek podanych w inwentarzu, badacze mogą śledzi erudycję twórcy spisu i jego stosunek do książki (m.in. zwracając uwagę na to, co autor inwentarza uważa za ważne w książce, jakie podaje elementy ją charakteryzujące, jakie popełnia błędy). Można również zastanawiać się, czy autor sam wypracowuje schemat opisu czy też go zapożycza, czy pracę wykonuje mechanicznie, czy odnotowuje cechy wyróżniające.

Following Peter Elbow’s work on ‘resonant voice’ or ‘presence’, this essay examines the seldom-explored resonance between a text and its writer in the moment of its creation. The essay asks what the boundaries and content of this space might look like, and how this knowledge might positively affect the creative product. It challenges the popular search for a writer’s ‘voice’, instead positing that each writer has a perpetually shifting internal plurality of voices, which unifies the constructivist and social constructionist views of the self. By arguing that the resonance between writer and writing is the experience of this plurality coming to harmony, the essay posits that to create such a resonance involves a balance of simultaneously relinquishing control to the internal choir and learning how to better conduct it.

‘My Africa Reads’ is a memoir that looks back at my reading history. The ‘Preamble’ identifies authors who influenced my worldview during my secondary and tertiary education in the UK and who remained my companions during the first decade of my return to Nigeria. From this immersion in Eurocentric literature, the memoir progresses to my encounter with postcolonial African literature in the collective setting of the Africa Book Group (ABG), which I joined in 2002 and led from 2014 to 2018. The memoir looks at authors and literature that the international women of ABG have engaged with, and at meetings at which guest experts spoke on aspects of African studies and affairs. It highlights the power of ABG—a shared reading experience—to advance that part of my cultural liberation facilitated by good postcolonial literature and open, unconstrained discussions with other women.

Publishing is often characterized by instinctive decision-making with little attempt to apply a scientific methodology to an obvious question: why does one book sell and another not? The thesis of this paper is that, although there are aspects of a book’s publication history that one cannot predict in advance, one can know what these aspects are. A simple syllogism underlies the argument: if human behaviour can be understood through psychology and if book-buying is a form of behaviour, the motivations for book-buying can also be understood through psychology. This approach can be applied historically, through recourse to sales data, to trace the fossils of books published long ago and so discover the type and strength of the motivations that once drove people to buy them. History demonstrates that these motivations, once properly framed, can be understood to be influenced by context. Book-buying motivations also appear cyclically. This leads to a discussion of why it is that one book rather than another may satisfy a motivation and therefore sell better than another. Using the concept of prisms combining to reflect a motivational ‘light’, we see that books exist as constructs of a finite range of elements that cohere (or not) in a multiplicative way to enhance or diminish their effectiveness. Evidence is also given for what appears to be a universal ratio that dictates a natural entropy in the effectiveness of these prismatic elements.

In 1631 the Protestant town of Magdeburg fell to the Catholic Imperial army and was burned to the ground with casualties of some 20.000 people. This event reverberated far and wide in broadsheets and pamphlets, songs and images, and not only in Germany. The destruction of Magdeburg echoed in faraway Iceland, where pastor Guðmundur Erlendsson wrote a poem about the event. In this article we argue that news of the event (perhaps in the form of broadsides) must have arrived quite early to Iceland and travelled through the learned community around the diocese of Hólar in the northern region of Iceland. Furthermore, we explore the intentions of the poet and his observations and perceptions of the events. The poem was most likely intended to be sung or recited and was disseminated in handwritten copies. We explore the questions: Why produce a poem about atrocities in foreign lands? What was the lesson of the events in Magdeburg for peaceful Iceland?

