Showing papers in "Book History in 2004"
TL;DR: For instance, the fox-terrier is a judge of the behaviour of a human being as mentioned in this paper, and the nature of the human behaviour is excluded from his comprehension, even when the human being's good will toward the dog is completely justified.
Abstract: Take our dogs and ourselves, connected as we are by a tie more intimate than most ties in this world; and yet . . . how insensible, each of us, to all that makes life signiWcant for the other!—we to the rapture of bones under hedges, or smells of trees and lamp-posts, they to the delights of literature and art. As you sit reading the most moving romance you ever fell upon, what sort of a judge is your fox-terrier of your behaviour? With all his good will toward you, the nature of your conduct is absolutely excluded from his comprehension. To sit there like a senseless statue when you might be taking him to walk and throwing sticks for him to catch! What queer disease is this that comes over you every day, of holding things and staring at them for hours together, paralyzed of motion and vacant of all conscious life?1
113 citations
TL;DR: Coetzee's Giving Offense (1996) is a collection of twelve essays that make up the book as discussed by the authors, most of which originally appeared between 1988 and 1993, and constitute neither a "history" nor a "strong theory" of censorship.
Abstract: on censorship, J. M. Coetzee’s Giving Offense (1996) stands out as an avowedly singular intervention. As Coetzee himself points out in the preface, the twelve essays that make up the volume, most of which originally appeared between 1988 and 1993, constitute neither a “history” nor a “strong theory” of censorship. Rather they represent an attempt, Wrst, “to understand a passion with which I have no intuitive sympathy, the passion that plays itself out in acts of silencing and censoring,” and second, “to understand, historically and sociologically, why it is that I have no sympathy with that passion.”1 These prefatory remarks prepare the way for a wide-ranging interdisciplinary study that is at once psychoanalytic, literary, historical, sociological, and autobiographical. They also make plain the antirationalist spirit of Coetzee’s enquiry, which centers not so much on legislative history or the practice of censorship as on the passions revealed and concealed in writings for or against it. One of the most important essays, “Emerging from Censorship” (1993), seeks, for instance, to understand the curiously “contagious power” of the censor’s “paranoia” (37). Why is it, Coetzee asks, that writers—and here he includes himself—so often “record the feeling of being touched and contaminated by the sickness of the state” (35)? The Writer, the Critic, and the Censor
28 citations
TL;DR: Tom's Cabin and the material that surrounded it when it first appeared as a series of installments in the free-soil weekly the National Era as discussed by the authors was a formidable challenge: how to shape an account of slave culture that would have a greater impact than the antislavery discourse typical of the abolitionist press.
Abstract: Tom’s Cabin and the material that surrounded it when it Wrst appeared as a series of installments in the free-soil weekly the National Era.2 Publishing in that context, Stowe faced a formidable challenge: how to shape an account of slave culture that would have a greater impact than the antislavery discourse already typical of the abolitionist press. In representing slavery during the 1840s, writers of slave narratives, sermons, poems, and other texts often sought to elicit empathy from their readers. But it was Uncle Tom’s Cabin that established sympathetic identiWcation as a widespread reading practice for consuming the story of slavery. How did Stowe’s tale accomplish that end? Stowe was well aware that neither her facts nor her arguments would be new to readers of the Era. Indeed, in a sense they were all too familiar. By 1851 every edition of the National Era included images of fugitives as well as political discussions, religious appeals, and other well-rehearsed attacks on slave culture. William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the National Era
13 citations
TL;DR: The problem arose when Harper & Brothers wrote back to complain that they had been cheated; the new work by "Currer Bell" was being issued in America by their main rival in publishing, T. B. Peterson as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: report that “Jane Eyre had had a great run in America.” This was good news, of course, and yet it created a complication that required immediate attention. As a result of the success of Jane Eyre, Charlotte wrote, an American publisher, Harper & Brothers, “had consequently bid high for the Wrst sheets of the next work by ‘Currer Bell’ which they [Brontë’s publisher, Smith & Elder] had promised to let him have.” These “Wrst sheets” would have secured for Harper, for a small fee paid to the British publisher, the proofs of the next manuscript, enabling them to issue the Wrst edition of the novel in the American market if not “courtesy of the trade” rights to its “exclusive” publication there.1 The problem arose when Harper & Brothers wrote back to complain that they had been cheated; the new work by “Currer Bell” was being issued in America by their main rival in publishing, T. B. Peterson. Harper & Brothers “asked to know the meaning of such false play.” Enclosed in the letter was a note from Acton and Ellis Bell’s rather shady British publisher, Thomas Newby, “afWrming that ‘to the best of his belief’ Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights—Agnes Grey—and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall—(the new work) were all the production of one writer.” As Charlotte wrote, “Jane Eyre Fever”
11 citations
9 citations
TL;DR: The theory of paratexts, as outlined by Gerard Genette, focuses on works of Wction and describes them as a “threshold of interpretation.”2 Paratext, whether written or devised by authors, publishers, or any other promoter, are designed to persuade people to buy and read the book as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Much can be gleaned from an introduction or preface about the book to which it is prelude, the author, his ideas, and their context.1 These texts have a distinctive structure and a speciWc logic, however, and they enable students of book history to propose another angle of research that aims at showing the place and position of the printed matter within a cultural setting. This can be an especially fruitful terrain in the world of Yiddish: a vernacular of the Ashkenazi Diaspora of Europe, a language that Jews spoke throughout the continent regardless of frontiers, a language that formed and united a people and helped forge its unique cultural blend. This was not the Jewish Latin—a fate that befell the scholarly, highbrow Hebrew—Yiddish was a vibrant, living vernacular. Yiddish paratexts of the early modern era can therefore shed light on books, their status and role in Ashkenazi society, and their importance to Jewish culture in Europe. The theory of paratexts, as outlined by Gerard Genette, focuses on works of Wction and describes them as a “threshold of interpretation.”2 Paratexts, whether written or devised by authors, publishers, or any other promoter, are designed to persuade people to buy and read the book and An Invitation to Buy and Read
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore how dedications frame their works in changes made following a patron's death, a situation that often forced former clients to confront anew the conventional language of their dedications.
