Literary Cultures and the Material Book

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2008), "Literary Cultures and the Material Book", Library Review, Vol. 57 No. 8, pp. 638-639. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530810899621

In recent years, the history of the book has re‐emerged like a phoenix out of the perceived ashes of historical bibliography. One trigger for this has been the growing recognition of cultural history, another the fascinating relevance to scholarship of studying relationships between literary and social culture, on the one hand, and the history of the book (the text as well as the archive and the library, private and public), on the other hand. The British Library series of studies in the history of the book (of which this is one) acknowledges this, as has the work of the three editors of the book (Eliot an editor of a parallel Blackwell companion to the history of the book, 2007, Nash and editor of a study of the culture of collected editions, 2003 and Willison a contributor to The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, a work currently in progress).

Literary Cultures and the Material Book is an impressive addition to the field. It examines connections between literary cultures and the material book – taking the first globally to mean both non‐Western and Western cultural traditions, and the second to mean books as written on wood and vellum, as codices and after printing in various book formats. Simon Eliot's introductory chapter on such material factors draws in its horns at 1900, so no “new technology” appears. We have here a collection of papers from the 2004 symposium, held in London.

Its geographical and chronological range is wide – from the Tale of Genji to Vizetelly's Zola, oral tradition in Africa to Aldus Manutius to Uncle Tom's Cabin to the Ryerson Press. Contributors are international in origin and/or interest and, alphabetically, include scholars like Peter Kornicki (a masterly study of marketing the Tale of Genji in seventeenth century Japan), Sheldon Pollock (on literary and manuscript culture in pre‐colonial India), Nicholas Mann (examining Petrarch – the author and his books), Maria Lopez‐Vidriedo (printing and literary culture during the Spanish enlightenment), Francois Vallotton (cultural hegemony and literary heterogeneity in the Francophone world), Richard Landon (on Richard Garnett) and John Barnes (Australian publishing and literary nationalism). Black‐and‐white photographs generously enhance the book throughout.

David McKitterick (author of, among others, a history of the Cambridge University Press) provides a thoughtful tail‐piece on “perspectives for an international history of the book” and this acts as a meta‐critical insight into the field as a whole. Defining terms is not easy – what is literature, for instance? Does a historical framework necessarily help? Are we too prone to think of the past, and of cultures other than our own, through the lens of the present? Since many disciplines engage with and in the history of the book, are their distinctive approaches part of a coherent whole? What are national boundaries when anyone attempts to consider internationalism? What about translation, what about music publishing and performance, what about the ever‐recurring dialectic between commerce and authorship? As a result, can an international approach really work and can a book dealing with it really work?

To answer such questions would take another symposium but, in this case, the book is admittedly ambitious and yet this is redeemed in two clear ways – the quality of the essays (all unpretentious, all well informed, all well‐customised in context) and the convincingness of the story‐arc of all of the essays put together – four sections (non‐Western traditions of the book, the Western book in history, language empires and the Anglophone tradition). The editors said they wanted to be non‐Western‐centric and this has worked. The collection that results, then, does several jobs rather well – it provides a good cross‐section of current scholarship for the initiated and the expert, while at the same time offering an insight for newcomers (such as students on the growing number of courses on the history of the book – not necessary rare books or special collections librarianship with which it is often linked and to which it is often reduced – and teachers and lecturers servicing such courses). For the astute librarian providing resources for courses, reading between the lines to the historiography here will help identify many eligible books worth buying for the library.

A book with such explicit aims as this – to consider the relationship between one of book history's main concerns, the material book and the study of literary cultures' (introduction by the three editors) – not only sets out its stall but begs the question – does it really do it? Like saying one of the best ways to understand the Holocaust is to study individual victims, let us quickly look at specific examples in the book. Take Robert Hillenbrand's study of the Shahnama (the “Book of Kings” manuscript) and the Persian illustrated book: here we face aporia arising from textual variants as well as challenges of contextualizing the iconography; we cannot ignore contemporary politics or attempts to excise Semitic echoes from the text; the insight into Mongol history it provides opens up issues for historians. Then take Andrew Nash's study of the inter‐war years of publisher Chatto and Windus in the UK, shaped by book clubs and Leavisite strictures about popular culture, fears about censorship that led printers to expurgate some novels and the emergence of Penguin paperbacks.

In ways like these the book proves its point. Some essays are more like reminders of well‐researched fields that try (and succeed) in re‐framing them in the context of the history of the book (and the aims of the symposium and the book), while others are deeper contributions to the knowledge, as if authors who know their stuff have enthusiastically revisited their own knowledge and ideas in order to look at it in a new way. The history of the book is that sort of field – a watering hole for scholars and practitioners of many kinds, and books like this confirm the fact that, far from being a bit‐of‐this‐and‐a‐bit‐of that, the history of the book (or book history) has matured into an established scholarly domain in its own right. For anyone studying the field, however, extending their reach into more recent decades – and above all into digital initiatives in the bibliographical, archive and heritage areas – cannot be ignored: not a limitation of this book but an inevitable corollary of reading it. Perhaps a focus of a future symposium?