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The article delves into how editors' perceptions of Shakespeare's First Folio evolved over 400 years, challenging established beliefs and revealing potential prior publications of his plays that might change their historical significance.

The article focuses on the cultural significance and diverse roles of the 1623 Folio edition of Shakespeare's works, exploring its representation of Shakespeare, its existence as a collection, and its widespread presence in institutional and personal collections worldwide. It delves into the book's multifaceted nature, discussing its functions as a symbolic representation of Shakespeare, a collection of plays, and a highly sought-after item in various collections globally.

The article focuses on reevaluating the significance of the 1623 Shakespeare Folio, discussing its resistance to a fixed chronology and challenging traditional perceptions about its creation and literary value. It explores the complexities surrounding the Folio's historical context, scholarly narratives, and its role as a representation of Shakespeare's work within a multi-dimensional temporal framework.

The article focuses on the interrelation between theater history and the history of books, examining an actor's inventory to illuminate the significance of high-status books and their implications for the 1623 Shakespeare Folio. Topics include the construction of a fictionalized "Shakespeare Company" in the Folio's list of actors, its exclusions and representations, and the exploration of alternative narratives revealed through contemporaneous lists and references within the plays.

Adopting an approach inspired by the field of book history, this article examines a heavily annotated copy of the Bach-Gesellschaft edition that belonged to Donald Francis Tovey. Tovey's annotations mix scholarly acumen with witticism and wonderment, variously providing thoughts on performance practice, complaints about idiotic editors, personal memories of past performances, and penetrating critical commentary. I consider the affordances of this edition as a material object, reflecting on the new ways of being around Bach's music that it enabled. The later sections of the article suggest that Tovey's wider engagement with Bach's music might be viewed as a kind of resistance to the Gesellschaft edition's presentation of Bach's compositions as a series of ontologically stable musical works. As well as contributing new insights into Tovey's achievements, I demonstrate the value of a richer understanding of what might constitute 'score-based' engagement with music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book" explores the concept of "the book" and its various meanings in different languages and cultures. The book focuses on the English-European understanding of "the book" as a distinct phenomenon, but also includes chapters that examine non-European cultures' perspectives on books. The contributors challenge the boundaries of the concept of "the book" and explore how it relates to different civilizations and languages. The volume encourages readers to reflect on the impact of words and their accepted meanings. [Extracted from the article]

The article centers on a handwritten account of the stillbirth of conjoined twins in eighteenth-century Mexico stitched into a book about natural history. Finding things in books as part of an accidental process of discovery in the present does not equal random acts by users in the past. Inserting documents and prints of various kinds into books represented for historical actors a distinct kind of archival practice that combined careful observation, deliberation, and a certain measure of dexterity to manipulate the physicality of a book. Examples of records and objects found in other titles from the same time period and region help to contextualize the way people used books and how they stored memories, as well as what we as researchers can learn when critically analyzing the materiality of print. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the primary purpose of the blood prohibition in the Hebrew Bible is not to reflect ethical sensitivity toward animals; rather, it is part of an anthropocentric ideology that promotes both human ascendancy over, and kinship with, animals. The blood prohibition places a high value on animal life, but it does this to justify, and socially authorize, the eating of animals while simultaneously alleviating the deeply embedded human guilt over killing them. To display this, I contrast how animals and blood function in the Priestly texts of the Hebrew Bible versus the non-Priestly texts—focusing on the primeval history of Genesis and the book of Leviticus. Most tellingly, the non-Priestly material in the primeval history contains no blood prohibition and thus does not contain the profound ambivalence toward animals and eating them that the Priestly material does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a study of interfaces to long-lived digital humanities (DH) resources using an innovative combination of research methods from book history, interface design, and digital preservation and curation to investigate how interfaces to DH resources have changed over time. To do this, we used the Internet Archive's Wayback machine to investigate the original presentation and all subsequent changes to the interfaces of a small sample of projects. The study addresses the following questions: What can we learn from a study of interfaces to DH material? How have interfaces to DH materials changed over the course of their existence? Do these changes affect the way the resource is used, and the way it conveys meaning? Should we preserve interfaces for future scholarship? We show that a valuable information may be derived from the interfaces of long-lived projects. Visual design can communicate subtle messages about the way the resource was originally conceived by its creators and subsequent changes show how knowledge of user behaviour developed in the DH community. Interfaces provide information about the intellectual context of early digital projects. They can also provide information about the changing place of DH projects in local and national infrastructures, and the way that projects have sought to survive in challenging funding environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 article focuses on book history and cataloguing of manuscripts. Topics discussed include library collections, antiquarianism and bibliographies. Other topics which includes literary studies, scholar and librarian Henry Bradshaw and scholar Neil Ker are also discussed. In addition, new criticism is also mentioned.

