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The paper attempts to understand the idea of readership and access to printed books in colonial South India, responding to print and missionary interventions in nineteenth-century Kerala. The paper would ask, how does one work with traces of reading in the text and construct its beyond with interest in this history, paying heed to its entanglements in desires and fears of and from the same activity of reading? Is there a potential affective space in this history, accounted by the reader between divisions of the material text and the liminalities of reading events scattered in its time and space? The paper envisions methods to study reading and its lives by imaginatively and symbolically locating "readers" and "respondents" to the changes within the nineteenth-century missionary printing exercise. The study understands the coming of Vidyasamgraham or The Cottayam College Quarterly Magazine, published between 1864 and 1867 to have set the pace for both knowledge dissemination and the making of rational modern "reading" subjects in nineteenth-century Kerala. The serialization of The Slayer Slain throughout its eight issues will be read alongside the selected entries of Vidyasamgraham to ask questions about how reading was conceived, its locations, and the nature of the book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the important artillery manuals of the 15th century is the Feuerwerkbuch. The treatise was one of the first European didactic technical texts, intended for both artillerymen and their employers. After circulating in manuscript copies for over a hundred years, the text was first printed in 1529. By 1619 it had been published thirteen times in total, making it exceptional among military manuals published in Central Europe at that time. The content of the work has been studied by various medievalists and codicologists to date, but they were not usually concerned with later transformations of the publication. The aim of this paper is to characterise the changes in this work between the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the Thirty Years' War and to trace its publication history and its publication relationship to other educational texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The words τὸ πρῶτον in Heraclitus B1 have been subjected to competing construals, yet this dilemma, and its stakes, are almost never discussed. We argue that the common translation of ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον, ‘when once they have heard it’, faces insurmountable philosophical, stylistic, and linguistic objections. We make a new case for the alternative construal, ‘after they have heard it for the first time’. This yields a linguistically better account of the Greek, and a philosophically more satisfying one in the broader context of B1 and Heraclitus’ thought. Finally, we examine the larger programmatic implications of the small phrase τὸ πρῶτον for Heraclitus’ book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the prevailing belief that Indian print culture emerged in the nineteenth century by exploring the participation of Indians in print culture in the late eighteenth century. It reveals that Indians were actively involved in print culture as both readers and patrons, contributing to periodicals, reading newspapers, and handling official documents. Subscription publishing, a method that limited risk and raised funds in advance, gained popularity in India, with Indian names appearing on almost half of the extant lists of subscribers to books published in India during the eighteenth century. The article argues that this early Indian experience with print laid the foundation for its later proliferation, contradicting the notion that Indian print culture only emerged after the arrival of foreign institutions. [Extracted from the article]

Jordan Alexander Stein's book, "When Novels Were Books," explores the relationship between the material qualities of books and the experience of character in Anglophone novels. Stein argues that the size, shape, and organization of a book can have a profound impact on readers' perceptions of character and their own sense of self. The book's argument is of interest to those studying book history and material texts, as it highlights the importance of considering the material aspects of literature. Stein's thesis challenges the notion of authenticity in literature and invites readers to question their own artificiality. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses Kathleen Lubey's book, "What Pornography Knows: Sex and Social Protest since the Eighteenth Century," which explores the history of pornography and its connection to social justice. Lubey argues that pornography can be a site of social protest and challenges the assumption that it is inherently misogynistic. She examines the evolution of a midcentury bawdy novel, "The History of the Human Heart," and its various editions, highlighting how the editing process shaped the portrayal of sex scenes and gender dynamics. Lubey's book offers a new perspective on the history of pornography and its potential for feminist discourse. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, relying on Readex's electronic database 'Early American Newspapers, Series 1, 1690–1876: From Colonies to Nation', I use the evidence of newspapers to construct a picture of the encyclopaedias most mentioned in British North America and the early United States during the period before 1790. I begin by explaining my methodology and reviewing other approaches to studying the American market for encyclopaedias before 1790. Then, working on the assumption that mentions of encyclopaedias in newspapers roughly represent interest in encyclopaedias, I attempt to quantify Americans' evolving interest in different encyclopaedias and kinds of encyclopaedias. Lastly, having sketched out the landscape of encyclopaedias in eighteenth-century America, I consider the uses to which they were put. Among other conclusions, I argue that, despite assertions to the contrary by encyclopaedists and their publishers, encyclopaedias functioned less as substitutes for private libraries than as complements to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David Elliston Allen was a highly regarded botanist and historian of natural history who made significant contributions to the field. He joined the Society for the History of Natural History in 1967 and served as its President from 1978 to 1981. Allen's work focused on regional consumer tastes, the social history of natural history, and the history of botany. He published numerous books and articles on these topics, shedding light on overlooked figures and perspectives in the field. The document also mentions a forthcoming posthumous publication titled "Brambles of Ireland" by the National Botanic Gardens. Additionally, a list of Allen's publications and contributions is provided, covering a wide range of subjects such as the Victorian fern craze, the history of veterinary medicine, natural history in the eighteenth century, and the struggle for specialist journals in the nineteenth century. This comprehensive list would be valuable for library patrons conducting research on the history of natural history in Britain. [Extracted from the article]

