Showing papers in "Book History in 2012"
TL;DR: The authors explored the dual nature of that challenge and outlined some principles toward the bibliographical study of e-books, taking the Canadian novel The Sentimentalists (Gaspereau Press, 2009) as a test case.
Abstract: E-books are human artifacts and bear the traces of their making no less for being digital, though they bear those traces in ways bibliographers have yet to explain thoroughly. The bibliographic consideration of e-books is a dual challenge in that it must reckon not only with unfamiliar forms of textuality but also with a pervasive cultural discourse about e-books that tends to mystify the textual condition itself. This article explores the dual nature of that challenge and outlines some principles toward the bibliographical study of e-books, taking the Canadian novel The Sentimentalists (Gaspereau Press, 2009) as a test case.
51 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored what producers and observers of the latenineteenth and early-twentieth century American print marketplace understood an appropriate report of the world to be and how social forces and cultural values shaped this understanding.
Abstract: This article explores what producers and observers of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American print marketplace understood an appropriate report of the world to be and how social forces and cultural values shaped this understanding. In doing so, it analyzes the discourse in print industry trade publications from 1885 to 1910. This study charts the rise and passing of a particular discourse about literary work and facticity, a discourse that reflected differing ideas and intense cultural negotiation about appropriate representational strategies, prose style, voice, and genre in print culture, including imaginative and journalistic expression. The formerly distinct but fluid genres of literature and journalism separated into rigid categories of public expression.
20 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a survey of the most significant work in the field of book historical studies in an African context, focusing on the material forms of texts, their distribution, marketing, readership or impact.
Abstract: African print culture has not been widely studied from a historical perspective. Many studies focus on the present, without interrogating the historical developments that led to the present situation. We do find information available on what has been published over time, but little attention has been paid to the material forms of texts, their distribution, marketing, readership, or impact. Much earlier work is also largely descriptive. It is only recently—in the past ten years or so—that theoretical models of book history have begun to influence studies in this field. This essay is the first attempt to organize book historical studies in an African context. While this survey cannot be considered comprehensive, given the scope of the continent and its research, it presents a sampling of the most significant work and highlights trends.
14 citations
TL;DR: A more evolutionary understanding of the "birth of the modern travel guide" by contextualizing the guidebooks of Murray and Baedeker within the wider travel guide genre and focusing on their lesser-known predecessors is presented in this article.
Abstract: This article calls for a more evolutionary understanding of the “birth of the modern travel guide” by contextualizing the guidebooks of Murray and Baedeker within the wider genre and by focusing on their lesser-known predecessors. An analysis of British travel guides to and accounts of “Belgium” from the period 1815–1870 reveals that the division between the “travel account” and the “travel guide” was not always clear-cut, as both genres were closely intertwined. It demonstrates that the process of gathering travel information became less transnational during the period 1815–1870 and increasingly reliant on internal borrowing from other travel guides and accounts published in English. We therefore need a more nuanced assessment of the use of travel literature as a source for the study of intercultural representation, imagery, and stereotypes—an assessment in which there is ample room for a transnational focus.
13 citations
TL;DR: The authors traces the complex transformations of Neville's utopian travel narrative The Isle of Pines as it traveled across the Continent in an attempt to shed new light on its contemporary impact and significance outside of England.
Abstract: Henry Neville’s utopian travel narrative The Isle of Pines, first published in London in June 1668, became an instant bestseller on the European market. Within a few months more than twenty foreign editions were printed in five western European languages, and numerous responses, commentaries, and adaptations followed over the years, leaving the reader wondering whether the story was fact, fiction, or something else entirely. This essay traces the complex transformations of this successful pamphlet as it traveled across the Continent in an attempt to shed new light on its contemporary impact and significance outside of England. In an attempt to shed new light on its contemporary impact and significance outside of England.
12 citations
TL;DR: Early literary criticism found expression in the same paratexts as the history of the book and vice versa as discussed by the authors. But although they share common artifacts, these two lines of inquiry remain largely separate.
Abstract: Book historians focus on the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as a period of transformation in authorship and reading practices in England. Their studies often turn to paratextual matter like prefaces and dedications for evidence about how authors, patrons, publishers, and readers negotiated their roles in the changing literary marketplace. Early literary criticism found expression in the same paratexts. Yet although they share common artifacts, these two lines of inquiry remain largely separate. In this article, I bring these threads of inquiry together to show how the history of literary criticism contributes to the history of the book (and vice versa).
11 citations
TL;DR: Duke as discussed by the authors was America's first black pinup magazine, which aimed to validate African American men's participation in consumer society and their efforts to achieve the good life through short stories, feature articles, and partially nude centerfolds.
Abstract: Duke debuted as America’s first black pinup magazine in the summer of 1957. Through short stories, feature articles, and partially nude centerfolds, Chicago-based Duke aimed to validate African American men’s participation in consumer society and their efforts to achieve the good life. In considering why the magazine folded after only six issues, this essay documents the history behind its production as well as the reception of its content. The essay finds that decisions made by Duke’s white editor, Ben Burns, and intraracial debates over middle-class respectability combined to frame the magazine’s surprisingly conservative tone on matters of leisure, consumerism, and black male sexuality.
11 citations
TL;DR: The category "ephemera" is a classification that does powerful rhetorical, practical, ideological, and disciplinary work as discussed by the authors, and it can be seen as a response to the commercialization of letters and the proliferation of print.
Abstract: The category “ephemera,” like the category “Literature,” is a classification that does powerful rhetorical, practical, ideological, and disciplinary work. This essay historicizes these value-laden classifications across disciplinary and period boundaries. It begins by suggesting how librarians and collectors have defined ephemera since the 1960s, then steps back to the eighteenth century in Britain, arguing that the categories of “ephemera” and “Literature” were reciprocally constructed parts of a classification system that was a response to the commercialization of letters and the proliferation of print. But today, new media technologies and digital archives are destabilizing centuries-old categorical distinctions, and eighteenth-century authors’ classification work can help us to think through the challenges and opportunities we face in the digital age.
11 citations
TL;DR: Based on a quantitative analysis of the place and form of publication of Australian novels from 1860 to 1899, the authors argue that local publishing and writing were significantly more important to colonial literary culture than these recent accounts allow, and that a local readership for Australian fiction also helps to explain the activities of British book publishers in the colonial market.
Abstract: Recent studies of the book (and of publishing and reading) in Australia emphasize the importance of British books and authors for colonial literary culture, while describing the absence of local publishing and disregard of colonial readers for Australian fiction. Based on a quantitative analysis of the place and form of publication of Australian novels from 1860 to 1899, I argue that local publishing and writing were significantly more important to colonial literary culture than these recent accounts allow, and that a local readership for Australian fiction also helps to explain the activities of British book publishers in the colonial market.
9 citations
TL;DR: This article examined Random House's decision to relaunch the Modern Library of America series in 1992 and argued that instead of returning to its roots in democratic cosmopolitanism, the series came to resemble the very middlebrow ventures it had historically been defined against.
Abstract: This article examines Random House’s decision to relaunch the Modern Library of America series in 1992. The series had a major influence on American culture in the interwar period, making significant works of modernist literature available to middle-class readers for a low price, but it faded after the paperback revolution of the 1960s. I follow the New Modern Library as it repopulated its catalog, experimented with electronic media, and published a controversial Best Books list, and I argue that instead of returning to its roots in democratic cosmopolitanism, the series came to resemble the very middlebrow ventures it had historically been defined against.
1 citations