Rare Book School
Preliminary Reading
List
Introduction to c15 Printing
Paul Needham
This course will touch on a wide variety of topics, all founded on the direct examination of early printed books (or at least on the principle of direct examination). It will provide a survey of European printing in the 15th century and of its scholarly literature, and show how our knowledge of that world proceeds directly from bibliographical investigations. We presuppose a general knowledge of bibliography, at the level of RBS's Descriptive Bibliography course; and thus or alternatively a working familiarity with the handbooks of R. B. McKerrow, Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students -- Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description -- and Philip Gaskell, New Introduction to Bibliography.
Our emphasis will be a little broader than that of these handbooks, for a considerable amount of attention will be given to individualities of copy history, as reflected in rubrication/decoration, binding (and printed or written waste in bindings), ownerships, and other signs of use.
The reading list is in two parts: first, some publications of my own that attempt to sketch out methodologies and their histories in several areas; second, a diverse group of earlier studies, in English, that are of unusual quality. Please try to read in advance at least I.1 and II.1. You might find it helpful to make photocopies, which you can mark up in class, of I.1, I.3, I.4, and I.5. Special credit, perhaps in the form of a free coffee, will be given to those who spot errors and typos in these. Those who spot genuine errors of reasoning will get double credit.
I.
1. PN, "ISTC as a tool for analytical bibliography," in Lotte Hellinga & John Goldfinch, eds., Bibliography and the Study of 15th-Century Civilization (London, 1987): 39-54.
2. PN, The Printer & The Pardoner: An Unrecorded Indulgence Printed by William Caxton for the Hospital of St. Mary Rounceval, Charing Cross. (Washington DC: Library of Congress, 1986): re bibliographical evidence from binding waste. On the same topic: "Fragments in Books: Dutch Prototypography in the Van Ess Collection," in Milton McC. Gatch, ed., 'so precious a foundation': The Library of Leander van Ess (New York, 1996: exhibition catalogue of Union Theological Seminary & The Grolier Club): 85-110.
3. PN, "Concepts of Paper Study," in: Puzzles in Paper: Concepts in Historical Watermarks, ed. Daniel W. Mosser, Michael Saffle & Ernest W. Sullivan II (Oak Knoll Press & The British Library, 2000), 1-36. Best to read after Stevenson, infra. If you want to dig deeper, see also "Res papirea: Sizes and Formats of the Late Medieval Book," in [Peter Rück, ed.], Rationalisierung der Buchherstellung im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Marburg an der Lahn, 1994): 123-145; and "Aldus Manutius's Paper Stocks: The Evidence of two Uncut Books," Princeton University Library Chronicle 55 no. 2 (Winter 1994): 287-307.
4. PN, "Counting Incunables: The IISTC CD-ROM," [Review Essay] in Huntington Library Quarterly 61 nos. 3 & 4 (1998), 456-529. Includes a survey history of incunable cataloguing.
5. PN, "Copy Description in Incunable Catalogues", PBSA 95 no. 2 ([June] 2001), 173-239.
II.
1. Henry Bradshaw, "The Printer of the Historia S. Albani," (Memorandum No. 1, Cambridge, 1868); reprinted in his Collected Papers (Cambridge, 1889): 149-63. Perhaps the first true "classic" of analytical bibliography. It will repay careful reading, for Bradshaw sometimes seems deceptively simple. I wrote on Bradshaw: The Bradshaw Method: Henry Bradshaw's Contribution to Bibliography. The Seventh Hanes Lecture. Chapel Hill, N. Car., 1988
2. E. Ph. Goldschmidt, Gothic & Renaissance Bookbindings, 2 vols. (London, 1928; reprinted Amsterdam, 1967). Read the introduction for an orientation on questions of 15th and 16th century bookbinding history. Everything written by G. D. Hobson and A. R. A. Hobson on bookbindings is good; and likewise by Howard M. Nixon and Mirjam Foot.
3. Neil R. Ker, Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings (Oxford, 1954: Oxford Bibliographical Society, Publications, New Series, V). Read the Introduction. Anything Ker wrote on any topic is worth reading. See, inter alia, the selection of articles in his Books, Collectors & Libraries (Hambledon Press, [1985]), eg pp 321-26, "The Chaining ... of Manuscripts Belonging to the Old University Library"; and/or "The Library of John Jewel," Bodleian Library Record IX no. 5 (1977): 256-65.
4. Allan H. Stevenson, " Watermarks are Twins," Studies in Bibliography 4 (1951-52): 57-91. (Full text available online.) A classic work to the same degree as Bradshaw's, above; his examples are centered on 17th century paper, but his method applies to European papermaking from the 14th through 18th centuries. Do not forget Stevenson's The Problem of the Missale Speciale (London: Bibliographical Society, 1967), which is both pathbreaking and beautifully written. I wrote on Stevenson: " Allan H. Stevenson and the Bibliographical Uses of Paper," Studies in Bibliography 47, 1994: 23-64.