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The history of publishing in Poland encompasses many issues associated with the emergence and dissemination of printed books. Of fundamental significance to the study of these issues are the records of the publishing output: while we have nearly complete, though still underexamined, records of this output for the period from the 15th to the 18th century, documented in bibliographies and catalogues, the situation is worse when it comes to the 19th and 20th centuries, until the outbreak of the Second World War. In this respect, what we need is not only a continuation, but a radical intensification of bibliographic work. This concerns works published in the Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Greek scripts, as well as musical notation. Polish book scholars have devoted a lot of attention to the beginnings of printing in Poland. The historiography concerning various typographic workshops located in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is rich; however, it still requires further extensive studies. Scholars have also been interested in phenomena influ- encing the content structure of printed publications, such as publishing privileges (in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), censorship and restrictions imposed by the partitioning powers and later by Poland’s communist authorities, as a result of which Polish publications had to be printed abroad and an independent publishing movement emerged. The scholars’ research interests have also focused on books as products of printers and publishers and on the publication of written works. Scholars have examined both the various components of the book (title page, printer’s signet, stemmata, etc.) and its editorial composition as a whole. Their undoubted achievements in the studies of the history of publishing in Poland are significant, yet in many areas they need to be continued and expanded (one important task is the edition of sources for the study of the history of Polish publishing) and to investigate the phenomena that stem from developmental tendencies in modern book studies.

The article discusses the importance of gaining knowledge in book history for early-career special collections librarians. It highlights the challenges of finding educational opportunities in this field and suggests that a practicum can be a valuable way to learn practical book history. The author shares their experience designing a practicum at their workplace, the Wangensteen Historical Library, and describes the three units they focused on: scholarly reading, seeking out connections with professionals, and creating a digital resource. The article concludes by emphasizing the accessibility of introductory texts and the value of building professional relationships to learn from experts in the field. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the surprisingly prevalent incidence of contemporary handstamps impressed upon the final leaf of Restoration playbooks. These are all circular and contain either individual letters or are bisected and contain a combination of letters and numerals. As they are demonstrably not part of the printing process, they have not attracted the attention of textual editors; but as this article shows, neither are they markers of ownership that would interest scholars researching provenance. We identify the marks as being the stamps of letter receivers; in particular, receivers (James Magnes and Richard Bentley) who were also stationers involved in the publishing of the plays we examined. The presence of these stamps suggests that Magnes and Bentley served not only as publishers and booksellers, but as distributors of the playbooks they produced. The presence of these stamps thus has implications for the distribution of Restoration playbooks through the English postal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional book distribution was central to political mobilization in the localities during the English Civil Wars. A contextual approach, building up a picture from print and manuscript sources such as journals, reveals the multiple ways in which books circulated, through a case study of Devon and the south west. In contrast to recent emphasis on activist publishers, these sources highlight the significance of book distribution by puritan clergy. Book distribution in Devon was dominated by the unmatched south-western network of the London publisher Francis Eglesfield (publisher of Robert Herrick's Hesperides). However, the political agency of book distribution lies beyond the conventional book trade with the activities of local ministers, exemplified by John Bond of Exeter, Thomas Larkham of Tavistock, and John Syms of Sheepstor and Plymouth. Their distribution efforts provided multiple routes by which books reached their political audiences and created opportunities for political participation in parish communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the history of medieval paper in England, noting that most of it was imported and very little has survived. The introduction of paper in the early fourteenth century and the impact of printing at the end of the fifteenth century are discussed, highlighting how paper allowed more people to become writers and readers. The article also touches on the psychological impact of paper on the literary imagination and the ambivalence between paper and parchment as writing supports. The author's research is based on a systematic census of manuscripts in Cambridge University Library, but the lack of surviving archives in England poses a challenge. Another text discusses the formats and origins of medieval manuscripts, focusing on agenda or oblong formats found in Cambridge manuscripts. The author criticizes previous sources for their lack of information on formats and discusses the use of agenda formats in accountancy and music. The origins of medieval paper are briefly mentioned, with Italy dominating in the early fourteenth century and French papermakers gradually taking over. The importance of watermarks in determining the source of paper is emphasized, with examples provided from manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library. Another text discusses the author's analysis of watermarks found in manuscripts and their significance in determining the origin and age of the paper. Examples of different watermarks and their potential origins are given, such as Italy, France, Germany, and Switzerland. The importance of paper evidence in studying the history of papermaking and its impact on the printing industry is also mentioned. The author points out some errors and inconsistencies in the book [Extracted from the article]

