Conveners: Giles Mandelbrote (Lambeth Palace Library), Dr Keith A. Manley (The National Trust), Professor Simon Eliot (Institute of English Studies), Professor Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary)

The seminars are jointly sponsored by the Institute of English Studies, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Library & Information History Group of CILIP.

Venue: Jessel Room, first floor of Senate House, unless stated otherwise below. Changes to room allocations will be displayed on the web-site of the Institute of English Studies.

Time: Tuesdays, 5.30 p.m.

Podcasts: Available online

Autumn Term 2012

4 December
Daniel Starza Smith (University College, London)
‘How Hard a Task you Lay vpon Mee you doe not Knowe’: Editing the Libraries of the First and Second Viscounts Conway, 1610-1645
Between 1610 and his death in 1631 Sir Edward Conway (later first Viscount Conway), enjoyed a spectacular rise in professional fortune, transforming from a Netherlands-based soldier to a Secretary of State who served both James I and Charles I. Conway acquired most of his education and courtly polish by seeking out literature in manuscript and by collecting around 500 printed books. Two catalogues exist of his libraries – dated, fortuitously, 1610 and 1631. I am in the process of editing these catalogues for Private Libraries in Renaissance England, and this paper presents my findings about this important statesman and patron’s intellectual profile at the beginning and end of this period. It also expands previous work on Conway’s son, Edward, second Viscount Conway (d.1655), one of the greatest private book collectors of the seventeenth century, whose collections totalled some 13,000 printed volumes.
Please note: this session takes place in the Dr Seng T Lee Centre for Manuscript and Book Studies in Senate House Library (fourth floor).

Spring Term 2013

5 February
Dr William Poole (New College, Oxford)
Seventeenth-Century Library Benefactors Books in Oxford Colleges: Some Examples and Some Uses
This talk will concern the rise of the genre following the opening of the Bodleian Library, and how we can exploit college examples of the form for different historical purpose; in other words not just to track the growth of specific collections per se but to ask if and how far such resources can be used to discuss intellectual change more generally.

5 March
Dr Paddy Bullard (University of Kent)
Title TBC – to be on either Jonathan Swift’s library or Edmund Burke’s library.

Summer Term 2013

7 May
TBC

4 June
Dunstan Roberts (Trinity Hall, Cambridge)
Title TBC
Please note: this session takes place in the Guard Room at Lambeth Palace.
Intending visitors are asked to contact in advance mary.comer@churchofengland.org.
Please note that the Great Hall will be closed during this term.

2 July
Alice Ford-Smith (Dr. Williams’s Library)
A Library Walk is being organized
Fuller details will be available at a later date. A charge of £10 will be made for this event.

Spaces of the book : materials and agents of the text/image creation (XXth and XXIst Centuries)

Trinity College, Cambridge, 6 and 7 September 2013

The conference will consider the book as a space of creation in which text and image stand in dialogue (illustrated books, livres d’artistes, artists’ books), from the point of view of its medium (materials, format, folding, etc.) and the various agents (writers, artists, as well as typographers, printers, graphic artists, publishers, gallery owners/directors, booksellers) who play an essential role in its conception and distribution.

The main issues will be:
— To what extent do the material specificities of the chosen medium influence literary and artistic innovation?
— To what extent do the various agents involved in the conception, composition, publication and distribution of the book play a role in the creative process, in contexts which also include digital media, installation and performance?
— Are there privileged sites for the distribution and reception of these works? Is the creative book an object to be called up from a rare books collection or a work to be exhibited (museums, galleries), or activated?
— How are the current transformations of both object and process modifying its social and political impact?
— Does the virtual book abolish the distinction that was traditional in the context of industrial reproduction between creative book and mass-market product?
— Does the multiplication of collective and even impersonal creations imply a new conception of creator or author?

During the conference, an exhibition on the avant-garde publisher, bookseller and gallery-owner Jean Petithory will take place in the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge.

The conference languages are English and French.

Please send your proposal (maximum 500 words) before 31 January 2013 to espacesdulivre@trin.cam.ac.uk

Organisers : Isabelle Chol (Université de Pau) and Jean Khalfa (Trinity College, Cambridge).
This conference is part of the ANR-LEC programme: http://lec.hypotheses.org/presentation

Michaelmas Term 2012

Alternate Tuesdays, 12.30-14.30 during term time,
CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground Floor

Thinking Things
Tuesday, 9 Oct 2012
Jonathan Lamb (Vanderbilt University) and Elizabeth Eger (King’s College London)

Worshipping Things
Tuesday, 23 Oct 2012
Mary Laven (University of Cambridge) and Maia Nuku (University of Cambridge)

Stilling Things
Tuesday, 6 Nov 2012
Hanneke Grootenboer (Oxford) and Joserra Marcaida Lopez (Cambridge)

Curing Things
Tuesday, 20 Nov 2012
Simon Chaplin (Wellcome Library) and Christelle Rabier (London School of Economics)

Open to all. No registration required

INTERDISCIPLINARY EARLY MODERN SEMINAR
Seminars are held in St. Catharine’s College OCR,
1.30 – 3pm (unless otherwise indicated).
Tea, coffee and biscuits are served.
All welcome!

MICHAELMAS TERM
10th October: Roundtable discussion on Diaries: What are the
implications of using diaries as sources? How are they useful
and how are they problematic?
Brief presentations from Simon Healy (History of Parliament), Cassie Gorman (English) and John Galagher (History).

