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In late 1860, Charles Mudie’s plans to expand his circulating library inspired his detractors and competitors to challenge the validity of his ‘right to selection’ – the process by which he chose which texts he would loan from his library. Over the next few months, prominent periodicals featured correspondence and editorials that decried or supported Mudie’s ostensible monopoly over literary exchange. While the initial argument was economic, the dispute extended beyond economics to religion, literary quality and culture. To connect these disparate fields, writers turned to the politics of interpretation: that is, whether specialists should define literary culture, or if a public comprised of individual, &#x2018.common’ readers should determine their own standards for books. Mudie’s opponents advocated for individual readers’ right to read what they liked, how they liked. His supporters argued that the public needed specialists to guide their literary tastes. The resulting exchange about what I call the ‘literary public’ amplified conversations integral to the burgeoning field of literary studies as it was emerging in the London colleges through the 1850s and 1860s. The contributing authors, publishers and critics justified or refuted ideas foundational to the establishment of English literature as an academic study for the common reader. As part of the mid-century confrontation between popular literary consumption and academic culture, the Mudie debate helped to politicize the reception and circulation of English literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author introduces the journal's special issue focusing on the themes of libraries, the field of History of the Book, and literature, from the 12th century to the late Middle Ages, and mentions French philosopher and critical theorist Michel Foucault and his notion of a library.

One of the most significant printers of German-language heterodox, spiritualist, and hermetic works in the seventeenth-century United Provinces has long been its most enigmatic. Between late 1645 and early 1650, Hans Fabel (1616-after 1650) originally of Wetzlar, printed or published at least sixty-two books and pamphlets at his offices in Amsterdam. In sheer quantity, these works made him one of the most prolific printers of German-language books in the United Provinces during this short period. However, in the secondary literature on the European book trade, Fabel has been dismissed as a ‘fictive imprint’ or a virtual publisher. Drawing on a variety of heretofore unknown or overlooked sources, both manuscript and print, this article presents for the first time a detailed bio-bibliographical account of Fabel's Amsterdam enterprise. It situates his activity within a variety of different contexts, the most important of these being his participation in the overlapping correspondence networks product of the dislocations of the Thirty Years’ War, particularly those of the London intelligencer Samuel Hartlib (ca. 1600-1662), and the Silesian mystic Abraham von Franckenberg (1587-1652). Indeed, the Thirty Years’ War was crucial to the trajectory of Fabel's business. The printer's own youthful experiences of the conflict in Wetzlar probably engendered within him an inclination to specialize in printing spiritualist works which condemned religious squabbling and conflict; his networks provided his business with customers, copy, and investors, and, finally, the end of the conflict in 1648 appears, along with economic considerations, to have decisively influenced his decision to leave Amsterdam and return to his native Germany. This investigation is seen as a further contribution to charting the terra incognita of the heterodox and clandestine bookmarkets and cultures of central Europe during the seventeenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper gives an overview of our current state of knowledge around English private libraries of the seventeenth century, covering such aspects as size, contents, sources, storage, and owners' attitudes to their books. It identifies areas where our information is poor, or based too much upon small numbers of well-known examples, and highlights the need for further research and better reference tools. The value of having a better understanding of this field, in the wider context of book history, is also considered. The author refers to his web-based listing of book owners of the period and suggests a model for its expansion into a fuller directory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From about 1780 a thriving publishing industry for travel accounts developed in France, but its rich visual component has not been closely analysed. Taking Auguste de Forbin's Voyage dans le Levant and Marie-Gabriel de Choiseul-Gouffier's Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce as paradigmatic examples, I reconsider illustrated travel books in light of new theories of reading generated by historians of the book. The multifarious nature of these books – juggling word and image, and coordinating the work of a large number of writers, researchers, artists and print-makers – provides a radically alternative model for interpreting travel representation in the age of expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the "The 15th-Century Book Trade: An Evidence-Based Assessment and Visualization of the Distribution, Sale, and Reception of Books in the Renaissance" history project. Topics discussed include the "Material Evidence in Incunabula" online database, the transmission and dissemination of incunabular texts, and the circulation and reuse of illustrations.

A bibliography on the subject of the history of books is presented, which includes the books "Manuscript and Print in London c. 1475–1530," by Julia Boffey, "Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel: A Publishing History," by Sally Dugan, and "Books, Borrowers, and Shareholders: Scottish Circulating Libraries and Subscription Libraries before 1825, A Survey and Listing," by K. A. Manley.