Robin Myers, a prominent figure in the world of books and archives, passed away on her 97th birthday. She was a respected member of the Bibliographical Society and served as its first female president. Myers had a passion for collecting books and autograph letters, and she used her extensive knowledge to teach others about book collecting. She also played a significant role in preserving and promoting the archives of the Stationers' Company. Myers was known for her talent for friendship and her elegant writing style. She leaves behind a legacy of publications and fond memories among her many friends. [Extracted from the article]

Late 19th-century Singapore is considered the centre for the printing and distribution of Muslim-Malay lithographed texts in the Malay archipelago. In 1890, the island's print output was approximately six million pages, with many of these printed from lithography. Thus informed, our recent readings of Singapore's role in regional histories of the printed book tend to locate its prominence along contemporary, national lines – this is anachronistic. The island, historically, was neither nation nor state, but a British colonial settlement. Singapore's advantageous geographical position certainly established it as a prominent site for book production and distribution. However, the existing corpus of lithographed publications, printed at multiple localities, indicate a broader range of regional locations involved in Muslim printing. These texts, from mushaf to syair, often feature printed defects and paratextual marks on their pages. Informed by approaches from analytical bibliography and printing history, the materiality of these marks and defects can be 'read' to identify specific print production techniques. These, in turn, suggest printing methods that were common in British and Dutch territories, and beyond – an indication of the mobility of techniques, materials, and practitioners within the lithographic trade, and the collaborative nature of print enterprises in the Malay world. By discussing these printed marks, this article will (a) re-situate and revise our understanding of interactions and practices within the Muslim-Malay lithographic printing trade; and (b) posit the notion that late 19th-century Singapore is not the locus, but one of several sites of significance within a regional 'constellation' of printing activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of history of science has evolved and diversified over the past few decades, encompassing not only the natural sciences, medicine, and mathematics, but also the social sciences, humanities, and the study of the relationship between science and technology. The discipline has embraced inter- and transnational perspectives, as well as postcolonial and decolonial aspects. The history of science has become an interdisciplinary field, exploring the relationship between science and other forms of knowledge. This special issue aims to highlight the diversity and vibrancy of current research topics and approaches in the histories of science, including the history of the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, communication practices, digital history, and the role of technology. The contributions also demonstrate the connections between histories of science and other fields of historical research, such as gender history, colonial history, media history, and environmental history. [Extracted from the article]

Marcy J. Dinius's book, "The Textual Effects of David Walker's 'Appeal': Print-Based Activism against Slavery, Racism, and Discrimination, 1829–1851," explores the impact of David Walker's pamphlet, "An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World," which called for Black liberation. Dinius examines five adaptations of the pamphlet over a twenty-year period, analyzing the materiality of the text and its influence on Black and Indigenous rhetorical and print cultures. The book highlights the interconnectedness of these texts and their role in advocating against slavery and racial discrimination. Dinius's work contributes to the field of Black bibliography and emphasizes the importance of preserving and studying these texts in the face of censorship and the erasure of marginalized voices. [Extracted from the article]

