Manuscript and Print Cultures
The Manuscript and Print Cultures (MaPC) Research Group is hosted in English and Comparative Literary Studies but invites scholars to join from across the Faculty and beyond who work amidst full historical, conceptual, and global scope of manuscript, print cultures, the history of the book and other ephemera. Recent research of MaPC members focuses on medieval manuscript tradition (Wood, Jiang), early modern travel writings (Din-Kariuki, Leonard), the printing and publishing of early modern playtexts (Grant, Hosington), early modern print cultures (De Smet); nineteenth-century theatre ephemera (Coates); material objects and their accompanying print (Webb); correspondence and translation (Botley); classical learning (Verhaart); pamphlets and revolutionary propaganda (West, Wardaugh); bilingual and transatlantic literary culture of the Caribbean (Gilmore); periodicals, illustration, and the Gothic (Baker); small press publishing and poetry (Skinner); literary and cultural production and publication in early twentieth century New York (Kelly).
As well as publishing with leading journals and presses, working on Leverhulme funded projects, our staff have written for outlets such as the Times Literary Supplement, and appeared on BBC radio.
Convened by Prof Teresa Grant t.grant@warwick.ac.uk and Dr Jen Baker J.Baker.5@warwick.ac.uk
If you would like to be added to the list of research group members below, please email J.Baker.5@warwick.ac.uk with your contact details, any webpages, and a brief blurb of your research interests in this area.
Events
Term One 2024-25
(Week 3) Tuesday 15th October, 5.05pm (ECLS hub on 5th floor)
Dr Li Ren-Yuan (Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of History and Philology / the Director of IHP Archives)
"Early Commercial Publishing and Reading Practices in China: Responses to the Early Information Age"
This talk introduces my ongoing research on the transformation of reading practices in China during the emergence of commercial publishing, facilitated by woodblock printing. I will approach to this issue in two ways. First, I examine this issue from the readers' perspective. Starting in the 12th century, the term "reading methods" became common as scholars debated what constituted proper ways to read. By the 14th century, practical reading guides appeared, and the meaning of "reading" began to shift. I argue that these discussions on "proper" reading methods were in response to changes in the textual transmission environment at the time and prompted further reflection on reading practices.
Second, I explore this issue from the perspective of publishers, using an example of reading aids created for a famous history book. Faced with information overload, editors and compilers of the time devised various methods to help readers manage the growing volume of content, such as charts, indexes, and different layouts and fonts. These adaptations to printed codices altered how readers interacted with texts and continued to evolve into the late Chinese imperial period.
From this research, I attempt to compare the discussion of information overload (Too Much to Know!) in the book history of early modern Europe with a similar situation in China during the rise of early commercial publishing.
Upcoming:
Term 2, week 3 - Thursday 23rd January at 5pm in FAB 5.49 (English hub)
Prof Paul Botley, 'Early modern asterisks and the censorship of printed letter-collections'.
Prof Botley will be giving a talk on the history of the asterisk and its role in censorship, inspired by findings from the Leverhulme funded Baudius Project from which he has recently returned. He will also answer any questions on the broader project/ the practicalities of such a project.
Term 2, week 8 - Thursday 27th Feb, 5pm
Prof Brenda Hosington. 'Creating a Catalogue: From the 'Renaissance Cultural Crossroads' to the 'Stuart and Commonwealth Cultural Crosscurrents' catalogues of translation'.
Dr Federica Coluzzi, "Dante…di giorno in giorno: Family History and Printed Ephemera in nineteenth-century Italy"
In the late nineteenth century, Italian women writers entered the overwhelmingly masculine and fiercely competitive field of Dante studies by authoring a vast and diverse body of works. Along with handbooks, translations, critical studies and creative adaptations, they contributed to the wider popularisation of Dante’s works through printed ephemera such as maps, diaries and calendars launched on the market by major publishes. Eugenia Levi’s Dante…di giorno in giorno presents Dante quotations, translated in French, German and English, for each day. First published in 1893, it went through three consecutive editions with Loescher & Seeber, before being re-issued in a new miniature format in 1903. In this seminar, I will invite participants to engage in a collaborative material study of personal copy of Levi’s book, paying particular attention to the marginalia inscribed in its pages to reflect on its intergenerational uses as a visitors’ book and sentiment album within a family from Trentino Alto Adige.
Research Group Members
Prof Teresa Grant is Professor of Renaissance Theatre and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance. She teaches on the degree programmes in English and History, English and English and Theatre and on the MA in English and Drama (of which she is the convenor). She is General Editor (with Eugene Giddens and Barbara Ravelhofer) of the Oxford University Press 15 volume The Complete Works of James Shirley.