The transformation of a play composed for the stage into a text printed to be read is a complex operation often mentioned by the playwrights themselves in the prefaces to the editions of their works. The printed publication could become the ‘place’ for perfecting what was performed on stage but it could also, for some authors, become a ‘place’ in which they defended their authorship through the control of the editions, even going so far, in the case of Carlo Goldoni (Venice 1707-Paris 1793), as to break the rules of the book trade. The author attempts to show how the construction of Goldoni’s authorship can be analyzed on three different levels: the expression of the author’s will; his claim for the right to publish his works himself and finally the representation of the figure of the author with the use of a different portrait for each edition.

In this article the authors analyse narratives of the ‘agents’ associated with book publishing in Latvia, instrumentalizing the Bourdieusian theoretical framework of habitus–capital–field in order to understand the particulars of power relationships in the national book publishing field. Based on the results of the narrative analysis, authors conclude that power relationships in book publishing in Latvia have historically shifted during periods when major social transformations have taken place in other fields of the social world (e.g. political, economic) and echoed in the publishing field in the form of altered conditions. Depending on each agent’s position in the field, these changes have meant that values and meanings linked with the practice of publishing have either had to be adjusted or been significantly disruptive.

Following the rise of the study of the history of the book in the 1980s and 1990s, provenance studies have become an important component in the research of social and cultural historians. This development was noticed and embraced by the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL). The Consortium incorporated results of provenance research in existing resources and created new resources specifically with the question of provenance in mind. In this contribution I will focus on two CERL resources: the Material Evidence in Incunabula Database and the recently developed CERL Provenance Digital Archive and the relation between the two. Examples will show how these two digital resources stimulate international cooperation in the field of provenance research.

There is compelling evidence of the use by the booktrade from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries of partly-completed sewn bindings with permanent structures, with or without boards, but without permanent covers. They allowed books to be held together as they went through the booktrade, added little extra weight and would have been relatively inexpensive. Evidence for their use can be found in archival sources, trade regulations and depictions in art, but mostly in the 82 sewn bookblocks without boards that have so far been recorded. They can be identified by a careful examination of their various and varied physical features, which present a complex variety of options. The survival of composite volumes raises the question of who commissioned the bindings. What is not in doubt, however, is that they were an established feature of the booktrade, though the extent to which they were used is as yet unknown.

During the twentieth century, a limited edition is usually numbered, in contrast to limited editions of around 1800. This article examines a number of turning points in the history of limitation statements and copy numbering: the disappearance of copyright related numbering versus unnumbered editions of private presses (around 1800), the advent of numbered prints (1850-1900), and numbering of luxury editions and private press editions (1880-1910). The stabilization of a new tradition of numbering occurs around 1930. The development of private press publications is examined in a broad context of copyright and the production of prints, while practices in the English-speaking world are shown to differ from those in other cultures, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany.

Benedictus de Spinoza became one of the few censored authors in the liberal publishing climate of the Dutch Republic. Twenty-three years passed before the first Dutch translation of his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) appeared in print, despite two interrupted attempts to bring out a vernacular version before 1693. This article compares the three oldest Dutch translations of Spinoza’s notorious treatise by combining digital sentence alignment with philological analysis. It describes the relationship between the variants, two printed versions and a manuscript, revealing a pattern of fragmentary similarity. This partial textual reuse can be explained using Harold Love’s notion of ‘scribal publication’: readers circulated handwritten copies as a strategy to avoid the censorship of Spinozism. As a result, medium and language not only conditioned the dissemination of Spinoza’s treatise in Dutch, but also affected its text in the versions published—either in manuscript or print—between 1670 and 1694.

This paper outlines the experience of four universities that collaborated on a pre-arrival shared reading project, the Big Read, in 2018/2019. They did so primarily to promote student engagement and retention and also to ease the transition into higher education, particularly for first-generation students, to promote staff connectedness, and to provide a USP (unique selling point) for their institution. The paper covers all the associated processes, from isolating the respective aims of the collaborators to the choosing and sharing of a single agreed title. In analysing the outcomes, recommendations are made for future cross-institutional projects of this kind.

