Open Access
The accidental growth of book history: A literature review of print culture and book history studies in South Africa
Elizabeth le Roux
- Vol. 30, Iss: 1, pp 39-64
TLDR
The study of book history is in its infancy in South Africa, with a small group of scholars working in the area and little sense of a shared body of literature, which could be used as foundational texts for those wishing to conduct research in this field as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
The study of book history is in its infancy in South Africa, with a small group of scholars working in the area and little sense of a shared body of literature, which could be used as foundational texts for those wishing to conduct research in this fi eld. This article describes an attempt to map the terrain of book and print culture studies in South Africa to date. Although it is only in recent years that writings have come to be grouped under a broader heading of book history (whether at conferences or in special issues of journals), work has been done in this fisince the early twentieth century. This is similar to the situation in other countries, where the ‘accidental’ growth of book history has meant that a great deal of work has been done on a wide variety of relevant topics. The article describes key strands in the literature, including print history, publishing history, the overlap with literary history, and studies of readership and reception.read more
Citations
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References
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Journal Article
What is the History of Books
TL;DR: The history of books as discussed by the authors is a rich field of research in the human sciences that has been studied since the time of the printing of the first book and has been called the social and cultural history of communication by print.
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Refiguring the archive
TL;DR: The history of the past is the trust of the present: Preservation and excavation in the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa G. Reid. as mentioned in this paper The Human Genome as Archive: Some Illustrations from the South: H. Mpe.
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The social uses of literacy : theory and practice in contemporary South Africa
Mastin Prinsloo,Mignonne Breier +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, Malan et al. discuss the role of literacy at work in the workplace in the Western Cape during the first democratic national elections in South Africa and discuss the importance of literacy for women.
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Southern African literatures
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a chronology of the history of Southern Africa, focusing on the antecedents of South African literature, including African or colonial literature from the early 1800s to the early 1970s.