The book "Women's Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England" edited by Valerie Wayne explores the question of whether women have a book history in early modern England. The book utilizes a range of new original sources and analysis to provide a resounding answer that women did indeed have a significant role in the book trade and cultural life during this period. The book is praised for its successes but also acknowledges its limitations, particularly in terms of its focus on English borders and its definition of "woman." Despite these constraints, the book is considered an essential piece of women's history and book history for future scholars and students. [Extracted from the article]

Giancarlo Petrella's book, "Scrivere sui libri: Breve guida al libro a stampa postillato," serves as a guide to annotated early printed books, known as postillati. The book is divided into three chapters that explore the history of annotated books, ownership traces and provenance, and reading evidence. Petrella provides numerous examples and a solid methodological approach to understanding the material history of books and reading. While the book may have some flaws, it is an important and indispensable work in the field of marginalia studies, particularly in Italy. [Extracted from the article]

This article considers the fugitive slave narrative as an important episode in the history of the book. It notes the multiple editions to which many of these books ran, and the difficulty of determining a comprehensive bibliographic record of publication. We establish this bibliographic record for Moses Roper's autobiography, Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery , whose sixteen editions were published between 1837 and 1849 in English and Welsh, in what the article identifies as six phases of publication. The article argues for the documentary importance of the paratextual material and visual imagery folded into each edition as extensions of the autobiographical record and, therefore, moments of historical redefinition that respond to the material, economic, social, and cultural conditions of production. This includes the capacity of Black writing to establish spheres of Atlantic print culture other than Anglophone. The article shows that the bibliographic surfeit of nineteenth-century Black writing exemplified by Roper's work provides an untapped biographical resource in which important clues to the biographies of their authors, and of their families in slavery and in freedom, lie hidden in plain sight. Bibliographic attention to Roper's work therefore reveals the novel ways in which the book was systematized as a form of archival practice at a time when it was necessary to travel light, and the public sphere provided one of the few hopes of establishing a durable record of the author's personal and family history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bruce Holsinger's book, "On Parchment: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age," explores the history and significance of parchment as a writing surface. The book covers a wide range of topics, including the physical qualities of parchment, its role in literature and theology, and its impact on animal populations and the environment. Holsinger's writing is informative, interpretive, and poetic, making connections across various disciplines and time periods. The book is accessible to both general readers and scholars and provides a valuable resource for studying parchment in medieval manuscript studies and beyond. [Extracted from the article]

Hannah Ryley's book, "Re-using Manuscripts in Late Medieval England: Repairing, Recycling, Sharing," explores the ways in which books were repaired, recycled, and made to endure in fifteenth-century England. Ryley argues that manuscript reuse should be seen as an act of care rather than destruction, as it protected and preserved living textual cultures. The book examines the making of parchment, the recycling of parchment leaves, marginalia and doodles, and the secondhand book trade. Ryley's work challenges the field to broaden its understanding of book value beyond monetary terms and emphasizes the principles of conservation and sustainability in the late medieval book trade. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the study of medieval book fragments and the growing field of digital fragmentology. It explores the various ways in which fragments of manuscripts have been repurposed and collected over the centuries, from being used in decorative art to being studied in schools and private collections. The article also highlights the importance of cross-disciplinary work and the use of digital images and software in fragment studies. It includes case studies on the resequencing of broken books, approaches to Arabic manuscript fragments, and critical threads in manuscript fragment studies. The authors hope that this collection of essays will spark conversations and broaden participation in the field of fragmentology. [Extracted from the article]

"Shomotsu, insatsu, hon'ya: Nitchūkan o meguru hon no bunkashi" is a comprehensive volume of essays that explores the historical study of commercial publishing in pre-1900 East Asia, with a focus on Japan. While the majority of contributors concentrate on Japan, the volume aims to create space for Japanese-speaking scholars to engage with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese book histories. The book examines the history of "bookshop editions" published by commercial print shops and bookstores in Tokugawa Japan, Song-Qing China, and Chosŏn Korea, highlighting the diversity and interconnectedness of the commercial book in premodern East Asia. However, readers should be aware that the volume devotes more pages to Japan than to China or Korea. Overall, the book provides a valuable resource for researchers interested in East Asian book history and encourages comparative studies across the region. [Extracted from the article]

