The Declaration of Arbroath in print, 1680–1705

This article examines the circumstances in which the Declaration of Arbroath was first printed in 1680 by Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh and the original manuscript on which Mackenzie’s text was based (NRS SP13/7). It then traces its subsequent print history between the Revolution of 1689–90 and the Union of Parliaments in 1707 both in Latin and in an English translation that first appeared in 1689. It locates the Declaration within the broader context of whig propaganda that encompassed a defence not just of the Revolution Settlement but of Scottish sovereignty at the time of the Union, culminating in James Anderson’s new edition and translation of the text of 1705. An appendix further examines the earliest reference to the Declaration in print – in Archbishop John Spottiswoode’s History of the Church in Scotland (1655) – and Spottiswoode’s use of a manuscript copy of Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon.

Geographic Information Systems and Book History

Scholars working in the multidisciplinary field of book history pose diverse research questions, work with numerous sources of data and information, and employ a variety of analytical methods and tools. Geographic questions have been considered by book historians, notably since the groundbreaking work of Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin in the 1950s. Geographic information systems (GIS) technology, which was developed in Canada in the 1960s, was initially devised to support new methods of analysis and visualization in the physical and life sciences relating to spatial conditions, patterns, trends, and projections. Since the late 1990s, social scientists have used GIS increasingly, and, since the early 21st century, humanities scholars have also begun to use GIS as a result of digital and spatial turns within their fields. The application of GIS as an analytical method to investigate research questions in book history, first suggested in 1997, is now employed across a range of scholarly endeavors. Examples from the sciences that illustrate the required data structures, as well as the scope and analytical power of GIS, illuminate the development of geographies of the book. Such examples also illustrate the types of questions for which GIS is appropriate for advancing knowledge. Limited training for book historians in the application of GIS, along with the complexities of the technology, have resulted in the need for partnerships with quantitative researchers. These collaborations are increasing understanding of the spatial dimensions of book and print history. In addition, new programs of study in digital humanities, and initiatives of innovative scholarly societies, are helping to forge a generation of technologically trained scholars to propel the field of book history further.

Dalla tipografia al banco di lettura: particolarità tipografiche e un insigne lettore nella princeps dei Motti e Facezie del Piovano Arlotto

The Motti e facezie are an important collection of Renaissance Italian short stories, characterized by the presence of a leading actor: Arlotto de’ Mainardi, an historical documented Florentine priest. While the text was a best-seller in the sixteenth century, unfolding in a vast number of editions despite the pressures of Catholic counter-reformation censorship, its print history has been largely neglected even by its most recent scholarly editor. This essay focuses on the likely first philological analysis of the Motti e Facezie del PiovanoArlotto’s princeps, offering a brief summary of the text, its composition and reception histories, its manuscript tradition, and the problematic decision by G. Folena to neglect the print tradition in the preparation of his edition. After laying this contextual groundwork, the essay turns to an analysis of five (of the seven) remaining copies of the editio princeps, showing two different state variants and focusing on one particular copy (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Pal. E.6.6.28) owned and annotated by the important philologist and Florentine refugee in France, Jacopo Corbinelli.

Publishing

Over the course of the 19th century, British publishing evolved unevenly from a handcrafted industry run by gentleman publishers to the modern industrialized mass media of the 20th century. At the same time, the period witnessed a massive increase in the size of the reading public due to population growth and increased literacy. These changes affected all aspects and levels of literary production. For authors, the increase in publishing output meant more opportunities to earn a living at writing, particularly for women writers and especially in the fields of literature and journalism. For publishers, the growing demand for print materials led to the adoption of mechanized production and the cultivation of a mass market for print. For readers, the increasing abundance of print materials at decreasing prices created a mass market where thousands of publications competed for readers’ eyes and pennies. To take the novel as one example, early in the century a new novel frequently appeared in an expensive three-volume edition of 500 copies priced at 31s 6d (thirty-one shillings and sixpence) each, a price well out of the range of the majority of readers who then depended on circulating libraries for access. By the end of the century, a new novel typically appeared in a one-volume edition of thousands of copies priced at 3s 6d or 6s each, an appealing price for nearly all middle-class readers. Magazine publication followed a similar transition: in the 1830s, monthly magazines such as Bentley’s Miscellany cost 2s 6d; at midcentury, monthly magazines such as the Cornhill cost 1s; and by century’s end, monthly magazines such as the Strand cost 6d, with stark increases in circulation. Past scholarship of publishing has often focused on the history of one author’s or publisher’s experiences in publishing: for instance, the descriptive bibliography of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s editions of poems or the general history of William Blackwood’s publishing company. Based on this well-developed bibliographical foundation, recent scholarship has been influenced by the development of book history as a field—the History of the Book, sometimes called print history or print culture, focuses on the authorship, production, and reading of books as a material practice. Broadly speaking, the history of the book investigates book production as an important cultural practice: in what ways do the interactions between authors, publishers, and readers affect what print material is produced? Alternately, how do social forces—such as class and gender—affect the production and consumption of print materials? The history of the book field has greatly widened our scope of study to, among other things, the lives of lesser-known authors, the business practices of publishers, and the experiences of readers: for example, on the experiences of women authors in the literary marketplace, the adoption of steam-powered presses by magazine publishers, or the changing tastes of children readers.

An Unexpected Direction: Pauline Hopkins, S. E. F. C. C. Hamedoe, and “The Dark Races of the Twentieth Century”

This essay mines the earliest and most influential of African American literary magazines, the Boston-based Colored American Magazine (CAM) (1900–09), and its southern rival, the Atlanta-based Voice of the Negro (1904–07), to investigate how black writers and activists addressed the links between US race relations, settler colonialism, and empire in the Pacific. Spanning these two periodicals, Pauline Hopkins’s work as an editor and contributor grappled with the question of how to represent, engage, and position Black Americans in a globalizing world that was at once becoming more vast, heterogeneous, and integrated. Race remained a powerful structuring principle, yet it accrued dynamic new meanings in the era of new imperialism. Along the way, the essay investigates an unexplored facet of Hopkins’s authorship and compositional style. It speculates that Hopkins may have published under another as yet unattributed pen name. The enigmatic S. E. F. C. C. Hamedoe was one of the most significant of regular CAM contributors. Before disappearing from print history, Hamedoe published a four-year-long series that mapped the political contours of the emerging Global South, crisscrossing continents and oceans. The extensive connections between Hamedoe’s writings and Hopkins’s final known completed series beg the question of whether they were one and the same. The series allowed Hopkins to experiment with various epistemologies of racial and historical knowledge in her efforts to formulate an understanding of Blackness that, like the episodic serial form, was open-ended, accretive, and noncohesive.

Conclusion

The emphasis of this monograph has been on the historical, cultural, religious, and social factors that shaped C. S. Lewis and his reception. Until recently those who have considered the subject have attributed his popularity to virtues of the man himself. The fact that Lewis, in effect, was an image, a mitigated commercial product, a platform, has largely been overlooked. A critical component of Lewis’s reception is the opportunities that education provided the middle classes for social mobility in the twentieth century and the social divisions and anxieties attendant upon those evolutions. Of equal importance is the timing of Lewis’s life and publications with print history and the rise of mass media and entertainment. Lewis’s platform as a contrarian Christian resisting modernity and his reactions to the intellectual, social, and religious changes of his day made the critical difference to his transatlantic receptions.

A Puzzle in the Print History of Locke's Essay

In the Epistle to the Reader that prefaces Locke’s Essay he famously declares that he considers himself to be an underlaborer to the great scientific minds of his generation.