There was a fascinating article in yesterday’s Guardian by Wayne Gooderham about an exhibition he has curated at the Charing Cross Road branch of Foyles, on ‘the secret contents of secondhand books’. Gooderham keeps a lovely blog of book inscriptions, but he writes in the Guardian about some of the other kinds of things that lurk between the covers of old books. Over the years, he discovered, staff at the Skoob Books warehouse have gathered a considerable collection of photographs, postcards, tickets and bills of numerous varieties, postage stamps, pressed flowers, bookmarks, and even a cemetery map – each one carefully noted and collated, and each a tangible yet mysterious trace of some past reader’s presence…

Gooderham’s exhibition continues until 13th December.

This week’s material text was destined for the rubbish bin, along with a great many dead spiders. Since moving house recently, I’ve spent too much time emptying boxes and dusting shelves, and this grimy scrap of newspaper was dislodged from somewhere during the course of my tidying. The name of the newspaper and date of publication do not appear on this fragment, but some casual investigations revealed that it is nearly half a century old, and from a local paper – the University Arms, venue for the ‘Dinner Dance’, is just around the corner from where I live. The cinema listings for a ‘pre-release presentation’ of the film Behold a Pale Horse, starring Gregory Peck, date it to 1964, and on the other side, you can just about make out the end of a report about the Olympics in Tokyo, which took place in October of that year, as well as a reminder about the seasonal changing of the clocks.

Last week I heard a lecture by Hugo Rifkind (columnist for The Times and The Spectator) in which he shared his cynical perspective on the future of newspapers. In the UK, most of the national broadsheets and tabloids are now published in both print and digital formats, and Rifkind showed some statistics which suggested how rapidly the demand for the former is decreasing. The fastest-growing newspaper format is the ‘app’ for tablet computers, which offers subscribers a convenient way to read their newspaper of choice on a portable screen while retaining some of the familiar layout of the printed version. The implications of these changes in the marketplace are manifold for newspapers and their employees. Rifkind spoke about his own growing nostalgia for the dying culture of printed news and all the rituals it incorporated – his paper, The Times, is no longer printed in the building in which he and his colleagues work, and so gone is the possibility of running down to the basement at 3 in the morning to see your column coming literally hot off the press. While news journalism will continue to evolve in many different forms, how long does the newspaper have left?

Ahead of next week’s CMT conference on ‘Texts and Textiles’, I thought I’d share this beautiful notebook which was given to me by a friend. The handsewn book has been bound in Shetland wool, knitted in a Fair Isle style, thus combining in one object, as the label above says, two traditional skills. The knitted wool creates an especially tactile surface, quite the opposite of the smooth, glossy covers of mass-produced hardback books. And I like the way that the repeated patterns of dark stitches against a pale background evoke the appearance of written text on a page.

In a recent conversation with a graduate student friend of mine who is writing about the domestic politics of US Cold War nuclear strategy, we ended up talking about a book he had just bought second-hand. Although the subject-matter of the book, ABM: An Evaluation of the Decision to Deploy an Anti-Ballistic Missile System, edited by Abram Chayes and Jerome B. Wiesner, with Introduction by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (New York: Harper Row, 1969), is pretty far removed from the kinds of things I usually read about for my own research, we stumbled upon what turned out to be a neat little detail inside the volume, which had previously been owned by a college library in California:

As you can see, the stamps in the borrowing slip indicate that the book was a fairly popular loan item until March 1972. After this, it was not borrowed again for eight years, until 1980. To the uninformed reader this evidence of the book’s borrowing history conveys no particular meaning, but my Cold War expert explained that there is in fact significance in these inked dates. In May 1972 the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed between the USA and the Soviet Union. The deployment of an ABM thus became very unlikely, and so interest in books such as this one subsided. In November 1980, however, Ronald Reagan was elected President. He soon began discussions about a renewed arms race, which lead to the announcement in 1983 of a new missile defence plan, dubbed the ‘Star Wars’ initiative. The borrowing slip confirms that interest in this book was revived somewhat during those Reagan years. It tailed off again in the 1990s, and at some subsequent stage the book must have entered the second-hand market after being deaccessioned by the library.

This volume is a serious political document, in which the editors brought together a series of Democrats, all of them either major players in the Kennedy/Johnson administrations, or highly respected scientists, many of whom had also advised the government. Thus the book united technical knowledge about nuclear weapons with political arguments against their deployment, a combination which had not been seen before in such a printed volume. Rushed to press in 1969 by Cass Canfield, a publisher friend of Edward Kennedy, it is furthermore a book which explicitly encourages the individual reader to participate actively in the political debate:

Printed on the inside of the back cover is an invitation for the reader, ‘having read this book’, to make up his or her own mind about the deployment of the ABM system. The coupon may be cut out and sent to Congress via the publisher. Perhaps because this copy was a library book, none of its readers picked up pen and scissors to complete and mail the coupon as directed. There are many other discussions to be had about the significance of this feature of the book. Most importantly however, in the context of the CMT’s activities, this volume reminds us that there is much more to say about both the material and intellectual functions of the book as an artefact around which individuals and institutions interact, especially but not solely in the sphere of political debate.

Thursdays at 5:30pm, room SR-24, Faculty of English, 9 West Road

Thursday 17 May

Juliet Fleming (NYU) will discuss pre-circulated sections from her book-in-progress: Counterproductions: Bibliography After Derrida

For copies, please email Jason Scott-Warren (jes1003@cam.ac.uk)

Thursday 31 May

Daniel Wakelin (St Hilda’s, Oxford)

‘Some Scribes Thinking’

For more information, contact Sarah Cain (stc22@cam.ac.uk)

A belated happy birthday to William Shakespeare, born 448 years ago yesterday. It seems an opportune moment to draw attention to Radio 4’s ‘Shakespeare’s Restless World’, a 20-part series of short programmes by British Museum Director Neil MacGregor which explores the world of Shakespeare’s first audiences through surviving objects from the period. Riding on the back of certain civic and sporting celebrations happening in the UK this year, Shakespeare is currently enjoying his own season on the BBC and we can look forward to an exhibition, Shakespeare: Staging the World, at the British Museum in the summer, as well as the World Shakespeare Festival.

