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Copyright of Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada / Cahiers de la Société Bibliographique du Canada is the property of Bibliographical Society of Canada and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Before the nineteenth century, virtually all paper was handmade, and relatively more expensive than it is today. As a cost-cutting measure, bookbinders routinely reused paper that others had discarded, such [...]

SOMMAIRE A l'aube de leur cinquantieme annee d'existence en tant que publication savante, les Papers/Cahiers de la Societe bibliographique du Canada continuent de jouer un role primordial dans l'histoire du [...]

New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2000. 270 pp., illus.; $55.00 US (hardcover). ISBN: 1-58456-029-0. Watermark research is an important component of bibliographical investigation for all those [...]

New York: Random House, 2001. xii, 370 pp.; $ 38.95 (hardcover). ISBN 0-375-50444-3. A constant criticism of professional literature in all fields is that it is dull and boring, fails [...]

The Aritha van Herk Papers: First Accession. Comp. Sandra Mortensen. Ed. Apollonia Steele and Jan F. Tener. Biocritical essay by I.S. MacLaren. Canadian Archival Inventory Series, Literary Papers, No. 15. [...]

Laura J. Murray and Keren Rice, eds. Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts. Papers Given at the Thirty-Second Annual Conference on Editorial Problems University of Toronto, 14-16 November [...]

Sidney E. Berger. Edward Seymour & The Fancy Paper Company. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 9.006. 80 pp.; US $150 ISBN 1-58456-189-0 Another addition to the Oak Knoll Press [...]

Brendan Frederick R. Edwards. Paper Talk: A History of Libraries, Print Culture, and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada before 1960. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2005. 248 pp.; US $45.00. ISBN: 081085113X. [...]

New York: The Grolier Club, 2002. 192 pp.; US $50.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0 919672 44 X. This is the catalogue of the Grolier Club's exhibition held between December 2002 and [...]

New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press and the Winterthur Museum, Delaware, 2002. [i-x] 1-250 pp.; $49.95 US (hardcover). ISBN 1 58456 055 X. This is the second and revised edition [...]

53 (2000) (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2002). 1-298 pp.; $60.00 US (hardcover). ISBN 0 8139 2148 1. This is the latest volume of articles from the Bibliographical Society [...]

Carole Gerson and Jacques Michon, eds. History of the Book in Canada. Volume 3. 1918-1980. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. xxxiv + 638 pp.; $85.00 ISBN 0802090478 Craig Munro [...]

The article discusses a series of artists' books the author exhibited in Newfoundland and Labrador for a master of fine arts degree she completed at the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland. The text for the books, taken from letters written to the author's grandparents in the 1930s by a Newfoundland Methodist minister, W. H. Dotchon, is discussed. The construction of the books so as to reveal parts of the letters but not others is discussed, as is the meaning of rearranging historical materials for works of modern art.

The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada are the official publication of the Society and are distributed to members together with a semi-annual Bulletin. Membership fees are $35.00 yearly [...]