This article, titled "Introduction," explores the interaction between manuscript and print in late imperial China. The essays included in this issue focus on case studies in drama, fiction, and morality books, examining how different texts were transmitted and received in various media. The authors highlight the variability of ideological messaging and the transformative effects of different textual producers and patrons. The essays demonstrate that the transmission of texts during this period was complex and cannot be easily categorized, suggesting that it was an age of convergence culture. [Extracted from the article]

This study examines the "life" of an eighteenth-century private library that migrated from Spain to New Spain in 1765 and returned, greatly reduced, back to Europe in 1772. The collection's owner was José de Gálvez (1720–1787), a reformist Spanish statesman and recently appointed royal inspector of the Mexican viceroyalty. Standing at the crossroads of book history, the history of reading, and political history, this piece examines the library and its books from both a material and intellectual perspective. It relies on "Thing Theory," a methodological approach that opens avenues for further research on human-object relations in the Atlantic world. Examining the interplay between the owner, his ideas, his biography, and his book collection, this study expands book history's geographies and proposes a new narrative about the global dimensions of the Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amazon has radically changed the publishing world. And this transformation is so profound that everything done before by the publishing industry today is seen as the product of an apathetic industry, chronically indifferent to change. Nothing could be further from the truth, as this text tries to highlight, and in an attempt to demystify this view, it recovers four moments and areas of the past history of publishing, all with transformative effects that still influence our practices: labor, intellectual property, Christmas celebrations and mass consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In medieval bestiaries, knowledge about animals and their behavior is regularly given a Christian moral interpretation. This article explores the use of imagery related to the bestiary tradition in three Hebrew books made around the year 1300, focusing especially on the richly decorated Rothschild Pentateuch (Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS 116). These Hebrew books signal how bestiary knowledge and its visual expression could be adapted to enrich the experience of medieval Jewish reader-viewers, adding to our understanding of Jewish-Christian interactions in medieval Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I give a labor history of the commonly used database Early English Books Online. EEBO began its life as a mirofilm archive produced beginning in 1940: a massive book-copying project was undertaken during World War II to protect rare books from German bombs. These reproductions were made largely by unnamed woman archivists and led by a team of woman photographers, academics, and secretaries. In this essay, I draw on existing theories and histories of EEBO while highlighting these women's work, which manifests in the photographs through the shadows of the fingertips they used to pin down the fragile books. This archive of reproductive labor exemplifies the artificial divide between auteur and stenographer, artist and secretary, that animated many of the early twentieth century's avant-garde movements, including ones in which EEBO photographers were intimately involved. The fingers represent the custodial labor of women working across artistic and administrative modes during World War II and the decades that followed. Centering photographed fingertips in a feminist labor history of Early English Books Online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Print Culture, Agency, and Regionality in the Hand Press Period" is a collection of essays that explores the role of print outside of major cities during the hand press period. The essays cover a range of topics, including the experiences of female printers, the relationship between print and regional identity, and the circulation of print materials. The collection also addresses the need for further research in areas such as women's agency, the impact of print on enslavement and abolitionist causes, and the intersection of print and critical theory. Overall, the book expands our understanding of non-metropolitan print activities and is a valuable resource for researchers in the field. [Extracted from the article]

The article announces the winners of two prestigious prizes in the field of intellectual history inclucing Morris D. Forkosch Prize to Nathan Vedal and Selma V. Forkosch Prize to Dan Edelstein.

