The Perils of Print Culture: Book, Print and Publishing History in Theory and Practice

255 Pages·2014·3.241 MB·English

by  Jason McElligott, Eve Patten (eds.)

New Directions in Book History
Series editors: Prof Jonathan Rose (Drew University, USA) and Dr Shafquat
Towheed (The Open University, UK)
As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of maturity
where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That is the goal of New
Directions in Book History. This series will publish monographs in English that
employ advanced methods and open up new frontiers in research, written by
younger, mid-career, and senior scholars. Its scope is global, extending to the
Western and non-Western worlds and to all historical periods from antiquity to
the 21st century, including studies of script, print, and post-print cultures.
New Directions in Book History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the
vanguard. It will experiment with inventive methodologies, explore unexplored
archives, debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories, study neglected
subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history to other academic fields.
Every title in this series will address the evolution of the historiography of the
book, and every one will point to new directions in book scholarship.
New Directions in Book History will be published in three formats: single-author
monographs; edited collections of essays in single or multiple volumes; and
shorter works produced through Palgrave’s e-book (EPUB2) ‘Pivot’ stream. Book
proposals should emphasize the innovative aspects of the work, and should be
sent to either of the two series editors:
Jonathan Rose is William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University. He
was the founding president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading
and Publishing, and he is an editor of SHARP’s journal, Book History. His works
include The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, The Holocaust and the
Book: Destruction and Preservation, A Companion to the History of the Book (with
Simon Eliot), and, most recently, The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor.
Shafquat Towheed is Lecturer in English at The Open University, UK. He is
director of the Reading Experience Database, 1450–1945 (RED) project and The
Open University’s Book History Research Group. He is co-editor of The History of
Reading (Routledge: 2010), The History of Reading, Vol. 1: International Perspectives,
c.1500–1990 (Palgrave, 2011) and The History of Reading, Vol. 3: Methods,
Strategies, Tactics (Palgrave, 2011).
Editorial Board:
Marcia Abreu, University of Campinas, Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University, Matt
Cohen, University of Texas at Austin, Archie Dick, University of Pretoria, Martyn
Lyons, University of New South Wales, Claire Squires, University of Stirling
Titles include:
Bethan Benwell and James Procter (editors)
READING ACROSS WORLDS: TRANSNATIONAL BOOK GROUPS AND
THE RECEPTION OF DIFFERENCE
Jason McElligott and Eve Patten (editors)
THE PERILS OF PRINT CULTURE: BOOK, PRINT AND PUBLISHING HISTORY
IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Gillian Partington and Adam Smyth (editors)
BOOK DESTRUCTION FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO THE CONTEMPORARY
New Directions in Book History
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–44325–9 hardback
978–1–137–45429–4 paperback
(outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a
standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us
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Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
The Perils of Print Culture
Book, Print and Publishing History in
Theory and Practice
Edited by
Jason McElligott
The Keeper, Marsh’s Library, Dublin
Eve Patten
Associate Professor, School of English, Trinity College, Dublin
Selection, introduction and editorial matter© Jason McElligott and
Eve Patten 2014
Individual chapters © Contributors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-41531-8
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
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ISBN 978-1-349-49055-4 ISBN 978-1-137-41532-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137415325
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managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The perils of print culture : book, print and publishing history in theory and practice /
edited by Eve Patten, Jason McElligott.
pages cm
“This book arises from a conference entitled ‘The Perils of Print Culture’ organised ...
at Trinity College Dublin in September 2010.”