This editorial, written by the new editor of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, introduces a new thrust for the journal, that of publishing documents and tools that will be interesting and useful to the book studies community. The editorial also gives a brief overview of the papers in the current issue and themes for upcoming issues, as well as an overview of the editor’s own research on The Ryerson Press and Ontario’s Royal Commission on Book Publishing, which is the source of the feature document for this issue—“The Writers’ Union Meets the Royal Commission”—as well as one of the tools, a table of contents of Royal Commission testimony. Patricia Demers’s keynote speech from Congress 2018, articles by Meaghan Scanlon and Richard Virr, and an index compiled by Cameron Anstee are featured in the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the introduction to this special issue of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, Karol'Ann Boivin and Mylène Fréchette underscore the limited visibility of book supply chain intermediaries in the public sphere. As these intermediaries become more and more interesting to researchers, we must take their relative erasure from the public imagination into account. Who are these unsung heroes? What is the scope of their impact on the book as an object, and how do their actions fit in with those of other intermediaries within the book supply chain? These are the questions that guided this special issue, which focuses on the nature of collective action in the world of literature. In closing, they introduce the three articles featured in the special edition, penned by Mylène Fréchette herself, Philippe Rioux, and Maxime Bolduc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his literary response to the articles recently featured in the special issue of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, "OEuvrer ensemble. Les rouages collectifs dans la chaîne du livre,"? Nicholas Giguère addresses the myth of the lone genius bearing sole responsibility for the production of their literary works" a myth that has persisted but is now considered untenable among book historians. On the contrary, Giguère suggests that the "I"? always writes in collaboration with other literary agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their introduction to a special issue of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, co-editors Rebecka Taves Sheffield and Nicholas Giguère provide a brief historical overview of the emergence of an LGBTQ+ press in Canada, and describe how the history of LGBTQ+ print culture in Canada is inextricably intertwined with the country's history of media censorship, which has been often used to exclude LGBTQ+ people from public spaces. Sheffield and Giguère then summarize the articles, note, and review essay included in the special journal issue and describe how, on a whole, the contributors' research sheds new light on the relationship between LGBTQ+ print media and the communities that it has both served and helped to create, despite persistent censorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From Renaissance collections to nineteenth-century print exhibitions, the "museumification" of literature calls for a redefinition of the traditional relationship between literature and books. Based on a sample of literary exhibitions in museums, this article examines the issues they bring to the fore on a period that extends from the end of the nineteenth century to today. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the concomitant museumification of literature and books by observing the tensions that it creates on an institutional scale, both between libraries and museums and within certain literary paradigms (genres, "classics," etc.). This article thus explores the motivations that might explain the seemingly central place of the book in the literary exhibition as opposed to a multitude of objects a priori more spectacular. In this sense, the hyper-materiality of literature and its dissociation from the book (on which the very existence of the literary museum is paradoxically based) is the focus of detailed analysis here. The literary exhibition relies on the contextualization of the literary text and, especially in a time of emphasis on digital text, on its place in the history of the book. Museumification today tends to attribute additional value to literature that is on other platforms than paper as a way of adding a spectacular aspect to the exhibition. In this perspective, the contemporary "dematerialization" of the book poses an ultimate question - a question concerning digital literary collections and the use of digital platforms in the added value of literature. By facilitating and broadening the access to heritage, virtual exhibits (one example of the digital platform) offer the double advantage of protecting fragile collections and making their value more durable. They run the risk, however, of neutralizing the "aura" of paper books and the quest for tangible objects, which constitute the main reason for our society's attachment to paper books and the foundation of museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses papers presented at a conference series titled "Emerging Trends in Book History and Print Culture," hosted by students from the Groupe de recherches et d'études sur le livre au Québec (GRÉLQ) at the University of Sherbrooke and from the collaborative program in Book History and Print Culture (BHPC) at the University of Toronto. Topics of papers included the Québec gay militant periodical press and the representation of literature in museums.

The article offers information on papers presented at a conference series entitled "Emerging Trends in Book History and Print Culture," hosted by students from the Groupe de recherches et d'études sur le livre au Québec (GRÉLQ) at the University of Sherbrooke and the collaborative program in Book History and Print Culture (BHPC) at the University of Toronto. Topics of papers included the Québec gay militant periodical press and the representation of literature in museums.

The essays in this issue of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada / Cahiers de la Societe bibliographique du Canada proceed from papers delivered at the Fourth National [...]

The article discusses the Canadian author, World War II veteran, and school administrator Colin McDougall, focusing on a discussion of McDougall's war experiences and why he only wrote one book based off research into the collection of his personal papers at McGill University's Rare Books and Special Collections Department. Other topics include a discussion of McDougall's book "Execution" and its basis off of real life Canadian soldier Harold Pringle, biographical information on McDougall, and a discussion of McDougall's writing process and the emotions behind his text. It also discussed postmodern criticisms of "Execution."

An introduction is presented to this special issue dealing with the history of books, focusing particularly on the impact of electronic books on bibliographical studies.

Halifax: Dalhousie University. School of Library and Information Studies, Occasional Paper Series no. 58, 1996. 120 pp. $26.95 (paper). ISBN 0-7703-9768-9. In his introduction to this collection of essays, Eric [...]