To sell a novel as socially relevant, the book cover, prefaces, and other paratext can help convey why readers should care and how the story should be read. But relevance can expire as society moves on. Reprints of groundbreaking classics that no longer engage contemporary concerns adapt their paratext to reach new readers, often by emphasizing the book’s historical and/or literary position. This article examines paratextual strategies across time and space for three Scandinavian novels with exceptional influence. Enlightenment-promoting Niels Klim’s Underground Travels (1741) was the region’s first novel; Hunger (1890) is praised by many as the world’s first modernist novel; and The Man on the Balcony (1967) became the progenitor of Nordic Noir. Early paratext used anonymity, false veracity, or documentary elements to sell relevance. But with commercial success, and temporal and geographical distance, paratext became increasingly author focused and self-referential, at times all but ignoring the author’s intent for the story.

As Children’s Laureate 2013–2015, Malorie Blackman raised awareness of the lack of racial diversity in children’s fiction. Underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in fiction and the publishing industry’s infrastructure is a severe problem in the world of children’s books, as illuminated by research into the publishing environment of the past 15 years, and the books populating current bestseller charts. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of economic and symbolic capital is important to understanding how diversity is highlighted in the contemporary literary field, but his polarization of the different form of capital as motivation for creating art is reductive. Storytelling is about combining voices and experiences, and publishers can, and should, combine economic and symbolic motivations in publishing diverse fiction for children. Publishing a book because it will be successful economically and because it is the right thing to do are not mutually exclusive; in publishing diverse children’s fiction, both motives can and should inspire us.

This essay is based on a talk the author gave at the By the Book conference in Florence in June 2019. It examines the power dynamics in the Italian publishing world from the perspective of a fiction writer. Writing and publishing are two completely different worlds that can be differently approached. What’s the point of writing? Should writers write about what they know, or about what they do not know? Can publishing be put off? What’s the role of literary agents in the publishing process? The author’s answers to these questions are based on her personal experience.

This two-part article is a sequel to a two-part paper published in Logos in 2008–2009. It provides a round-up of the current situation of the book industry in Africa today (primarily that in English-speaking sub-Saharan Africa), together with a brief review of the activities of the various organizations that have supported African publishing over the years. Part 1 examines the persistent failure of African governments to support their book industries and public libraries in a tangible and positive fashion. It reviews the current status of book development councils in Africa, the unsatisfactory progress in establishing national book policies, the challenges of generating book industry data, and the opportunities presented to African publishers by the new digital environment. An Appendix provides a list of conferences, meetings, and seminars on publishing and book development held in Africa between 1968 and 2019. Part 2 of this article will appear in Logos, 30 (4).

This article focuses on the 18th century printers’ ornaments as an important group of sources of the history of the book. Until now, most studies in Lithuanian had focused on the decorations of books from the 16th– 17th centuries as well as contemporary publications. The present study through several perspectives analyzes the ornaments of the institutional printing houses of Vilnius from the second half of the 18th c. The importance of the chosen topic is substantiated not only with the scarcity of studies but also with the issues associated with the attribution of anonymous publications that had been disseminated during the hand-press period. The study’s sources were images of ornaments in the early printed books as well as European printers’ manuals and inventories of Vilnius printing houses from the period of 18th–early 19th c. The first part of the study has found that in the late 18th c., the Vilnius printers had used printers’ flowers (ornamental pieces of type) and six kinds of decorative blocks, which were carved in wood or metal (i.e., headpieces, tailpieces, vignettes, initials, factotums, and decorations of initial letters). Despite the clear function of these blocks, Vilnius printers freely experimented by placing them in unorthodox places within the books. In the second part of this study, based on a comparison of the printers’ ornaments, the ways of interaction between the Vilnius printing houses are disclosed and interpreted: ornament inheritance, division of labor, the renewal of publications in another printing house, and the falsification of publications. Also, the article discusses cases of ornaments migrating and being copied, which complicates the attribution of anonymous publications. Despite the exploratory nature of the study, it reveals new facts from the operations of 18th c. Vilnius printing houses and allows us to perceive some peculiarities of late GDL culture.

