More than 200 enthusiastic book historians, literary scholars and book lovers participated in the second annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), which was hosted by the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress on July 14-16.
Eighty-two papers on a broad range of topics were presented by scholars from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.
In his remarks on July 15, Dr. Billington noted that in all likelihood this was the largest scholarly meeting ever held at the Library.
Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole was conference host and chaired the planning committee. He was assisted by SHARP President Jonathan Rose of Drew University, Carol Armbruster of the European Division, Larry Sullivan of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, James R. Kelly of the George Washington University Library and the Washington Rare Book Group, and the staff of the Center for the Book: Maurvene D. Williams, Anne Boni and Pat White. The Association of American Publishers helped underwrite conference costs.
Featured speakers were Francess Halpenny, professor emeritus, Faculty of Library and Information Science at the University of Toronto, who spoke on "Canada's Major Critical Editions" and announced the formation of the Centre for the History of the Book at the University of Toronto; and Peter B. Kaufman, president of PUBWATCH, an organization that promotes Western assistance to the book culture of Russia and the newly independent states. He spoke on "Books and East-West Relations."
Plans are under way for future annual conferences of SHARP, which has more than 500 members -- at the University of Edinburgh on July 15-17, 1995; the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass., in summer 1996; and in Prague in summer 1997.
The call for papers for the 1995 conference has been issued. SHARP welcomes proposals for papers dealing with the creation, diffusion or reception of the written word in any historical period. Conference proceedings will be in English, but papers may focus on any national literature. Proposals (one page maximum) and inquiries on the conference should be sent to the conference host, Bill Bell, Department of English Literature, 5 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9JX, Scotland. The deadline for proposals is Nov. 1, 1994.
For information on SHARP, write Linda Connors, SHARP Membership Secretary, Drew University Library, Madison, NJ 07940.
Following is the program for the 1994 conference held at the Library of Congress:
Session 1: July 14, 10:00 a.m. 12 noon
Panel 1A: Nineteenth Century American Nonfiction.
Moderator: C. Deirdre Phelps, editor, New England Book and Text Studies
1. Print Culture and Political Economy in the Early Republic:
The Rise of American Political Economy, 1810-1840
Clyde A. Haulman, Commonwealth Center for the Study of American Culture,
College of William and Mary
2. Nineteenth Century Illustrated Natural History Books and
Their American Audience: A Case Study of "Reader/Viewer" Response
Margaret Welch, Baltimore
3. Nineteenth Century American Riding Manuals: An Overlooked
Source for Cultural History
Robin Bledsoe, Cambridge, Mass.
Panel 1B: Brushing Up Your Shakespeare.
Moderator: David Linton, Humanities Division, Marymount Manhattan College
1. The Renaissance Author in His Text
Katherine O. Acheson, Concordia University, Montreal
2. The Case for Censorship: King Lear and Judicial Reform
James A. Knapp, Department of English, Temple University
3. Uncertainty in Shakespeare Editing
Annalisa Castaldo, Philadelphia
Panel 1C: Publishing in the French Diaspora.
Moderator: Mary Niles Maack, Graduate School of Library and Information
Science, UCLA
1. Mme. Petit-Dunoyer and Her Quintessence des nouvelles
Chloe Baril, Universite de Montreal
2. "Between Civilization and California": Foreign-Language
Printing in Nineteenth Century New Orleans
Florence M. Jumonville, Historic New Orleans Collection
3. Canadian, American and Latin American Publishers of French Works
During World War II
Jacques Michon, Universite de Sherbrooke
Session 2: July 14, 1:15 3:00 p.m.
Panel 2A: Advertisement and Self-Effacement.
Moderator: William E. Lenz, English Department, Chatham College
1. Platform Publicity: Public Lectures and Book Promotion in 19th
Century America
Peter Cherches, Brooklyn, N.Y.
2. Hot Corn!: Poverty, Purity and Publishing in the 1850s
JoAnn Castagna, College of Liberal Arts, University of Iowa
3. Writer/Reader Relations and the Rhetoric of Authorial Self-Effacement
in Turn-of-the Century American Fiction
Barbara Hochman, Tel Aviv University
Panel 2B: Common Reading.
