Calling overdue attention to women in #BookHistory and #design
Sarah Wyman Whitman (1842-1904) was one of the first American artists to make a career of book cover design. From 1880 to 1904 she designed around 300 book covers, mostly for Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Her covers sold books so well that the publisher mentioned her name as the cover designer in its advertisements.
The Scottish Novel in 1824
1 July, University of Edinburgh – free
This one-day in-person symposium marks the bicentenary of 1824, an ‘annus mirabilis’ in the history of Scottish fiction that saw the publication of two experimental masterpieces: James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs & Confessions of a Justified Sinner, & Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet.
Some #BookHistory: French lawyer & author Marc Lescarbot (d.1641) (‘ML’) had a client involved in an expedition to Acadia, New France. He invited ML, who accepted. 1606 July: They reached Port Royal (now in #NovaScotia )… with ML’s #books in tow: the 1st known library* in what is now #Canada.
Depending on your definition of ‘library’, of course. Let’s say, ‘Lescarbot’s books are regarded as the first known collection of European-style codices in what is now Canada’. @bookhistodons
florid poem by Col. J. J. von Scheler in honor of the 54th birthday [when you're an enlightened despit, it doesn't have to be a round number] of Duke Carl Eugen of Württemberg
Small folio from the presses of Court Printer Christoph Friedrich Cotta the elder, Stuttgart
Among the beauties of traditional printing, as book historians know, are the distinctive character and robust materiality.
Note here, the tactile quality of the rag paper (photo 1), the deep impression of type and ornament (2) and the way the border is assembled from individual ornamental pieces (3)
#TIH#OTD in #BookHistory 6 May 1236: Death of Roger of Wendover, Benedictine monk & 1st of a series of important chroniclers at St Albans. His best-known chronicle, Flores historiarum, survives in 2 #MedievalManuscripts—including the 1 shown in the 📷—& an edition in Matthew Paris’ (c.1200–1259) Chronica majora. @bookhistodons@medievodons
#TIH#OTD in #BookHistory: Happy birthday to the French publisher Louis Christophe François Hachette (1800 May 05–1864 Jul 31), founder of @HachetteLivre (estab. 1826). Initially called Brédif, the company became L. Hachette et Compagnie on 01 Jan 1846.
#OTD in #HorrorHistory#WeirdHistory#BookHistory: Death of Eleanor Sleath (1770 Oct 15–1847 May 05), best known for her 1798 #gothic novel The Orphan of the Rhine, listed as one of the 7 ‘horrid novels’ recommended by Isabella Thorpe in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.
(‘The Northanger Horrid Novels’ were believed to be of Austen’s own invention until Montague Summers began publishing on the seven, refuting the denial of their existence. Other scholars soon followed suit.)
Seeing Dante’s Commedia in Print from the Renaissance to Today
"An intensely envisioned journey through the three realms of the Christian afterlife (Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise), Dante’s poem, written in the early 1300s, was the subject of vivid illustrations from its earliest circulation and, when book making transitioned into the new medium of print in the late 1400s, Dante’s poem became the source of inspiration for new visual traditions."
This is just a reminder that, in 1631, Robert Barker in London misprinted a famous line of the Holy Bible, namely „Thou shalt commit adultery“.
The forbidden copies with the famous slip sold well, and a few survived in our catalogues. The edition was called the Wicked Bible afterwards. #bookhistory#histodons#history#bible
And this happens when fingers that were used to hold down a book's page to be scanned were captured, and a software "repairs" this space automatically afterwards. In short: the scanned image is corrected by filling the problematic space with new content. In this case, this filling didn't fit too well: you see a "en=" text part from a different print, and some very bad pixel space. Welcome to the complex digital narrative of old printed books.
Ever been slapped with a birch rod by a fish? Well, meet this guy from around 1600, a godsend punishing fish caught by a horrified fisher in the Baltic Sea. According to a broadside, the story was maybe true.
This is highly useful if you work with #earlymodern books of all kinds: a compiled and explained set of contemporary #abbreviations. From apothecaries' weights to signs for half moon moments in almanacs. Boost, #bookhistory and #histodons looking for abbreviations of the past. #history@histodons