The library of Leufstabruk is an eighteenth century private library in Sweden that was built up by industrialist and entomologist Charles De Geer (1720-1778). Approximately 1500 contemporary titles from the library were purchased by mail-order from the booksellers Samuel (II) and Johannes Luchtmans in Leiden. Leufstabruk was, however, not only a place where Enlightenment literature was brought in, but also a centre of knowledge production. In this article, I will explore Leufstabruk as a portal for cultural transfer between Sweden and the Dutch Republic, and consider how this collection may serve as a frame to rethink the emergence of Sweden as a centre of knowledge creation in the eighteenth century

This study examines documentary evidence in the form of personal letters concerning the commission of a frontispiece from the then apprentice printmaker Jan van de Velde II (1593-1641) for a 1613 edition of Jean Taffin’s best-selling Boetverdicheit des levens (‘Treatise on the amendment of life’). The previously unpublished frontispiece is identified here for the first time, and it now stands as the earliest known work by the artist. The study also elucidates the highly placed network of Remonstrant reformers discussed in the letters, and their frustrated efforts to track down a likeness of the deceased author, who had been the personal chaplain to William the Silent. Finally, it argues that the limited financial outcome of the commission had a formative impact, as the letters themselves suggest, on Van de Velde’s decision to pursue a career primarily working from his own designs, a bold direction for a printmaker of the day.

This article examines the political and ideological circumstances surrounding the two French translations of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf during the 1930s. It focuses on the personal histories of the translation agents involved in the production, translation and dissemination of Mein Kampf—such as diplomats, politicians, investors, publishers, editors and translators. By uncovering and exposing their ideological attitudes, this study shows how Hitler’s book was altered, censored and repurposed in France to suit different political agendas. Consequently, it argues that the two French translations during the prewar period, entitled Mon Combat (1934) and Ma Doctrine (1938), should be regarded as historical artifacts in their own right, rather than mere reproductions.

This article examines for the first time Il Corriere Ordinario, an Italian-language newspaper which appeared bi-weekly between 1671 and 1723 in Vienna. This specific newspaper title is remarkable because it was published in the Italian language in a predominantly German-speaking city. The two printers responsible for producing this periodical had recently migrated to Vienna from the Habsburg Low Countries. Despite recent advances in scholarship, acknowledging the importance of international news flows, foreign language newspaper ventures such as Il Corriere Ordinario have hitherto been largely ignored. This article investigates why this newspaper was printed in Vienna and argues that it was intended both for a local and international Italian(ate) audience. As a semi-official news bulletin of the imperial Habsburg government, it publicised foreign political news of its allies and became a useful tool in the fight against French propaganda. Using the case of this remarkable newspaper, I will demonstrate why and how political information moved across state and linguistic borders.

This article discusses changes in the materiality of textbooks by examining several examples of primarily Slovene textbooks from various periods. By focusing on their spread design rather than technical aspects (e.g., length, weight, and format), one may infer that their materiality changed with the development of printing technologies and publishing skills. Based on the assumption that textbook visuality is a field of meaning that requires different bodily movements, postures, and engagement with the physical environment to produce cognitive processing, this article sheds light on how the body adapts to the changed materiality of digital textbooks. Numerous micro-movements in a long string of procedures are required in a digital textbook ecosystem. All the participants should be aware of the different demands and properties of the digital textbook ecosystem. Therefore, further empirical research is needed.

Originally, literary prizes were restricted to the world of academia, but since the 19th century they have grown to become commercial events in the publishing calendar. This article looks at the role of the literary prize as an agent of change by focusing on two prominent prizes in the United Kingdom: the Booker and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. By analysing data from archive material held at Oxford Brookes University, this article argues that the founding of the Women’s Prize highlighted an issue with the Booker and promoted discussion around that issue, and that the Booker reacted positively in the years after the introduction of a competing literary prize.