Este artículo hace un cuestionamiento al significado típico del término incunable. Primero porque las fechas que lo definen no tiene un fundamento sólido. Segundo porque definirlo desde la temporalidad excluye una serie de elementos que son claves para el nacimiento y la fijación del libro. En 1982, el historiador norteamericano Robert Darnton, en su célebre artículo, extendió la historia del libro más allá del objeto ampliándola a los circuitos de la comunicación y a los diferentes agentes relacionados con su producción y usos, a saber: autores, editores, impresores, proveedores, vendedores, lectores y encuadernadores (1982). Esta revisión bibliográfica recupera otras aristas que también definen al incunable pero que han sido desatendidas e intenta abordar el nacimiento del libro desde los circuitos de la comunicación y no solo desde la temporalidad. Igualmente, reúne hechos, discusiones y definiciones que se conocen poco en el idioma español, y que permitirán a especialistas y divulgadores tener una mayor claridad sobre los libros del siglo XV = This article questions the typical meaning of the term incunabula. Firstly, because the date that defines it does not have a solid foundation. Secondly, because defining it from temporality excludes a series of elements that are key to the birth and establishment of the book. The American historian Robert Darnton, in his famous article, extended the history of the book beyond the object, extending it to communication circuits and the different agents related to its production and uses, namely: authors, publishers, printers, suppliers, sellers, readers, and bookbinders (1982). This bibliographic review recovers other aspects that also define the incunabulum but that have been neglected and attempts to address the birth of the book from the circuits of communication and not only from temporality. Likewise, it brings together facts, discussions and definitions that are little known in the Spanish language, and that will allow specialists and communicators to have greater clarity about the books of the 15th century.

The document provides a list of scholars and their areas of expertise in Victorian studies. The scholars come from various universities and specialize in different aspects of Victorian literature, history, and culture. Their research interests include topics such as imperialism, gender, science, art, and literature. The scholars have published books, articles, and edited collections in their respective fields. [Extracted from the article]

The text discusses three books that explore the relationship between Victorian literature and the sea. "Down from London: Seaside Reading in the Railway Age" by Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton focuses on the emergence of seaside literature and the demand for print culture in seaside resort towns during the 1860s and 70s. "The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language: All at Sea" by Matthew P. M. Kerr examines the use of maritime imagery in Victorian literature and argues that modernism inherited a Victorian maritime self-consciousness. "Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House" by Isabel Hofmeyr explores the connection between Victorian Britain's maritime infrastructure and its colonial ambitions, focusing on the custom house as a site of colonial import controls. The books offer insights into the intersection of literature, culture, and imperialism in the Victorian era. [Extracted from the article]

The Polish-Jewish novelist, poet and translator Józef Wittlin (1896–1976), author of the classic Sól ziemi (1935, English Salt of the Earth, 1939), lived in Lwów (until 1918 Lemberg, today Lviv) for about 20 years until 1922. Thereafter, whether in Poland or from 1939 in exile first in France, then the United States, he cherished his memories of this architecturally distinguished and multiethnic city, publishing his memoir Mόj Lwów [My Lwów] with an exile press in New York in 1946 (English translation 2016). The article draws on archival documents from Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States and other published sources to give a history of the book's conception and reception, above all in the exiled Polish diaspora, and makes a case for Mόj Lwów 's enduring significance as a work of imaginative reconstruction written in exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the possibilities of thinking about the production, circulation, and reception of books through the form of the network. Using archival material of the Council of Books in Wartime, the essay reassembles some of the many attachments that formed the Armed Services Editions during World War II, one of the largest enterprises in the history of publishing. The essay traces the selections of the council, the networks of soldier-readers created by the books themselves, and the acts of reading constrained and made possible by these attachments across front lines and through bureaucratic memos. This assembly provides the backdrop for a consideration of the text of Thomas Mann's "Mario and the Magician," a short story published in the Armed Services Editions in 1944, whose plot not only mirrors the tension between authority and free will manifested in the geopolitical conflict of World War II, but also elucidates the dialectic of power and agency modeled by the form of the network as articulated in the council's reader-producing experiment itself. What is ultimately at stake in positing an uneven network of actors who negotiate, maintain, extend, and possibly even subvert vectors of cultural power is a reconsideration of the agency attributed to readers in sociological studies of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the cultural significance and diverse roles of the 1623 Folio edition of Shakespeare's works, exploring its representation of Shakespeare, its existence as a collection, and its widespread presence in institutional and personal collections worldwide. It delves into the book's multifaceted nature, discussing its functions as a symbolic representation of Shakespeare, a collection of plays, and a highly sought-after item in various collections globally.

The article focuses on reevaluating the significance of the 1623 Shakespeare Folio, discussing its resistance to a fixed chronology and challenging traditional perceptions about its creation and literary value. It explores the complexities surrounding the Folio's historical context, scholarly narratives, and its role as a representation of Shakespeare's work within a multi-dimensional temporal framework.