Medieval chronicles offer valuable source material for historians studying the Middle Ages. Like all medieval books, also chronicles were written and copied by hand, causing both unintentional errors and intentional alterations to the text. Stemmatologists are trying to recreate the family tree of the different copies. In recent years, many computer-assisted methods have emerged which several editors have already used. Computer-assisted stemmatology can offer valuable tools not only for editors but also for historians. They can also help to test traditional methods of textual criticism, point out errors in earlier historiography and create possibilities for studying cultural links and the history of books. In this article it is demonstrated how the use of different computer-assisted stemmatological methods can reveal new information concerning the manuscript tradition of a Finnish 16th-century chronicle, Paulus Juusten's Catalogus et ordinaria successio Episcoporum Finlandensium. With the help of these methods, it can also be shown that the stemma put forward in the latest edition of the chronicle should be reconsidered. Using PAUP, RHM, and SplitsTree, it is pointed out that these methods create similar results as traditional textual criticism. These results can be obtained considerably more quickly than with traditional methods and without the subjective decision by a stemmatologist between 'original readings and errors'. [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.

This article explores the career of John Nutt, trade publisher ‘near Stationers-Hall’ from 1698 to 1706, and, from then until his death in 1716, printer ‘in the Savoy’ of The Tatler and of law books as assignee of the royal law printing patent. The particular emphasis of the article is on the three multi-volume serial publications printed in monthly parts by John Nutt, beginning in 1708 and continued for fifteen years after his death by his successor and widow, Elizabeth, ultimately in partnership with their son, Richard. An examination of the rare surviving copies of the monthly parts as issued, with their original titlepages and trade dress intact, reveals the proprietors’ promotional efforts for this emerging form of publication and permits the actual timing of their appearance in print to be precisely established. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The identity of the anonymous printer of the unauthorised edition of Rochester's “Poems on Several Occasions”, 1680 has been sought without success ever since it first appeared. This paper explores the background against which it appears and identifies the printing house involved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

In order to create viable bookblocks, binders presented with problematic textblocks resorted to a number of strategies to create out of what they were given the gatherings they needed in order to sew the books and allow boards and/or covers to be attached to them. These are what might be called “binders' gatherings” as they are quite distinct from the gatherings envisaged by the writers or printers of books, and often cut across them in ways that can confuse those who try to work out how the books were first printed or written. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

David Pearson's discussion of the formation of a directory of seventeenth-century book owners is taken up and extended in this article. Pearson's ’landscape of book ownership‘ has material dimensions which could usefully be included in such a directory. Housing books in a room, on shelves, surrounded by additional collections, are all contributions to this landscape. Pearson's call for a reference framework is answered by the proposal of a typology of early English library rooms, based on their attributes of scale, fittings and location with the plan of the country house. Case studies are drawn from an intensive study of the county of Norfolk. Archival evidence supports a re-evaluation of the problem of the name of the book room: study, library or closet? Personal collections housed in closets are linked to single owners, but the study or library can be seen as the open resource for the household, rather than assuming that it is primarily for the male owner of each generation. The reappraisal of the different roles of these spaces within the house allows notions of shared use to break down some existing boundaries in the scholarly literature, particularly over the gendered nature of the closet. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1709 a Latin translation of Andrea Palladio's guide to Rome, L’Antichità di Roma (Rome, 1554), was published in Oxford. The publication was sponsored by the famous Dean of Christ Church, Henry Aldrich (1648-1710). This article examines a previously unrecorded copy of the book and throws new light on the circumstances surrounding the publication of this 1709 translation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A bibliography is presented of history periodicals and corresponding articles that relate to the history of books, including "Unpacking the Warburg Library," by J. Kraye published in "Common Knowledge," "The People Must Have Plenty of Good Books," by G. Little published in "Library & Information History," and "The Neglected Textbook: Placing Educational Publishing in Context," by J. Fisher published in "Script & Print."

