Literary Cultures and the Material Book

British Library Studies in the History of the Book

Despite the pioneering work of such scholars as S. H. Steinberg, the still relatively young discipline of 'the history of the book' has been generally limited either by geographical or by linguistic interest. The wide range covered by the 30 contributors to this book, from China and Russia to South America and New Zealand, is evidence of growing interest in book history across international boundaries - almost inevitable when the book trade itself now has to respond to pressures of globalization, reading habits, and the promise (or threat?) of promiscuous textual availability on the internet. Indeed, the World-Wide-Web obliges scholars and librarians to tackle some new questions about the materiality of text and its global transmission.

The contributors in this volume focus on a vital relationship: that between the material book itself (including the way in which it is created, multiplied and sold); and the study of literary cultures. That is to say, the ways in which a physical book is `transformed` into literature by critics, editors, bibliographers, publishers and librarians. The final chapter, by David McKitterick, considers possible future perspectives for an international history of the book.

Review
`an impressive addition to the field`

Stuart Hannabuss, Literary Review, 57, 8

Table of Contents
Introduction - Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash and Ian Willison
Some material factors in literary culture 2500BCE - 1900CE - Simon Eliot

NON-WESTERN TRADITIONS OF THE BOOK
A thousand years of printed narrative in China - Glen Dudbridge
Marketing the Tale of Genji in seventeenth-century Japan - Peter Kornicki
Literary culture and manuscript culture in precolonial India - Sheldon Pollock
The Shahnama and the Persian illustrated book - Robert Hillenbrand
Towards a history of the book and literary culture in Africa - Isabel Hofmeyr

THE WESTERN BOOK IN HISTORY
Epic, diffusion and identity - Christopher Carey
Carolingian manuscript culture and the making of the literary culture of the Middle Ages - David Ganz
Petrarca philobiblon: the author and his books - Nicholas Mann
The diffusion of literature in Renaissance Italy: the case of Pietro Bembo - Brian Richardson
From literary almanacs to 'thick journals': the emergence of a readership for Russian literature, 1820s-1840s - Abram Reitblat and Christine Thomas

LANGUAGE EMPIRES
Literary consequences of the peripheral nature of Spanish printing in the sixteenth century - Clive Griffin
The conflicts of the canon: printing and literary culture during the Spanish Enlightenment - Maria Luisa Lopez-Vidriero
The book and Naturalism in Spain, Portugal and Latin America - Jean Francois Botrel
Friedrich Nicolai: creator of the German republic of letters - Bernhard Fabian
The German language and book trade in Europe: cultural transfers and collective identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - Frederic Barbier
France between literary culture and mass culture: seventeenth to twentieth centuries - Jena-Yves Mollier
Publishing and literature in the French-speaking world: the cultural hegemony of the centre and the creative role of the periphery - Francois Vallotton
Jacques Hebert: foremost publisher of the Quiet Revolution - Jacques Michon

THE ANGLOPHONE TRADITION
Creating an English literary canon, 1679-1720: Jacob Tonson, Dryden and Congreve - John Barnard
Literary culture and literary publishing in inter-war Britain: a view from Chatto and Windus - Andrew Nash
'The elixir of life': Richard Garnett, the British Museum Library and literary London - Richard Landon
The tradition of A. W. Pollard and the world of literary scholarship - Stephen Bury
'In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?' - Michael Winship
From Methodist literary culture to Canadian literary culture: the United Church Publishing House/the Ryerson Press, 1829-1970 - Janet B. Friskney
'The centennial racket': J. C. Beaglehole, nationalism and the 1940 New Zealand centennial publications - Sydney J. Shep
'Heaven forbid that I should think of trating with an English publisher': the dilemma of literary nationalists in federated Australia

AFTERWORD
Perspectives for an international history of the book - David McKitterick