Abstract: The death of a patron could be devastating. In early modern England, most writers depended upon the patronage of the nobility, as the numerous book dedications of the era bear witness. These dedications, whose pleadings for patronage, protection, and place we almost unthinkingly label "fulsome" and "sycophantic," can be difficult for us to take seriously today. Yet, considered as integral physical parts of the books in which they appeared, book dedications provide significant insights into the operations of the patronage system and the expectations early modern writers had of their readers.1 Particularly rich opportunities for exploring how dedications frame their works arise in changes made following a patron's death, a situation that often forced former clients to confront anew the conventional language of their dedications.
8 citations
TL;DR: The French Convert is not text alone but an unpredictable interplay among authors, readers, and printers/publishers as discussed by the authors, and the history of its many printings reveal important trends in Anglo-American print domains and consumer interests during the eighteenth century.
Abstract: the Atlantic world than they did twenty years ago, particularly with the publication of the Wrst volume of the American Antiquarian Society’s magisterial History of the Book in America series, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World. Although our knowledge has increased dramatically, the eighteenth-century book The French Convert still languishes in almost total obscurity. This widely reprinted chapbook, which eventually ran in more than forty editions in Britain and America, has received scant attention from historians, perhaps partly because of difWculties in assigning it authorship, date, or even initial location of publication. But these qualities make The French Convert signiWcant and interesting, even beyond its obvious attractions as a largely forgotten colonial best-seller. A book like The French Convert is not text alone but an unpredictable interplay among authors, readers, and printers/publishers. Though textual analysis has a place in book history, it alone does not sufWce to explain the historical uses of a book.1 Thus both this book’s text and the history of its many printings reveal important trends in Anglo-American print domains and consumer interests during the eighteenth century.2 This article offers a case study of The French Convert and its career in print in order to consider two larger Recovering The French Convert
5 citations
TL;DR: The history of the origins, customs, laws, and religion of the Inca empire was written by Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616) as discussed by the authors, who probably never imagined the extent to which what he called the "true meaning" of his account was to change language, form, and content in the two centuries that followed its initial publication.
Abstract: Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616) set out to compose the history of the origins, customs, laws, and religion of the Inca empire. Boastfully asserting that he was the only person capable of reproducing “clearly and distinctively. . . . what existed in that [Incan] republic prior to the Spaniards,” he probably never imagined the extent to which what he called the “true meaning” (verdadero sentido) of his account was to change language, form, and content in the two centuries that followed its initial publication.1 “. . . To Collect and Abridge . . . Without Changing Anything Essential”
4 citations
TL;DR: One of the more acute expressions of the distress of Hebrew authors in the last third of the century was voiced by Yehudah Leib Gordon (1830-92), the greatest of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) poets as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: One hundred and Wfty years of arduous attempts to revive Hebrew as a modern literary language preceded its revival as a spoken language. Yet, from its incipience to the end of the nineteenth century, modern Hebrew literature could barely gain itself a narrow circle of devoted readers. One of the more acute expressions of the distress of Hebrew authors in the last third of the century was voiced by Yehudah Leib Gordon (1830–92), the greatest of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) poets.1 In 1871 Gordon published the poem “For Whom Do I Labor?” out of a sense that, lacking an audience, he was perhaps the last of the Hebrew poets: Another Look at “The Life of ‘Dead’ Hebrew”
4 citations
TL;DR: In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Uzanne published a book entitled "Worthy of Our Era: Books Worthy of our Era?" as discussed by the authors, which was published by the Société des Bibliophiles Contemporains (SBC).
Abstract: Belgian Symbolist painter Félicien Rops (1833–98) when describing his friend, a paragon of bibliophilia in Wn-de-siècle France. During an era of intense bibliophilic activity spanning the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the Wrst decade of the twentieth, Uzanne (1851–1931) was passionately and prodigiously engaged with the printed word as an author (more than Wfty volumes of Wction and criticism), journalist (regular contributions to L’Echo de Paris and numerous other French and foreign periodicals),2 bibliographer, and ad hoc publisher. He founded three inXuential reviews devoted to the book: Le Livre: Bibliographie moderne (1880–89), Le Livre Moderne (1890–91), and L’Art et l’Idée: Revue contemporaine du dilettantisme littéraire et de la curiosité (1892–93). A habitué of bibliophile societies, he ran two of his own, the Société des Bibliophiles Contemporains Books Worthy of Our Era?