Moderator: Sondra Miley Cooney, Kent State University
1. The End of a Genre: Postal Regulations and the Dime Novel's Demise
Trudi Johanna Abel, Department of History, Williams College
2. Making a Gem of It: Palgrave and Macmillan at Work on The
Golden Treasury
Esther Quantrill, University of Texas at Austin
3. Reading and the Autodidact: Working-Class Autobiographers and
Their Reading Practices in 19th Century Britain, France and Australia
Martyn Lyons, School of History, University of New South Wales
Panel 2C: Writing and Reading Science. Moderator: Declan C.
Murphy, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress
1. Economic Aspects of Scientific Journalism in the 17th and 18th
Centuries
David A. Kronick, San Antonio, Texas
2. Reading at the Periphery
Bertrum H. MacDonald, School of Library and Information Studies, Dalhousie
University
3. Authorship in the Biomedical Sciences
Addeane S. Caelleigh, editor, Academic Medicine
Session 3: Thursday, July 14, 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Panel 3A: New Maps of the British Book Trade.
Moderator: Ananabel Jones, London
1. Towards a New Map of London Booksellers in the 18th Century
James Raven, Magdalene College, Cambridge University, England
2. The Secret Life of the British Book Trade: Some Aspects of the
Finances of Mudies, Smiths, Chatto and Others, 1870-1914
Simon Eliot, Department of Literature, Open University (Bristol)
3. Economics of the Book Trade in 19th Century Britain
Alexis Weedon, University of Luton
Panel 3B: History from the Bottom Up: Footnotes, Marginalia, & Titles.
Moderator: Carol Armbruster, European Division, Library of Congress
1. What Oft Was Said: Dullness and Emergent Editorial Practice: Or,
A History of the Footnote
Evelyn B. Tribble, Department of English, Temple University
2. Greek Marginalia in the Medieval Manuscripts of Isocrates: Structure,
Function, and Theory in the Scholia, and Hypotheses
Robert G. Sullivan, Department of Speech Communication, University of
Maryland
3. Titles in the Marketplace: Novel Names and Genre Claims in British
18th Century Fiction
Eleanor F. Shevlin, Department of English, University of Maryland
Panel 3C: Canon Formation.
Moderator: Larry Sullivan, Rare Book and Special Collections Division,
Library of Congress
1. Manufacturing Intellectual Equipment: The Tauchnitz Edition of The
Marble Faun
Susan S. Williams, Department of English, Ohio State University
2. Commerce and the Canon
Paul M. Wright, editor, University of Massachusetts Press
3. The Modern Library Series and the Paperback Revolution
Gordon B. Neavill, School of Library and Information Studies, University
of Alabama
Session 4: Friday, July 15, 10:00 a.m. 12 noon
Panel 4A: The Use and Misuse of Printed Texts.
Moderator: Gail Elizabeth Korn, New York, N.Y.
1. Orality, Literacy, Typography: Tracing a 17th Century Woman Printer's
Oral Activism through Her Printed Texts
Paula J. McDowell, College Park, Md.
2. Gender, Class and Plagiarism in 17th Century English Authorship
Laura J. Rosenthal, English Department, Florida State University
3. The Profits of Plagiarism: Henry Baker, George Adams, and The
Microscope Made Easy
Alice Walters, Department of History, University of Massachusetts
Panel 4B: Small Presses.
Moderator: Kathleen A. Walkup, Mills College
1. Andre Malraux, Book Designer, and the French Bibliographic Craze
of the Early 1920s
Walter G. Langlois, University of Wyoming
2. Canon, Class, and Limited Editions: Bibliophilic Publishing and
the Grabhorn Press, 1920-1966
Megan Benton, English Department, Pacific Lutheran University
3. Anarchy and the Word: The Case of the Libertarian Book Club
Robert A. Vietrogoski, American Studies Program, College of William and
Mary
Panel 4C: Lending Libraries and Reading Habits.
Moderator: James R. Kelly, Gelman Library, George Washington University
1. The Reading Trade in Pre-Revolutionary France
Paul Benhamou, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Purdue
University
2. Mutual Benefit and Enjoyment: Ladies' Library Associations
Evelyn Leasher, Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University
3. Making Society out of Books: Mercantile Libraries and the Reading
of Market Culture
Thomas Augst, Committee on Degrees in History and Literature, Harvard
University
Session 5: Friday, July 15, 1:15 3:00 p.m.
