Spotlights on Incunabula


Book Description

The five hundred years from the 1450s to the 1950s represent an extraordinarily rich quarry for evidence of incunabula sales, collecting, and use. What book lists reveal about publishing and reading habits in late-fifteenth-century Venice, how a Scottish librarian went about acquiring incunabula during World War II, and the international workshop connections glimpsed through early Hungarian bindings are among the topics explored in this volume. Library professionals aim spotlights on French plague tracts, Deventer as a printing place, the use of incunabula in learned societies in the nineteenth century, and incunabula collecting by monks and universities in England and Scotland.




Vernacular Books and Their Readers in the Early Age of Print (c. 1450–1600)


Book Description

'The Open Access publishing costs of this volume were covered by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Veni-project “Leaving a Lasting Impression. The Impact of Incunabula on Late Medieval Spirituality, Religious Practice and Visual Culture in the Low Countries” (grant number 275-30-036).' This volume explores various approaches to study vernacular books and reading practices across Europe in the 15th-16th centuries. Through a shared focus on the material book as an interface between producers and users, the contributors investigate how book producers conceived of their target audiences and how these vernacular books were designed and used. Three sections highlight connections between vernacularity and materiality from distinct perspectives: real and imagined readers, mobility of texts and images, and intermediality. The volume brings contributions on different regions, languages, and book types into dialogue. Contributors include Heather Bamford, Tillmann Taape, Stefan Matter, Suzan Folkerts, Karolina Mroziewicz, Martha W. Driver, Alexa Sand, Elisabeth de Bruijn, Katell Lavéant, Margriet Hoogvliet, and Walter S. Melion.




Augustus De Morgan, Polymath


Book Description

When Augustus De Morgan died in 1871, he was described as ‘one of the profoundest mathematicians in the United Kingdom’ and even as ‘the greatest of our mathematicians’. But he was far more than just a mathematician. Because much of his voluminous written output on various subjects was scattered throughout journals and encyclopaedias, the breadth of his interests and contributions has been underappreciated by historians. Now, renewed interest in De Morgan’s life and work has coincided with the digitization of his extensive library, revealing the extent to which he pioneered and influenced the development of not merely mathematics but also logic, astronomy, the history of mathematics, education, and bibliography. This edited collection celebrates De Morgan as a polymath. Drawing together multiple elements of his activity from a range of publications and archives, its contributors re-assess his academic work, his place in his intellectual environment, and his legacy. The result offers new insight into De Morgan himself as well as the wider circles in which he moved, including his family life.




The Digital Incunabula: rock • paper • pixels


Book Description

"The Digital Incunabula is Patrick Aievoli's personal sonnet through media, interaction and communication design. He carefully crafts each evolutionary step into ripples that are supported by his own storied professional and academic experiences. It's full of facts, terms and historical information which makes it perfect for anyone looking to flat out learn!"--James Pannafino, Professor, Millersville University& Interaction Design ● "Well documented, well written, and well argued."--Dr.Michael Soupios, Professor Political Science, LIU Post ● People who can use this book include any educators, counselors, parents or students who are looking for information concerning design or media as a future. entertainment, education, or the arts.




Legend-Tripping Online


Book Description

On the Internet, seekers investigate anonymous manifestos that focus on the findings of brilliant scientists said to have discovered pathways into alternate realities. Gathering on web forums, researchers not only share their observations, but also report having anomalous experiences, which they believe come from their online involvement with these veiled documents. Seeming logic combines with wild twists of lost Moorish science and pseudo-string theory. Enthusiasts insist any obstacle to revelation is a sure sign of great and wide-reaching efforts by consensus powers wishing to suppress all the liberating truths in the Incunabula Papers (included here in complete form). In Legend-Tripping Online, Michael Kinsella explores these and other extraordinary pursuits. This is the first book dedicated to legend-tripping, ritual quests in which people strive to explore and find manifest the very events described by supernatural legends. Through collective performances, legend-trippers harness the interpretive frameworks these stories provide and often claim incredible, out-of-this-world experiences that in turn perpetuate supernatural legends. Legends and legend-tripping are assuming tremendous prominence in a world confronting new speeds of diversification, connection, and increasing cognitive load. As guardians of tradition as well as agents of change, legends and the ordeals they inspire contextualize ancient and emergent ideas, behaviors, and technologies that challenge familiar realities. This book analyzes supernatural legends and the ways in which the sharing spirit of the internet collectivizes, codifies, and makes folklore of fantastic speculation.