Dr Jen BakerLink opens in a new window (ECLS) researches nineteenth-century Anglophone death cultures and the Gothic - particularly relating to the child - and more broadly on the novel form, the short form, gothic illustration and gothic publishing, paratexts and epitexts, and more contemporary considerations of "the book" such as Gothic pop-up and other movable ephemera.
Dr Sarah Wood is Associate Professor in Middle English in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies. She has published extensively on the manuscripts and textual tradition of Piers Plowman. Prof.
Professor Ingrid De Smet Link opens in a new window(SMLC) regularly works with manuscripts and rare books in her research on the intellectual culture of early modern France, the Low Countries, and Italy; She has taught postgraduate classes on working with manuscripts and rare books, and early modern print culture; and supervise PhD students working with manuscripts and print. Among my current (co-)supervisees in this area is work on Sergei (Zotov) (alchemical manuscripts) and Karin (Sprang) (alba amicorum).
Dr John West (ECLS)
Prof. Ralph Hanna is Professor Emeritus of Palaeography at the University of Oxford. His books include Introducing Medieval Book History: Manuscripts, their Producers and their Readers (Liverpool, 2013) and Looking at Medieval Books: Learning to See (Liverpool, 2023)
Prof. John Gilmore (ECLS)
Dr David Coates Link opens in a new window(TPS) is a cultural historian working on British theatre, amateur theatre, performance and entertainment histories of the long nineteenth century. He is interested in the material traces of theatre from the period, including playbills, published plays, acting editions, newspapers, illustrated news, theatre guidebooks and scrapbooks.
Dr Anna LanfranchiLink opens in a new window (SMLC) is a teaching fellow in Translation and transcultural studies and Italian. Her research focuses on transnational publishing history, history of copyright and literary agents, book programmes and cultural diplomacy.
Dr Nancy Haijing Jiang (ECLS)
Prof. Brenda HosingtonLink opens in a new window is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Renaissance Studies. Her major area of research is translation history and theory, with a particular focus on the relationship between translation and print in early modern England (Editor in chief of one online catalogue of printed translations (1473-1640) and Co-editor of another (1641-1660) forthcoming). She also publishes on women translators, many of whom produced translations in manuscript, and on Neo-Latin translations and their print history.
Dr Jack Bowman is a current tutor in the History department and recently finished his PhD at Warwick. His research focuses on anti-colonial print networks and political thought in the twentieth-century, with a current focus on Pan-Africanism. He has a recent article upon Indian independence activist V. K. Krishna Menon and his role as an editor in Britain (during which he, among other things, helped found Pelican Books!) now out in The Historical Journal.
Dr Ania Crowther is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Renaissance Studies and completed her PhD at Warwick in 2018 on James Shirley and the Restoration Stage with a particular focus on the relationship between the manuscript and print versions of Shirley’s The Court Secret. Her work is largely on promptbooks and manuscript edits to Seventeenth-century drama and she is currently editing Youth’s Glory and Death’s Banquet for the Complete Works of Margaret Cavendish project.
Dr Jessica Wardhaugh (SMLC) is a Reader in French Studies, and works on the relationship between politics and culture in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France. She has published books on street politics and political theatre, as well as on ideas of community and democracy. Her current book project explores political play in its verbal, visual, and physical forms, and she is particularly interested in the material and print cultures of popular politics, including posters, flyers, graffiti, and political ephemera.
Madeleine BraceyLink opens in a new window is a first-year PhD student at Coventry University working on the long lost Coventry Grammar School Library. She is supervised by Dr Alice Leonard (Coventry) and mentored by Prof. Paul Botley (Warwick).
Dr Alice LeonardLink opens in a new window is a specialist in the culture and history of error in early modern England. She is interested in how perceptions of error manifested and changed during this period, in epistemological contexts such as natural philosophy, travel and navigation. In 2023, she will be a British Library Eccles Fellow to conduct archival research for my second monograph in this area. She is co-editor on the Notebooks volume of The Complete Works of Thomas BrowneLink opens in a new window (OUP) and is also working on a short book entitled Early Modern Bookspace, under contract with Cambridge University Press.
Dr William Rupp is assistant professor in Liberal Arts. After completing his doctoral studies in history at Warwick, William has worked in outreach and as an academic developer. His research is focused mainly on travel and national identity creation in eighteenth-century Britain but he has also worked technology adoption and social control in the latter part of the nineteenth century.