Panel 5A: Publishers and Audiences in 18th Century England.
Moderator: Mary McCarl, Birmingham, Ala.
1. Pope, Publishers, and Popular Interpretations of the Dunciad
Variorum
Shef Rogers, English Department, University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand)
2. Chapbook Versions of Moll Flanders: The Tranmission of Popular
Literature in the 18th Century
David Goldthorpe, The Open University (London)
3. Curll's "Pope's Head": The Meaning of a Bookshop Sign
Eric V. Chandler, Berkeley, Calif.
Panel 5B: Resources for the Study of Publishing History.
Moderator: Ann Cowan, Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing, Simon
Fraser University
1. Publishers' Memoirs, Publishers' Archives: Methodological Problems
in Writing the History of the Book
Leslie Howsam, Department of History, University of Windsor
2. American Fiction Publishing, 1837-1857
Ronald J. Zboray, Department of History, Georgia State University, and
Mary Saracino Zboray
3. R.G. Dun and Company Credit Reports on the American News Company,
1864-1892: A Case Study in Strategies and Secrets
Lydia Cushman Schurman, Arlington, Va.
Panel 5C: Book Promotion.
Moderator: James W. Gilreath, Rare Book and Special Collections Division,
Library of Congress
1. Almanac Book Promotion in the Early Ohio River Valley
Jeffery A. Douglas, Seymour Library, Knox College
2. Literary Promotion, Canon Formation, and Ticknor and Fields' Inserted
Advertisements
Jeffrey D. Groves, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Harvey
Mudd College
3. Marketing F. Scott Fitzgerald to the Book Trade: The Scribners
Trade Catalogues and Publishers Weekly
Jan Peter F. van Rosevelt, Department of English, University of South
Carolina
Session 6: Friday, July 15, 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Panel 6A: Books Across Cultures.
Moderator: Jirina Smejkalova- Strickland, Prague, Czech Republic
1. Dutch and English Almanacs in the Early Modern Period: A Comparison
Jeroen Salman, Department of Dutch, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
2. 'Embodying Empire': Continuity and Change in The Graphic and Textual
Presentation of the Habsburg Imperial Mission over Four Centuries
Andrew Wheatcroft, Department of English Studies & The Centre for
Publishing Studies, University of Stirling
3. "Not a Reading but a Hard Drinking City;" John Murray's
Trade with Dublin, 1770-1793
William Zachs, Boswell Office, Yale University Library
Panel 6B: Popular Intellectual Culture.
Moderator: Frank Annunziata, History Department, College of Liberal Arts,
Rochester Institute of Technology
1. Silent Spring and the Book-of-the-Month Club: The Politics
of Representing the Environment
Gary Kroll, Department of History, University of Florida
2. McBook: The Reader's Digest Condensed Books Franchise
Evert Volkersz, Special Collections Department, University Libraries,
SUNY at Stony Brook
3. The Literature of Knowledge
Beth Luey, Scholarly Publishing Program, Department of History, Arizona
State University
Panel 6C: Reading on the American Frontier.
Moderator: James W. Gilreath, Rare Book and Special Collections Division,
Library of
Congress
1. 'When Will You Be Done with Reading': Reading as a Matter of Life
and Death for Mary Ann Wodrow Archbald (1762-1841)
Alison M. Scott, Popular Culture Library, Bowling Green State University
2. "A Taste for Reading Is Imperceptibly Acquired"
Kate Neckerman, Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry, University of Iowa
3. The Ella Clanton Thomas Journal and the Experience of Reading
in 19th Century America
Amy M. Thomas, Department of English, Montana State University
Session 7: Saturday, July 16, 9:30 11:30 a.m.
Panel 7A: Copyright, Authors, and the Marketplace.
Moderator: Jill Wacker, Philadelphia, Pa.
1. Authorship, Ownership and the Construction of the Literary Marketplace
in the Debate Over International Copyright
Meredith L. McGill, Department of English and American Literature and
Language, Harvard University
2. Copyright and the Economies of Tom Jones
Simon Stern, Department of English, University of California at Berkeley
3. The Long and Happy Life of Daisy Miller
William A. Wortman, King Library, Miami University
Panel 7B: Imperial Publishing.