24th October: 17th Century London: Public Spaces, Public Presence
Michelle Wallis (History and Philosophy of Science), ‘“A Favourable Construction Upon this Public Way of Practice”: Handbill Advertisements and the Medical Marketplace of Early Modern England’ and Kristen Klebba
(History), ‘For the Recreation of Our People’: Civic Culture, Merchant Elites and the Emergence of London’s Moorfields’.

7th November: Dr Adam Smyth (Birkbeck, London), ‘Scissors and Bibles at
Little Gidding’.

21st November: Dr Eoin Devlin (Selwyn College), ‘Restoring Catholic
England: Lord Castlemaine’s Mission to Papal Rome’.

For further details, or for the full 2012-13 programme, please contact:
Liesbeth Corens (lc495) Phoebe Dickerson (pd291)
Charles Drummond (cd432)

Tuesday 31 July 2012, Cambridge University Library will be holding its
fifth masterclass as part of the Incunabula Project.

The masterclass, entitled ‘Integrating Images in the Fifteenth-Century
Book’, will be led by Roger Gaskell, of Roger Gaskell Rare Books
(http://www.rogergaskell.com/About.htm).

The invention of printing meant that identical copies of verbal texts
could be produced. However the provision of exactly reproduced images, the
same in each copy, lagged behind, and hand-drawn or pasted-in illustrations
continued to be used. Using examples from the UL collection, this class will
provide hands-on instruction in identifying and analysing the technologies
of picture printing by which standardised text-image relationships were
achieved.

The seminar will be held in the Sir Geoffrey Keynes Room at the Library.
It will start at 2.30pm and will last approximately 90 minutes, allowing time
for questions and discussion. Attendance will be limited in order to allow
all attendees a chance to see the books under discussion up close, and
to participate in the discussion.

To book your place, please contact William Hale at
.

Library & Information History Group

David McKitterick (Wren Library) will give a talk on *Seventeenth-Century Libraries*

Monday 2 July, 3pm, Morison Room, University Library

All welcome

Libraries: New Research Directions

An Early Modern Research Centre colloquium at the University of Reading

Friday, 8 June 2012

This colloquium aims to bring together people researching the history of libraries over a wide chronological period and from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Papers and discussion will focus not only on particular cases but also on broader methodological questions about the current practice and possible future directions of library history. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Fee: £15 (£10 students and unwaged)

Programme

10.30am  Coffee and registration

11am  Welcome

11.15-12.45pm   

Matthew Nicholls (University of Reading): ‘Libraries in the ancient world: points of communication.’

David Rundle (Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford): ‘How libraries die, or what the fate of manuscripts in early modern England can teach us.’

12.45-1.45pm  Lunch

1.45-3.15pm                          

Anne Overell (University of Durham): ‘The libraries of Cardinal Reginald Pole and his friends, ca.1520-1558.’

Daniel Starza Smith (University of Reading): ‘“Well versed in all parts of learning”: the Conway family libraries, 1610-1645.’

3.15-3.45pm Tea

3.45-5.15pm                          

Paddy Bullard (University of Kent): ‘What did Jonathan Swift do in libraries?’

Rose Dixon (King’s College London): ‘Virtual “magazines of learning”: The Dissenting Academy Libraries Project, 1720-1860.’

5.15pm                                     

Warren Boutcher (Queen Mary, University of London): Closing comments followed by discussion.

6pm   Drinks

For a booking form, please visit the EMRC website (http://www.reading.ac.uk/emrc/events/emrc-events.aspx) or contact the EMRC secretary, Jan Cox:  j.f.cox@reading.ac.uk

Organiser: Rebecca Bullard: r.bullard@reading.ac.uk.

‘Royal Devotion: Monarchy and the Book of Common Prayer’

An exhibition at Lambeth Palace Library, London

Curated by Brian Cummings and Hugh Cahill

1st May – 14th July, 2012

This exhibition traces the close relationship between royalty and religion from medieval to modern times. It tells the story of the Book of Common Prayer and its importance in national life. This story is illustrated with books, manuscripts and objects, many of which have royal or other important provenances. For details and tickets see: http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/content/royaldevotion

There is also a series of public lectures to accompany the exhibition:

10 May – Professor Eamon Duffy, ‘Latin for Lay People; Medieval Prayer Books’

31 May – Revd. Dr. Judith Maltby, ‘The Prayer Book Under Duress: Public Worship in the Civil War and Interregnum’

6 June – Professor Brian Cummings, ‘The Genesis of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer’

5 July – Professors Stephen Taylor and Philip Williamson, ‘Coronation, Prayer Book, and People 1660-1953’

Doors open 5.15pm (admission by Library exhibition entrance). Lectures will take place in the Guard Room, Lambeth Palace, at 6 p.m. Exhibition closes for ticket-holders at 8pm. Refreshments will be available after the lecture.

Tickets (including free viewing of the exhibition before and after the lecture) £12 each. Season ticket for the series of four lectures £35. Tickets by pre-booking only. To book lecture tickets please telephone 0743 204 4820, email visitor.manager@churchofengland.org or write to Visitor Manager at the address below, enclosing a cheque payable to Lambeth Palace Library.

Royal Devotion exhibition booking information: Tickets cost £12 Adults, £10 Concessions (over 60s, student and unemployed), under 17s free. Price includes printed exhibition guide. To buy tickets and for more information visit www.lambethpalacelibrary.org or call 0844 847 1698

Opening times:

Tuesday- Friday 11.00-13.30 and 14.00- 17.00 (last entry 16.00), Saturdays and Bank Holidays- 11.00-16.00 (last entry 15.00)

Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7JU

www.lambethpalacelibrary.org