In post-war Quebec, the fascicle format experienced a meteoric rise in popularity. In order to draw all the heuristic potential from an analysis of this format, our article is based on a detailed study of the editorial peritext of some forty fascicles of sentimental novels published between 1945 and 1963 by the Éditions Police-Journal. On the one hand, these dime novels are comparable to "small books"--each issue generally contains a single story spanning 32 pages. The publisher's branding, ostensibly serves as a guarantee of its quality. On the other hand, these objects with their soft and colourful covers are in constant dialogue with the magazine, often emulating its fundamental mechanisms. Through a detailed analysis of these little-explored romance novels, we hope to inspire a reflection on the popular print formats of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first novel by Frances Burney, Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, published in 1778, has enjoyed long-standing popularity and has never gone out of print in English. A distinct cluster of its editions appeared at the end of the nineteenth- to the beginning of the twentieth-century. This period in book history was marked by the creative work of private-press book designers, printers, binders, and illustrators inspired by the aestheticism, arts and crafts, and art nouveau movements. Even though their pioneering work was destined for narrow circles of collectors and connoisseurs, it profoundly influenced the development of both industrial and artists' book design, heightening the awareness of books' aesthetic appeal. The fin de siècle was a time of nostalgia for idealized pre-industrial society, symptomatic of late Victorian and Edwardian escapism, which found its expression in lavish book ornaments and illustrations executed in the Directoire and Louis XVI styles. Late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Evelinas, illustrated and decorated by Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham, and Hugh Thomson, produced by Dent, Newnes, and Macmillan, reflect a profound influence that innovative private presses had on general publishing practices and the quality of industrially produced books. These Evelinas, beautifully illustrated, bound in decorative covers, and well-printed, exemplify both the newly awakened interest in the book's physical makeup and aesthetic aspects and the late-Victorian and Edwardian escapist nostalgia characteristic of fin de siècle publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 1944, when the influential Toronto critic William Arthur Deacon lamented the absence of a Canadian "equivalent of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'" because Canadians are "still pioneering, still afraid of ourselves intellectually and emotionally," little did he know that a significant candidate was on the horizon. Gwethalyn Graham's second novel, Earth and High Heaven, which appeared later that year, launched an analysis of anti-Semitism that was quickly embraced by cultural arbiters and the general public in both Canada and the United States. This article situates the production and reception history of Graham's book in relation to other novels by English Canadian women writers that advocated for social change, and offers cases studies of the three most widely disseminated works that used the power of fiction to marshal empathy: Marshall Saunders's Beautiful Joe (1894), Graham's Earth and High Heaven (1944) and Joy Kogawa's Obasan (1981). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many critics have studied the relationship that unfolds between black men and white women in the novel How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired (1985) by Haitian-born Quebecois author Dany Laferrière. However, another type of relationship in Laferrière's work seems just as important, if not more important: the relationship between the aspiring writer and female readers as mediated by the book. This new angle allows for a rereading of the novel around a central axis--the idea of the literary Other, and the way it is articulated in the novel through the fictionalized book. This article first examines how, at the diegetic level, women own books, which makes them desirable to the narrator; in contrast, at the metadiegetic level, the terms of this equation are reversed, for it is now books, as mediators, which make objectified women attractive by being possessed by them. The relationship between the male reader (subject), the book (mediator), and the female reader (object) is then replaced by the relationship between the female reader (subject), the book (mediator), and the male reader (object), as the English-speaking white woman undertakes to judge the French-speaking Black (novelist) on the basis of books. In this context, the black male reader has no choice but to analyze the white female reader using her own book-based preconceptions. Indeed, whereas the white female reader judges the human subject based on his relationship to the book as an object, the black male reader uses the book to understand said human subject. It is therefore up to the aspiring black writer to help the white female reader rethink her relationship with books in general, and with literature in particular. This article shows that the narrator's objective (as a writer) is ultimately for his book to be read--in other words, to be possessed--by women, as he himself possesses women (as a womanizer). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how the seminal focus placed on portability as the defining characteristic of the book is erroneous and misguided. Based on Western concepts and early-modern bias that ultimately equates codex to book, the notion of portability is inapplicable to all book cultures and deserves re-examination. By redefining the meaning of the book to be an idea, an idea that can then be transposed textually and/or pictorially onto a substrate, scholars can come to understand how in ancient Egypt wall inscriptions and art were considered books, and how stone was a primary and fundamental book medium. Using Western, modern, and even global examples to explain how the book in its original state is a metaphysical entity, the notion of the book as object is in turn discarded because defining the book by its medium causes numerous restrictions - the object is not the book, merely its carrier. The importance of physical portability therefore becomes replaced in favour of metaphysical portability and its various implications. By using ancient Egyptian tomb walls as a case study, the meaning and boundaries placed on the book in book studies will be reframed and redefined by drawing Egyptian cultural practices, literature, ideologies, and the use of stone to establish examples of non-portable books. Any discussion of ancient book cultures primarily remains focused on papyrus or clay tablets (i.e., portable materials), a focus that skews the reality of ancient book cultures and gives rise to bias due to the neglect of other mediums that were far more important for ideological purposes. Egyptian book culture was, in fact, more than papyrus; a variety of materials were used as substrates, not all of which were portable in the conventional sense, but neither their use nor their significance to ancient Egyptian society should be dismissed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the uses of literature in The Labor Advocate: A Weekly Labor Reform Newspaper (Toronto, 1890-91). As editor of the Advocate, Thomas Phillips Thompson aimed to increase awareness of the means and consequences of industrial capitalism, and thus enhance the possibility of social justice for the working class. He did so in a mixed format periodical that included poetry, short fiction, and serialized novels as well as editorials, biographies, obituaries, reports, letters, and columns. Over forty-four issues, Thompson experimented with literary expression to attract readers and foster the democratic reform of social organization. Analysis of the Advocate points to the importance of communication strategies in both the early history of the Canadian labour press and the longer history of labour in transnational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the discovery of a holograph manuscript by the American poet and philosopher George Santayana and the subsequent inquiry into its provenance. (1) During a retrospective conversion [...]