Moderator: Kathryn Ledbetter, Department of English, University of South
Carolina
1. American Printings of British Copyright Material Imported into
Canada East in 1849: Cuustoms Plantation Records
Mary Lu MacDonald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
2. Cultural Imperialism and Imperial Culture: How the Outreach of
British Publishers in the Late Victorian Period Helped Construct an Australian
Literary Canon
Elizabeth Morrison, Department of English, Australian Defence Academy,
Canberra
3. Discounts and Remainders from the Old World to the New in the
18th and 19th Centuries
Wallace Kirsop, Department of Romance Languages, Monash University, Melbourne
Panel 7C: What Book Reviewers Do.
Moderator: Michael Dirda, Book World, The Washington Post
1. Enlightenment Reviewing and the Transformation of Literature
Jon Klancher, Department of English, Boston University
2. The Book Review Journal as Cultural Intermediary: The Role of The
New York Times Book Review in Defining Books and Reading
Ann Haugland, Department of Communication, Illinois State University
3. Everybody's "Little Houses": Reviewers and Critics Read
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Anita Clair Fellman, Women's Studies and History, Old Dominion University
Session 8: Saturday, July 16, 1:15 3:00 p.m.
Panel 8A: Defining Literary Property.
Moderator: Greg Elin, New York, N.Y.
1. Orchestrating Interests: The U.S. Copyright Act of 1909
Jane Rosenberg, Alexandria, Va.
2. An Author's Rights: Moral Rights and Author-Publisher Dealings
under Mexican Copyright Law
Jake Watts, Latin American Bibliographer, Michigan State University
3. Should Writing Be Legal? Reflections on Copyright and Repetition
Suzanne Osborne, Comparative Literature, Graduate School, City University
of New York
Panel 8B: The Early American Literary Marketplace.
Moderator: William L. Joyce, University Library, Princeton University
1. Print in Colonial Virginia: A Customer-Based View of the Williamsburg
Printing Office
David A. Rawson, Department of History, College of William and Mary
2. Lindley Murray: Best-Selling Textbook Author in Britain and the
U.S. during the Early 19th Century
Charles Monaghan, Brooklyn, NY
3. Literary Veiling and the Marketplace in Antebellum America
Susan Barrera Fay, School of Arts & Sciences, Marymount University
Panel 8C: Novelists in the Magazines.
Moderator: Marilyn Button, English Department, Lincoln University
1. Oliver Twist's Con-Texts
Robert L. Patten, Department of English, Rice University
2.The Guardian and Virginia Woolf
Sonya Rudikoff, Princeton, N.J.
3. Edith Wharton and the Popular Magazines
Sharon Shaloo, Arlington, Mass.
Session 9: Saturday, July 16, 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Panel 9A: The Author as Commodity.
Moderator: Jane S. Gabin, Chapel Hill, N.C.
1. Sterne, Garrick, and the Commodification of Authorship
Frank Donoghue, Department of English, Ohio State University
2. The 19th Century American Book Market and Representations of Authorship
in Whitman's Poetry
David Dowling, Department of English, University of Colorado at Boulder
3. Still the Dean but not in Demand: Howells and the Problem of Surplus
Value
Michael Anesko, Pennsylvania State University
Panel 9B: Iconography & Texts.
Moderator: Michael Hancher, Department of English, Univesity of Minnesota
1. The Verbal and Visual Representation of Aristotle's Ethics and Politics in
the French Translations by Nicole Oresme Commissioned by King Charles
V of France
Claire Richter Sherman, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts,
National Gallery of Art
2. Textual Insertions in Late 15th Century Narrative Wall Paintings:
Questions of Authorship and Readership
Veronica Plesch, Princeton University
3. Publishing Pompeii, 1738-1840: A Study in Cultural Censorships
Alison Shell, London
Panel 9C: Biographical Approaches to Book History.
Moderator: John Powell, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Pennsylvania
State University, Erie
1. Defining the National Pantheon: Editors, Authors, and Houghton
Mifflin's Biographical Series, 1880-1915
Scott E. Casper, Department of History, University of Nevada, Reno
2. Macmillans, the &2EML, and The "Dust Heap": Biographical
Series and Biography
Laurel Brake, Centre for Extra-Mural Studies, Birkbeck College, University
of London
3. Book History and Biography
James L. W. West III, Center for the History of the Book, Pennsylvania
State University