Summary: “This stimulating collection of essays illustrates various pressures and concerns –
both practical and theoretical – related to research in the fast-developing terrain of print
culture studies. As the editors Jason McElligott and Eve Patten suggest in an engaging and
provocative introduction to the volume, researchers in diverse aspects of this field regularly
confront similar procedural or methodological difficulties in their work: these range from
doubts about the reliability of digitised resources and concerns with the limiting parameters of
‘national’ book history to overall scepticism about academic definitions of what ‘print culture’
means in the first place. In the essays assembled here, several leading print culture experts,
including Leslie Howsam, James Raven, David Finkelstein and Toby Barnard, join with a number
of emerging scholars and historians of print culture to address such ‘perils’, in a series of lively
and illuminating ‘case-study’ contributions to the subject”— Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Printing—History. 2. Printing—Social aspects—History. 3. Printing—Great
Britain—History. 4. Books—History. 5. Books—Social aspects—History.
6. Books—Great Britain—History. 7. Publishers and publishing—History. 8. Books and
reading—History. I. Patten, Eve, editor. II. McElligott, Jason, 1972- editor.
Z124.P46 2014
686.209—dc23 2014018834
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Tables viii
Acknowledgements ix
Notes on the Contributors x
1 The Perils of Print Culture: An Introduction 1
Jason McElligott and Eve Patten
2 The Practice of Book and Print Culture:
Sources, Methods, Readings 17
Leslie Howsam
3 ‘Pretious treasures made cheap’? The Real Cost
of Reading Roman History in Early Modern England 35
Freyja Cox Jensen
4 Early Printed Liturgical Books and the Modern
Resources That Describe Them: The Case of
the Hereford Breviary, 1505 51
Matthew Cheung Salisbury
5 ‘Lacking Ware, withal’: Finding Sir James Ware
among the Many Incarnations of his Histories 64
Mark Williams
6 Balancing Theoretical Models and Local Studies:
The Case of William St Clair and Copyright in Ireland 82
Sarah Crider Arndt
7 The Impact of Print in Ireland, 1680–1800:
Problems and Perils 96
Toby Barnard
8 Signs of the Times? Reading Signatures in
Two Late Seventeenth-Century Secret Histories 118
Rebecca Bullard
9 Dangerous Detours: The Perils of Victorian Periodicals
in the Digitised Age 134
Margery Masterson
v
vi Contents
10 Nineteenth-Century Print on the Move: A Perilous
Study of Translocal Migration and Print Skills Transfer 150
David Finkelstein
11 The Problem with Libraries: The Case of Thomas Marshall’s
Collection of English Civil War Printed Ephemera 167
Annette Walton
12 The ‘Lesser’ Dürer? Text and Image in
Early Modern Broadsheets 182
Cristina Neagu
13 ‘Fair Forms’ and ‘Withered Leaves’: The Rose Bud
and the Peculiarities of Periodical Print 204
Anna Luker Gilding
14 ‘Print Culture’ and the Perils of Practice 218
James Raven
Select Bibliography 238
Index 240
List of Figures
4.1 Signature D in the Worcester copy 55
4.2 F6 recto from the Bodleian copy, giving only
the first antiphon and psalm of Lauds 55
4.3 F6 recto from the Bodleian copy, giving only
the first antiphon and psalm of Lauds 56
4.4 The desired state of signature F, with the cancel applied 56
12.1 Christus am Kreuz mit Maria und Johannes
(Nuremberg, 1510). With the permission
of the British Museum 196
12.2 Der Tod und der Landsknecht (Nuremberg, 1510).
With the permission of the British Museum 197
12.3 Der Schulmeister (Nuremberg, 1510). With the
permission of the British Museum 198
12.4 St Catherine (1505/07). With the permission of
the Art Institute, Chicago 199
12.5 Christ on the Cross with the Virgin, St John, Longinus and
Mary Magdalen (c.1510). With the permission of the
British Museum 200
vii
List of Tables
4.1 Accurate collations of the Bodleian and Worcester
copies, together with the collations as provided
by Frere and ESTC 58
7.1 Dublin imprints: annual averages of recorded
titles by decade 98
viii
Acknowledgements
This book arises from a conference entitled ‘The Perils of Print Culture’,
which we hosted at Trinity College Dublin in September 2010. The
conference was attended by almost 100 scholars drawn from a range
of academic disciplines across four continents. Forty-two individual
presentations were made over the course of a sunny and convivial
weekend in Dublin.
We are very grateful to the Trinity Long Room Hub, the research cen-
tre for arts and humanities at TCD, for a grant towards the cost of the
conference. The event could not have taken place without this award.
Jason McElligott and Eve Patten
February 2014
ix