Module Identifier ILM6610  
Module Title HISTORICAL AND ANALYTICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY  
Academic Year 2007/2008  
Co-ordinator John R Turner  
Semester Intended for use in future years  
Next year offered N/A  
Next semester offered N/A  
Other staff Ms Tanya C Rogers  
Course delivery Lecture   Lectures supplemented by practicals.  
  Lecture   20 Hours.  
  Practical   3 Hours.  
Assessment
Assessment TypeAssessment Length/DetailsProportion
Semester Assessment Essay: Presentation 25% - Content 55% - Bibliography and Citation 20% One 3,000 word essay to be submitted by Friday 24th March 2000 Essay questions Answer any one question 1. Discuss the evidence for the practice of printing before about 1440 2. Discuss the career of William Caxton 3. In terms of the transmission and receiving of infomation what chages were brought about when printed documents superseded manuscripts? 4. What attempts were made from about 1510 to 1557 to control the press and how successful were they? 5. Between about 1550 and the 1580s many printers in Britain were unhappy with their condition. Why was this so and what action did they take? 6. How did it become possible for an author to earn a living by writing? 7. Outline the development of the publications of news to the outbreak of the Civil War. 8. In 1709 there was a radical change in the concept of copyright. What was the change, what were the subsequent results, and how did it effect authors? 9. How have publishers sought to reduce their capital outlay? 10. Discuss the development of publishing and selling books as cheaply as possible to large numbers of people. 11. How did nineteenth-century circulating libraries influence the book trade? 12. What was the Private Press Movement, how did it arise, and what was its influence? 13. How far is it legitimate for a textual bibliographer to attempt to construct an edition based on the authors intentions?  

Aims

This module will include:

(a) Analysis and description of books

The physical analysis of early book; type, paper, format, imposition, presswork, decoration, binding.

Bibliographical description: how to describe books precisely and identify their variants; title-page transcription, collation formula, inserts and cancels. The clasification of variants in terms of edition, impression, issue and state.

This part of the course includes a series of practical sessions which culminate in a full description of a book. The full description is assessed.

(b) The history of the book

Printing before Gutenberg; Gutenberg and his successors; the fifteenth and sixteenth century book in Europe.

The book in Britain from the fifteenth century onwards. For each period the social and economic background to book production is studied, together with developments in the book trade.   Specific topics include.

the impact of printing and features of print culture; the differences between manuscript and print culture;

Caxton and the early English book trade;

Tudor attitudes of printing. The Stationers' Company and the regulation of the press.
Elizabethan and Jacobean printing-house practice. The Civil War and its impact on the press.
Changed attitudes after Civil War. Eighteenth century books: their quantity and diversity. The 1709 copyright act. The rise of periodicals. The development of publishers. Machine-printed books: technological changes. Factors influencing the growth of literacy. Nineteenth century publishing. The developemnt of bookselling. The influence of libraries on the book trade;

bibliography and the problems of textual transmission: theories of textual criticism.

At the end of this module you should be able to:

. analyse the structure of a bok;
. provide a bibliographical description of a book;
. explain the history of the book in Britain from the time of William Caxton to about 1950;
. suggest a rationale for textual bibliography.

Reading Lists

Books
Altick R The English Common Reader - 1957
Altick R The English Common Reader, 1957, Chapter 12 and 13.
Altrick Richard D The English Common eader 1957 Chapter 1 'From Caston to the eighteenth century'.
Belanger T 'Publishers and writers in eighteenth-century England', (as before).
Belanger T Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-century England 1982 'Publishers and writers in eighteenth-century England' in I Rivers (ed)
Bennett H S English Books and Readers: 1603-1640, 1970 - Good background reading, especially Chapter 8.
Bracken J K The Library, 10, 1988,pp.18-29. 'Books from William Stansby's printing house , and Jonson's Folio of 1616'
Cave R Bibliographical Description and the Cataloguing of Rare Books, 1990
Clanchy M T- 'Looking back from the invention of printing' Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 39, 1982, pp.169-83
Eisenstein E L Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. 1979
Eisenstein E L The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 1983
Eisenstein E L - 'Some conjectures about the impact of printing on Western society and thought: a preliminary report' in H J Graff (ed) Literacy and Social Developement in the West: a Reader
Eisenstein E L - 'The early printer as Renaissance man' Printer History, 3, 1981,pp.3-16
Eliot S 'The three-decker noval and its first cheap reprint, 1862-94', The Library, 7(1), 1985,pp.38-53.
Feather J A History of British Publishing 1988
Feather J Publishin, Piracy and Politics 1994
Foxon D Pope and the Early 18th-century Book Trade, 1991- Ignore the detail but good for general ideas.
Gaskell P A New Introduction of Bibliography 1974
Gaskell P A New Introduction to Biliography, 1972,pp.189-273 for technical development, note sections on plates, illustrations and edition binding.
Gaskell P New Introduction to Bibliography, pp.336-53.
Gerulaitis L V Printing and Publishing in Fifteenth-century Venice 1976 (Chapter 1)
Gettman R A A Victorian Publisher, 1960, Chapter 8 on the three-decker.
Hill J E 'From provisional to permanent: books in boards 1790-1840', The Library, 21(3). 1999,pp.247-273.
Hirsch R Printing, Selling and Reading: 1450-1550, 1974, (Chapter 1.)
Kilgour F G The Evolution of the Book 1998
McDonald P D 'Implicit structures and explicit interactions: Pierre Bourdieu and the history of the book The Library , Sixth Series, 19 (2), June 1997, pp.105-21
McGann J J A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism, 1983. For exposition of the theory.
McKenzie D F 'Typography and meaning', in The Book and the Booktrade in Eighteengh Century Europe. ed G Barber and B Fabian, 1981, Section II, pp.93-106.
McKenzie D F New Pelican Guide to English Literature. (As before). 'Printing from Caston to Milton'
McKenzie D F Studies of Bibliography, 22,1969,pp.42-9. 'Printers of the mind'
McKenzie D F The London Book Trade in the Seventeenth Century, (Sanders Lectures), 1976, chapters 1 and 2.
McKenzie D F The New Pelican Guide to English Literature Vol 2 1982 'Printing in England from Caxton to MIlton' in B. Ford (ed)
McKitterick D 'Cataloguing incunables', TLS, 14 December 1984, p.1459.
Middleton B History of English Crat Bookbinding 1963 pp. 280-4
Mullen R Anthony Trolope: a Victorian in his World, 1990, Chapter 5 ' A novel-reading people', pp.153-75 only.
Nelson, C and Seccombe M Periodical Publications 1641-1700: a Survey with Illustraions, 1986, Sections 1-3 only.
Rose J 'Rereading the English Common Reader: a preface to a history of audiences' Journal of the History of Ideas, 53(1), March 1992,pp.47-70.
Saunders J W The Profession of English Letters, 1964, Chapters 3-5 on authorship in 17th century.
Shakespeare W The Norton Facsimile of the First Folio, 1968. See introduction by C. Hinman.
Shillingsburg P L Pegasssus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W.M. Thackeray, 1992.
Steinberg S H Five Hundred Years of Printing, new ed, 1996
Sutherland J A Victorian Novelists and Publishers, 1976,pp.9-40 Novel Publishing 1830-1870.
Sutherland James The Restoration Newspaper and its Development, 1986, Chapter 1 'Origins and development.
Watt Tessa Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550-1640, 1991, Chapter 1 only.

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 7