Introduction: Discovering Modernism – Travel, Pleasure and Publishers’ Series

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Jaillant
Keyword(s):  
Print Culture ◽  
Book History ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Literary Modernism ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Recent Scholarship

The introduction summarises recent scholarship on (1) literary modernism in the marketplace; (2) book history and print culture studies, including the study of publishers’ series. The guiding thread of the argument developed in the book is introduced here: that European publishers’ series made modernist texts available to a mainstream readership – including many non-English native speakers in Continental Europe and elsewhere.

Of Travellers, Messengers and Foundlings – Fictionality, Authorship, and Textual Property in Thomas More’s Paratexts

Moreana ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (Number 205- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 17-44
Author(s):  
Gabriela Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
One Step

Paratexts have attracted increasing attention in recent scholarship as an especially privileged tool for managing the reception of a text in early print culture, and Thomas More was certainly an exceptionally versatile user of this strategic publishing device. Not only does he make ample use of conventional paratextual techniques such as prefaces, marginal glosses and commendatory poems, he also takes the medium one step further by making his paratexts part of the narrative setting of his works, especially in the literary dialogues. In creating a plethora of (semi-)fictional voices and contexts, he effectively blurs the line between text and context, fact and fiction, and author and editor/printer. While this textual game of hide-and-seek has been extensively studied in Utopia and has often been seen as a typically ‘humanist’ feature of the text, the present article explores similar techniques throughout More’s work, thus overcoming the alleged rift between his pre- and post-reformation writings.

The Icon and the Text: American Book History and the Construction of the World's Largest-Grossing Illustrated Book, Madonna's Sex (1992)

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-211
Author(s):  
MANAV RATTI
Keyword(s):  
National Culture ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Book History ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
Book Selling ◽  
American Book ◽  
Illustrated Book

Madonna's book Sex (1992) is the world's largest-grossing illustrated book, selling 1.4 million copies worldwide and earning US$70 million in sales at retail. This essay is the first to use methods from the discipline of bibliography to analyze the book's production, distribution, and reception. This article extends scholarship on Madonna, including about her iconicity and visuality, from her songs and videos to her print culture. I demonstrate how Sex – both as a printed book and as an expression of national culture – is part of a dynamic American book history that constructs notions of America, including freedom of speech, thought, and religion.

The Material Dimension of the Bible from Print to Digital Text

2020 ◽  
pp. 413-432
Author(s):  
Katja Rakow
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Digital Text ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word ◽  
Material Religion ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
David Morgan

The chapter addresses the material dimension of the Bible in the discourse and practice of evangelical and Pentecostal Christians. According to surveys commissioned by the American Bible Society, announcements from big Bible publishers, and my own observations among contemporary evangelical and Pentecostal Christians in America, digital Bibles and Bible apps are on the rise. The transition from print culture to digital culture has not gone uncontested, and the discussions among Christians about the appropriateness of digital Bible media for religious practices points toward a contestation of the materiality of the medium through which God’s Word, and thereby God, is made present to religious practitioners. Thus the first part of the chapter introduces the frame of material culture studies and the approach to materiality in the study of religion. The second part discusses an analytic model suggested by the material religion scholar David Morgan along which a material analysis of religious objects should be developed. It will subsequently be applied to explore the relation between the Bible and its concrete materiality with a comparative focus on print and digital versions of the Bible.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Michelle Levy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Book History ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Manuscript Production ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
Media Interaction ◽  
Political Conditions

The Introduction draws upon recent work in the fields of book history, literary and media studies, textual scholarship and digital humanities, to advance the fundamental thesis of early modern scholars – that manuscript production and circulation continued long after the advent of print. It also supports the consensus of media historians – that newer media (such as print) did not overtake and subsume older media forms (such as manuscript). Repudiating a ‘decline and rise’ or ‘succession’ model of technological change, this book instead posits a model characterized by media interaction and exchange. Taking Romantic-era literary manuscript culture and its inevitable entanglement with print as its central subject, the subsequent six chapters examine the literary manuscripts and writing practices of several central Romantic authors, and the shifting set of cultural and political conditions they faced. In doing so, this study presents a new account of literary Romanticism, one that recalibrates accounts of individual authors’ works, careers and practices; reconstructs networks of authors, editors, publishers and readers; and reconfigures concepts of privacy, sociability and publicity. It also addresses how the expanding print culture of the late eighteenth century impacted both the practices and the values ascribed to manuscript culture.

Creative Printers

2018 ◽  
pp. 111-163
Author(s):  
David Finkelstein
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Creative Writers ◽  
Shared Information ◽  
The Usa

From the 1840s, and over the course of the next six decades, new and emerging print trade unions backed the launch of monthly typographical trade press journals in the USA, UK, South Africa, and Australia. Many were short-lived, or underwent multiple transformations of title, frequency, and format throughout their lifespan. The aim of these journals was to inform, entertain, and support the development of a cooperative, shared professional trade identity and working-class literary culture. They shared information and borrowed material from each other, reproducing trade news, working-class poetry and other items from sister publications when needed. A feature of many of these typographical journals was the use of in-house compositor-poets and creative writers. Many of these individuals have now been forgotten. One of the aims of this chapter is to focus attention on their roles as labour laureates and on their significance in cultural history and print culture studies.

Bentham for “beginners and amateurs” and ladies: Handbook of the British flora

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Shteir
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Book History ◽  
Considerable Change ◽  
Science Writing ◽  
Publishing History ◽  
Popular Book ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Technical Issues ◽  
Victorian Science

George Bentham's Handbook of the British flora (1859) had a mixed reception during its publishing history. From motivations that were both botanical and educational, Bentham aimed to write a “popular” book for “beginners and amateurs” rather than a textbook or a Flora for experts, but his book was caught in cross-currents of mid-Victorian science. While some botanists welcomed the accessibility of Bentham's book, others were more critical and dismissive. Because Bentham wrote as an expert, his product was subject to judgment from those who were preoccupied with technical issues and debates. This essay charts the genesis of Bentham's book and studies its reception at a time of considerable change in cultures of natural history. It probably was not possible for Bentham's book to satisfy several quite different contemporary agendas. Recent scholarship about book history, forms of science writing, and sharpening demarcations between “amateurs” and “professionals” can help explain why Bentham's Handbook of the British flora had a category problem.

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