SOMMAIRE Cette livraison speciale des Papers/Cahiers s'articule autour de la culture du livre a Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador. Cette publication coincide avec la commemoration de deux importants anniversaires. Il y a en effet [...]

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2001. viii, 376 pp.; $34.99 (hardcover). ISBN 0-7710-8833-7. It's not often that the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada reviews fiction but Thomas Wharton's Salamander [...]

Michel Brisebois. Impressions: 250 Years of Printing in the Lives of Canadians. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1999. 64 pp.; $20.00 (paper). ISBN 1-55041-408-9. I would like to call this book [...]

--. Pierre Ouvrard Master Binder a Retrospective/Maitre Relieur une retrospective May 15 -- August 15, 2000. [Edmonton]: Bruce Peel Special Collections Library, 2000. [20 p.]; Free (paper). The publication, in [...]

Mirjam M. Foot. The History of Bookbinding as a Mirror of Society. The Panizzi Lectures 1997. London: The British Library, 1998. 112 pp.; $40 (paper). ISBN 0 7123 4597 3. [...]

Alan Bartram. Making Books: Design in British Publishing since 1945. London and New Castle, Del.: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 1999. 160 pp.; $39.95 US (paper). ISBN 0-7123-4633-3 [...]

Bruce Peel Special Collections Library. Pierre Ouvrard: Master Bookbinder/Maitre relieur. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2000. xxxi, 95 pp.; $29.95 (paper). ISBN 0-88864-360-8. $40.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0-88864-361-6. The publication, in [...]

Irene Oore and Oriel C.L. MacLennan. Marie-Claire Blais: An Annotated Bibliography. Toronto: ECW Press, 1998. 159 pp.; $16.95 (paper). ISBN 1-55022-351-8. The subject of this fine bibliography is a particularly [...]

Carman Cumming. Sketches from a Young Country: The Images of Grip Magazine. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1997. xiv, [2], 275, [i] pp.; $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8020-0695-7. $18.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8020-7646-7. [...]

William H. Helfand, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. [Philadelphia]: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1998. [ii], 64 pp.; $10.00 U.S. (paper). ISBN 0-914076-93-0. Far from casting off all that [...]

University of Alberta. 1996. [36 pp.] (paper). Drawing upon items from its own holdings, the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library of the University of Alberta presented between 5 February and [...]

This paper is a slightly revised version of a keynote address given at the founding conference of the History of the Book in Canada which took place at the National [...]

Teeswater, Ont.: Reference Press, 1997. 110pp.; $25.00 (cerlox binding in paper). ISBN 0-919981-62-3. A pioneering effort in the field of academic periodicals of opinion, The University Magazine (1907-1920) and its [...]

Foreword by Jean-Francois Vilian. London: The British Library; New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 1996. xxix, [1], 258 pp. $49.95 U.S. (cloth), $34.95 U.S. (paper). ISBN 1-884718-25-6 (cloth, Oak Knoll); [...]

The title of this monograph is well chosen. It is a collection of seven essays based on papers given at the 1994 Rare Book Group seminar held at Marsh's Library, [...]