In last night’s episode of ‘Shakespeare’s Restless World’, MacGregor went to Westminster Abbey to look at some of the tombs and relics of English monarchs which, as today, would have been popular tourist attractions in Shakespeare’s time. Jonathan Bate highlighted the important parallels between visiting the effigy of a famous king (and perhaps listening to a guide translate the Latin inscription on his tomb, telling of his achievements) and seeing Shakespeare’s incarnation of the same hero in action on the Elizabethan stage. I’ll be interested to hear what other material texts feature in this series! The programmes can be found on Radio 4 at 1.45 pm and 7.45 pm on weekdays, but are also available to listen again online.

There are many beautiful things to be seen at the British Museum in Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam, a major exhibition focussing on the pilgrimage that every Muslim must make at least once in their life if they are able to, according to the teachings of the Qur’an. It was at the ancient site of Mecca that the Prophet Mohammed received his first revelations in the seventh century, and the Hajj involves rituals in the sanctuary at Mecca, as well as visits to the other holy places of Arafat, Muzdalifa, and Mina. Amongst the manuscripts, maps, photographs and other exhibits  brought together by the British Museum, some of the most exquisite are examples of the textiles that have been used to cover the Ka’ba, the black cube-shaped building at the heart of the sanctuary in Mecca which is believed to have been built by Abraham, and around which pilgrims must walk seven times. The Ka’ba is veiled in the kiswa, a sumptuous cloth heavily embroidered in gold and silver threads with verses from the Qur’an. The kiswa is renewed every year, involving huge labour and expense.  These sacred surfaces covered in dense patterns of calligraphic Arabic are works of great beauty, and this exhibition allows visitors the rare privilege of seeing them in intimate detail.

Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam ends on 15^th April.

We encourage anyone who works on sacred texts and textiles in the Islamic tradition to consider submitting an abstract for a twenty-minute paper at the CMT’s ‘Texts and Textiles’ conference, to be held in Cambridge, 11-12 September 2012. See here for more details.

I needed to check something in Andrew Marvell’s ‘Upon Appleton House’, and, not having my volume of Marvell’s poetry to hand, did what any PhD student would do and quickly searched for the poem via Google.  I am used to the sinister phenomenon of Google linking to adverts connected to the content of my emails, and usually ignore them, but this time I was amused by the commentary Google provided on Marvell’s text. While a supplier of ‘artificial grass’ probably wouldn’t be welcomed by Marvell’s speaker, who criticises ‘all this marble crust’, what would he make of the offers of  tree surgeons – ‘for healthier, tidier trees’ and ‘local clearance work’?

A few people have asked where they can find the details of the call for papers for the CMT conference on ‘Texts and Textiles’, to be held 11-12 September 2012. The information has got rather buried on our ‘News’ page, so here it is again: textstextilesCMT .  The PDF can be downloaded, circulated, and displayed as you wish!

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TEXTS AND TEXTILES

a conference organised by the Centre for Material Texts
to be held 11-12 September 2012 at Jesus College, Cambridge

The shared origin of text and textile in the Latin texere, to weave, is a critical commonplace. Many of the terms we use to describe our interactions with words are derived from this common linguistic root, and numerous other expressions associated with reading and writing are drawn from the rich vocabulary of cloth. Textiles are one of the most ubiquitous components of material culture, and they are also integral to the material history of texts. Paper was originally made from cotton rags, and in many different cultural and historical settings texts come covered, wrapped, bound, or decorated with textiles. And across the domestic, public, religious, and political spheres, textiles are often the material forms in which texts are produced, consumed, and circulated.

In the light of the CMT’s current research theme on ‘the material text in material culture’, we invite papers which consider any of the many dimensions of the relationship between texts and textiles. There are no historical, geographical, or disciplinary limitations. Areas to be addressed could include:

the shared language of texts and textiles

construction and deconstruction: to weave, spin, stitch, knit, stitch, suture, tie up or together, piece, tailor, gather, fashion, fabricate, mesh, trim, stretch, wrap, unfold, unpic
challenges and problem-solving: knots, tangles, holes; to lose the thread, iron out creases, unravel, cut, keep on tenterhooks
pieces and fragments: rags, patches, patchwork, scraps, strands, threads, rhapsodies, patterns, seams, loose ends, layers

the stuff of books

bookbindings and covers
incunabula – ‘swaddling clothes’
medieval girdle books, book chemises
paper and paper-making
cutting, sewing, and stitching in and on books
scrapbooks, albums, collages
book ribbons and bookmarks
carpet pages
textiles in illustrations, frontispieces, title pages

textile texts

needlework and words: tapestry, embroidery, samplers, quilts, hangings, carpets, banners
the needle and the pen
printed textiles
sacred/religious texts and textiles
love-tokens, keepsakes, charms, and relics
cushions, badges, handkerchiefs, flags, scarves, uniforms, livery and other textual/textile ephemera
professional and amateur work
relationships and networks of gifts, patronage, exchange
pattern books, sample books, costume books

Proposals of up to 250 words for 20-minute papers should be sent to Jason Scott-Warren (jes1003@cam.ac.uk) and Lucy Razzall (lmfr2@cam.ac.uk) by 30 April 2012