A bibliography of articles and periodicals related to book and publishing history is presented, including the article "'Marxist Publisher' by James S. Allen," by P.M. Filardo in the 2011 issue of "American Communist History," "The Storage of Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Their Travels 1541–1967," by M. Sparks in the 2011 issue of "Archaeologia Cantiana," and "William Rooney’s 'An Irish Rural Library,'" by G. Long in the 2010 issue of the "Dublin James Joyce Journal."

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]

A list of contributors and reviewers for the publication are presented.

The article presents a bibliography on book history including the articles "The Painting of Hand-Coloured Zoological Illustrations," by C. E. Jackson, "Blake's Design for Nebuchadnezzar," by P. Miner, and "Bewick's Account Book Marginalia," by M. Chard.

A bibliography of recently published periodicals as of September 2011 is presented on book history, including "British Numismatic Journal," "Journal of Design History," and "Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society."

The article offers information about the Bibliographical Society, including membership, publications, and the journal "The Library."

The cataloguing device known in the middle ages as the secundo folio, being the opening words of the second leaf of a book, was a means by which a medieval book could be matched to its record in a list. First used in the early thirteenth century, it came to be universally employed in England and elsewhere, and continued to be used until the early sixteenth century, for printed books as well as for manuscripts without discrimination. While the secundo folio has long had a meaning and usefulness to modern manuscript cataloguers, for whom it has been a means of matching a surviving book to its medieval institutional home, its usefulness has escaped the attention of incunabulists. While it is true that the diagnostic cannot be used to identify an individual printed book as it can an individual manuscript, it can be used to identify the edition (or editions), and thereby offers a new source of evidence for the acquisition and ownership of incunabula at an early date, making a contribution to studies on the development and reach of the early booktrade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A bibliography of periodicals on the history of books is presented which includes the April 2009 issue of "Archives of Natural History", the May 2010 issue of "Ben Johnson Journal," and the Spring 2010 issue of "Book Collector".

In this article, we argue that, just as an edition of a book can be a means of reifying a theory about how books should be edited, so can the creation of an experimental digital prototype be understood as conveying an argument about designing interfaces. Building on this premise, we explore theoretical affinities shared by recent design and book history scholarship, and connect those theories to the emerging practice of peer-reviewing digital objects in scholarly contexts. We suggest a checklist for subjecting prototypes directly to peer review: Is the argument reified by the prototype contestable, defensible, and substantive?Does the prototype have a recognizable position in the context of similar work, either in terms of concept or affordances?Is the prototype part of a series of prototypes with an identifiable trajectory?Does the prototype address possible objections?Is the prototype itself an original contribution to knowledge?We also outline some implications for funding agencies interested in supporting researchers who are designing experimental computer prototypes. For instance, if a series of prototypes functions as a set of smaller arguments within a larger debate, it might be more appropriate to fund the sequence rather than treating each project as an individual proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses British non-conformist preacher and educator Philip Doddridge, his publication "The Family Expositor," his widow Mercy Doddridge, and the history of 18th century booksellers and their practices. It focuses on the process of the editing, negotiations, marketing, and distribution practices of publishing by using the correspondence of the Doddridges to provide a history of books during the period. It provides an overview and description of "The Family Expositor," details the publishing of the final three volumes of the six volume-work under the guidance of Mercy after her husbands death in 1751, and the assistance of scholars Job Orton, Caleb Ashworth, and Samuel Clark in preparing the final volumes for publication.

The article offers brief profiles of David Pearson, Peter Garside, and Janet Ing Freeman, who contributed to the writing of the journal.