The article delves into how editors' perceptions of Shakespeare's First Folio evolved over 400 years, challenging established beliefs and revealing potential prior publications of his plays that might change their historical significance.

The article focuses on the interrelation between theater history and the history of books, examining an actor's inventory to illuminate the significance of high-status books and their implications for the 1623 Shakespeare Folio. Topics include the construction of a fictionalized "Shakespeare Company" in the Folio's list of actors, its exclusions and representations, and the exploration of alternative narratives revealed through contemporaneous lists and references within the plays.

In order to survive, books in the Philippines have had to contend with multiple forces: the humid tropical climate, typhoons, floods, fires, earthquakes, termites, wars throughout the nation’s colonial history. This fact is often raised in studies on the history of the book in the Philippines, but how and why the book survives in spite of such conditions has hardly been given attention. Such a lacuna in Philippine book history is what this study seeks to fill. It explores the survival of Philippine incunabula (books printed from 1593 to 1640), with a focus on the transformation from material object to cultural artifact that the book undergoes in the course of enduring through the centuries. This study examines the case of the Vocabulario de Iapon (Japanese vocabulary), with a particular interest in the copy in the Bernardo Mendel Collection at the Lilly Library of Indiana University. The Vocabulario de Iapon, which was printed in Manila in 1630, is both typical and unique among Philippine incunabula for the circumstances it saw from its publication to its survival. It has much to tell about publishing in the Philippines in the seventeenth century, the reception of books through the ages, and the culture of collecting in modern times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Albums assembled from fragmentary materials present a special set of problems for bibliographic research. Inaccurately described in catalogs and often caught between different fields, these hybrid objects can be tricky to find within collections and even more difficult to place historically in terms of genre. Yet understanding these seemingly idiosyncratic albums has become more important to book history than ever, as the field pushes to tell deeper histories of the material text. This essay begins from the premise that the modern library catalog is, as an ordering technology, incapable of accurately describing these unique books. In order to dispel the fog of naïve wonderment that often persists around them, I proceed to develop a taxonomy of what fragments are (whether remnants , snippets , or pieces , with the related notion of scraps) and a spectrum of their use within collections (as specimens of something or as raw stuff to create something new). Finally, I draw on the terms laid out in this essay to survey some major genres of assembled albums, including Romantic albums, scrapbooks, paper doll houses, chromolithographic albums, Victorian photocollage, design portfolios, sample books, leaf books, and extra-illustrated volumes. By beginning to trace connections across time, this essay shows how a more sensitive reading of fragments might transform book history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The remarkable theatrical history of Joseph Addison's 1713 tragedy Cato is well known, but the play is also an exceptional case in book history. This essay looks in detail at its two entirely distinct "first" editions. It resolves the relationship between these two editions and considers the quite different problems they raise for the bibliographer: the one of how we distinguish between edition and issue in a context of frenzied publication, standing type, and incremental resetting; the other, of how a manifestly substandard and suspicious edition came to carry the self-proclaimed hallmark of the play's true publisher, Jacob Tonson. The early print history of Addison's Cato , this essay shows, both puts pressure on the language of bibliography and also marks an important and revealing episode in a number of larger histories: those of the Tonson house, of book piracy and copyright protection, and of the bestseller. Appendices provide bibliographical descriptions of the 1713 Qα and Qβ editions, press variants of the earliest three issues of Qα, and uncorrected errors in Qβ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the typical meaning of the term incunabula. Firstly, because the date that defines it does not have a solid foundation. Secondly, because defining it from temporality excludes a series of elements that are key to the birth and establishment of the book. The American historian Robert Darnton, in his famous article, extended the history of the book beyond the object, extending it to communication circuits and the different agents related to its production and uses, namely: authors, publishers, printers, suppliers, sellers, readers, and bookbinders (1982). This bibliographic review recovers other aspects that also define the incunabulum but that have been neglected and attempts to address the birth of the book from the circuits of communication and not only from temporality. Likewise, it brings together facts, discussions and definitions that are little known in the Spanish language, and that will allow specialists and communicators to have greater clarity about the books of the 15th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]