Incunabula


Book Description

This collection of essays is designed to honour the work of Lotte Hellinga on her retirement from the British Library, where she was for many years Head of the Incunable Section. Scholars from eight countries range widely over the field of 15th-century printed books, writing on such topics as the shape of early type; authorship, ownership and the building up of collections of incunabula; the binding and decoration of books from the presses of England, the Low Countries and Italy; the earliest trade in printed books; and the vicissitudes of the Gutenberg Bible in the sales rooms. The book is illustrated and contains an appreciation of Dr Hellinga's career and a list of her publications.




Reading and the Victorians


Book Description

What did reading mean to the Victorians? This question is the key point of departure for Reading and the Victorians, an examination of the era when reading underwent a swifter and more radical transformation than at any other moment in history. With book production handed over to the machines and mass education boosting literacy to unprecedented levels, the norms of modern reading were being established. Essays examine the impact of tallow candles on Victorian reading, the reading practices encouraged by Mudie's Select Library and feminist periodicals, the relationship between author and reader as reflected in manuscript revisions and corrections, the experience of reading women's diaries, models of literacy in Our Mutual Friend, the implications of reading marks in Victorian texts, how computer technology has assisted the study of nineteenth-century reading practices, how Gladstone read his personal library, and what contemporary non-academic readers might owe to Victorian ideals of reading and community. Reading forms a genuine meeting place for historians, literary scholars, theorists, librarians, and historians of the book, and this diverse collection examines nineteenth-century reading in all its personal, historical, literary, and material contexts, while also asking fundamental questions about how we read the Victorians' reading in the present day.




Colard Mansion


Book Description

La 4e de couverture indique : "In the late Middle Ages, the time of Charles the Bold and Hans Memling, Bruges was a metropolis of books. One of the central figures in the international book trade was Colard Mansion (active from 1457 to 1484). Initially, in addition to being a valued translator, Mansion was primarily a highly sought-after copyist of luxury manuscripts, but when the art of printing made its entrée in Europe in 1455, he saw his chance and became one of the first in the Low Countries to specialise in the new medium of printed books. In no time, he became one of the most important book entrepreneurs in Bruges and environs. In this book, manuscripts, illuminated incunabula and rare prints bring Mansion's innovative book business back to life. Nearly fifty specialists from around the world offer unique insights into Mansion's life, many aspects of which are shrouded in mystery. Among other things they describe the gradual transition from manuscript to print, explain workshop practices and publishers' strategies, and provide contextual information about late-medieval printmaking and the creation of an impressive oeuvre of literary editions in the vernacular. Mansion developed a brand that remained solid for centuries. This book holds the key to understanding why."




Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

Despite the fact that, if only by number, small and peripheral cities played an important role in fifteenth and sixteenth-century European print culture, book history has mainly been dominated by monographs on individual big book centres. Through a number of specific case studies, which deploy a variety of methods and a wide range of sources, this volume seeks to enhance our understanding of printing and the book trade in small and peripheral European cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and to emphasize the necessity of new research for the study of print culture in such cities.




Five Hundred Years of Printing


Book Description

This classic work, first published as a Pelican Original in 1955 and maintained in successive editions until 1980 is now available in a finely illustrated larger format book, drawing on the collections and curatorial expertise of The British Library. It has been completely revised and brought up to date, covering topics such as censorship, best-sellers, the invention of lithography and the connection between printing and education. It is of particular use to anyone studying the huge technological changes that the printing industry has experienced during its long timespan.




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