Information about the 2009 Annual General Meeting of the Bibliographical Society held at London Metropolitan University in London, England on 20 October 2009 is presented. Membership information, requests for the organisation to sponsor additional book awards, and the work of the society's journal "The Library" are discussed. The 2008-2009 Annual Report is included which features society officers, a list of meetings, and a bibliography of publications held by the organisational library.

A bibliography of periodicals published in 2009 and 2010 containing articles pertaining to library, book, and literary history is presented which includes "ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews," "Bodleian Library Record," and "Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies."

The article looks at the book "The Actions & Doctine & Other Passages touching Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," edited by the community of Little Gidding, England for King Charles I in 1635. The book was created by cutting and pasting sections from other existing books. The history of Little Gidding is reviewed, including the appearance of the Ferrar family. The importance of the Church of England among residents of Little Gidding is discussed. Controversies related to the inclusion of images within a religious text are mentioned.

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 presents a list of books focusing of various aspects of history. The content of each book is listed. One book on the list is "Freedom's Distant Shores: American Protestants and Post-Colonial Alliances with Africa," by R. Drew Smith. Another book on the list is "Ireland and Europe in the Nineteenth Century," by Leon Litvack and Colin Graham. A third book on the list is "Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix," by Robert I. Rotberg.

The article provides information on the book "Cosmographia," which was edited most recently by Otto Prinz. The text of the book purports to be written by Saint Jerome, who edited the work of a pagan philosopher known as Aethicus Ister. The story presented in the book is one of a travelog, where the book's author describes Aethicus Ister traveling around the world.

Comments on the history of book as reflected in the books "Reimaging Textuality: Textual Studies in the Late Age of Print," edited by Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux and Neil Fraistat and "Perspectives on American Book History: Artifacts and Commentary," edited by Scott E. Casper, Joanne D. Chaison, and Jeffrey D. Groves. Illustration of the centrality of book studies to the humanities by the books; Synthesis of book studies and cultural critique; Connotation of artifact as rich historicism to which book studies aspires.

Analyzes how social, economic and cultural factors converge to influence the creation and uses of print in the U.S. Influence of political climate on the history of books; Notions about the distribution of books; Overview of studies on the role of print in the lives of readers.

The article discusses the early modern practice by book publishers and printers of post-dating works published at the end of a year. Several works detailing the purchase of post-dated pamphlets and books are considered including "Catlogue of the Pamphlets, Books, Newspapers, and Manuscripts Relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and Restoration, Collected by George Thomason, 1640-1661," and "The Luttrell File: Narcissus Luttrell’s Dates on Contemporary Pamphlets 1678-1730," by Stephen Parks.

A bibliography is presented on topics related to the history of books which includes the periodicals "Archives of Natural History," the XII, 3, October 1986 issue; "The Bodleian Library Record," the XII, 4, April 1987 issue; and "Huntington Library Quarterly," the L, 3, Summer 1987 issue.

A bibliography is presented on topics related to the history of books which includes the books "Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Vol. 2 (162 5-1700), Part 1, Behn to King," compiled by Peter Beal, "Index of English Literary Manuscripts, vol. 3 (1700-1800), Part 1, Addison to Fielding," compiled by Margaret M. Smith with Penny Boumelha, and "Hebrew typography in the Northern Netherlands 1585-1815. Historical evaluation and descriptive bibliography," part 2, by L. Fuks and R. G. Fuks-Mansfeld.

The article discusses the authorship of the anonymously published 1760 biography entitled "The Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel, Esq." Two letters written to the London, England printer Dodsley, one of either brothers Robert or James, dated June 13, 1776 and September 2, 1787, establish that the Reverend John Mainwaring (1724-1807) was the author of Handel's biography. Both of the letters are reprinted and discuss Dodsley's payments to the author for the agreed upon percentage of the book's profits. Based upon the letters, the author discusses the probable print run of the book.

Discusses the book 'The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain,' vol. 3, edited by Lotte Hellinga and J.B. Trapp. Study of manuscripts; Transmission, acquisition, circulation, reception, retention and use of handwritten and mechanically-reproduced books.

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.