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Mike Kelly delivered the 2026 NEH-SHARP Living American History in Primary Documents Lecture, "Indigenous Agency & Intervention in the Bibliographical Record," at the University of Virginia on 22 July, 2026. About the Talk: This talk draws from the past thirteen years that Mike Kelly has spent building the Native American Literature Collection in the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College, as well as current work to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into library, archives, and museum practices. The history of the Indigenous people of North America engaging directly with printing technology extends from the first presses in seventeenth-century New England to the comics, games, and more produced by the Indigenous Imagination Workshop in the twenty-first century. Kelly will demonstrate how a deep knowledge of traditional bibliography coupled with an understanding of Indigenous history results in a rich and complex understanding of this aspect of book history. At the same time, there are many ways to incorporate Indigenous methodologies and perspectives into our curatorial practices, which Kelly and his colleagues have attempted to do at Amherst. About the Speaker: Mike Kelly has served as the Head of the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections since 2009; prior to that time he was Curator of Books at the Fales Library & Special Collections at New York University. He received his Master’s in Library Science from the University of Texas at Austin where he spent two years as an intern at the Harry Ransom Center; he also holds an M.A. in English from the University of Virginia. In 2016, he was awarded the Reese Fellowship for American Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas by the Bibliographical Society of America for his work on the bibliography of Samson Occom, a member of the Mohegan tribe of Connecticut. He co-curated (with Carolyn Vega) the exhibition “I’m Nobody! Who Are You? The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson” at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, which ran from January through May 2017. In the summer of 2018, Mike co-taught the course H-150: A History of Native American Books & Indigenous Sovereignty in Amherst for Rare Book School and he just completed teaching the online RBS course G-90v: Indigenous Agency and Intervention in the Bibliographical Record.

Michael Stamm delivered the 2026 Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Lecture on the History of the Book Trades, "Landscapes, Labor, and the Infrastructures of Printed Newspapers," on 8 July 2026. About the Talk: Printed newspapers have become endangered as digital distribution has transformed the news business and the ways that people access information. This talk returns to the decades in our previous century when the printed newspaper thrived as the center of the news cycle, and it highlights some of the hidden landscapes, labor, and infrastructures enabling that. Twentieth-century newspapers were not just outlets for news but were also the material products of industrial capitalism manufactured by business firms organized like those in other mass production industries. These firms drew upon natural raw materials and developed infrastructures of production and distribution gathering large and diverse human labor forces including lumberjacks, paper mill operators, and newsboys. We often think about printed texts as relationships between authors and readers, but this talk draws attention to some of the hidden materials, people, and infrastructures involved in producing and circulating printed newspapers. About the Speaker: Michael Stamm is Professor of History at Michigan State University. He received his B.A. in English from UC Berkeley in 1994 and his Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago in 2006. He has been at MSU since 2008, and he has served as Chairperson of the History Department since 2022. He is a political, cultural, and environmental historian specializing in media and journalism history. His first book, Sound Business: Newspapers, Radio, and the Politics of New Media (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), traced how American newspapers have responded to competition from “new media,” which in the decades after 1920 meant radio broadcasting. His most recent book is Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing the Newspaper in Twentieth-Century North America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), which offers a history of the printed newspaper tracing its production from the forest to the reader. In 2019, the book received Canadian Business History Association’s Best Book Prize. He is currently completing a book entitled Communicating with Nature: Agriculture, Materiality, and the Industrial Information Age, which traces the use of farm crops in the manufacturing of paper and ink and in the circulation of public information.

Matthew Kirschenbaum delivered Rare Book School's 2026 Sol M. and Mary Ann O’Brian Malkin Endowed Lecture, "From text to .txt: Making Material Messes in a Sloppy World," on 6 July 2026. About the Talk: By the turn of the millennium, the word “text” had become a verb. Three-and-a-half years ago, ChatGPT was released into the wild, decisively severing the link between writing and human expression. In 2025, Merriam-Webster’s word of the year was “slop.” This talk will offer an attenuated archaeology of what someone we know once called the textual condition. And not to give away the game, but that condition is not good: today, text functions as something much more like a fossil fuel or other extractable resource than a medium for communication and expression. Nonetheless, the talk also asks how we can still make some good old fashioned material messes in a world of slop. Examples will be provided. Refreshments will be served. There may even be a book or two. About the Speaker: Matthew Kirschenbaum rejoined UVA in 2025 as Commonwealth Professor of Artificial Intelligence and English after 25 years at the University of Maryland, where he finished as a Distinguished University Professor. He considers himself a student of texts and textual technologies in all their social and material forms, and his scholarship and teaching have explored literary intersects with printing and bookmaking, archival science, media archaeology, digital humanities, and now artificial intelligence. He is the author of three books, most recently Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage from the University of Pennsylvania Press (2021). His first book, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (2008) was the winner of multiple awards, including the MLA Prize for a First Book. Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing (2016) enjoyed widespread public media attention. Recent articles have appeared in PMLA, Critical Inquiry, and ELH; and he frequently writes for popular outlets, which have included the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Slate, Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Kirschenbaum is an active member of the Modern Language Association’s task force on AI in Research and Teaching, and a member of the teaching faculty at Rare Book School. He has been a Guggenheim and an NEH Fellow, and is a practicing letterpress printer. Current projects includes two books, the first on the political economy of text in the present moment and the second on the weaponization of AI in what some have called a full-blown epistemic crisis. You can find him on Bluesky at @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗦𝘂𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻 𝗟𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗪𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝑵𝑩: 𝘋𝘶𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮 𝘶𝘱𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘵 45:31, 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦. 𝘞𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘘&𝘈 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥. Rare Book School is founded on a shared commitment to “responsible stewardship of the historical record in all its richness and many forms,” a mission made more urgent by the present instability of our national institutions, from the Library of Congress to the Smithsonian to the National Endowment for the Humanities. This talk highlights a number of resourceful women in American book history, some celebrated and some whose names we’ll never know, who found ways to preserve and share aspects of the historical record outside the established institutions of their own day. Whether barred from full participation in professional fields and private clubs on account of their sex, or simply focused on historical material deemed unworthy of serious attention, these women took the work of cultural preservation into their own hands in creative and surprising ways, to our collective benefit. In 2026, what practical and strategic lessons can we draw from the communities these women built? 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿: Heather O’Donnell has been an antiquarian bookseller for more than twenty years. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Yale, and was a member of the Princeton Society of Fellows before joining the book trade. In 2011, she founded Honey & Wax Booksellers, dealing primarily in literature, with an emphasis on the material history of printing, bookselling, and collecting. A graduate of Rare Book School and member of the Grolier Club, Heather helped launch the ABAA Gender Equity Initiative and Mentorship Program, and co-founded the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize for young women collectors. She currently serves on the faculty and board of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS-Minnesota), the Council of the Bibliographical Society of America, and the Yale Library Associates Trustees. She is a member of the American Antiquarian Society, and writes about book history for the 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘠𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴.

Elizabeth Canning delivered Rare Book School's 2026 Kenneth W. Rendell Endowed Lecture, "Women’s Libraries & Their Afterlives," on 10 June, 2026. Women’s book collections appear in a wide range of forms: as catalogued libraries; as groups of surviving books linked by inscription and family use; or as volumes dispersed but still traceable through the historical record. In some cases, a woman’s library may never have existed as a traditional collection. Women’s commonplace books record reading lives—and can produce something like a library in manuscript form. Considered together, these collections are not always bounded or stable. Some are large and well-documented; others survive only in small clusters or scattered traces. Drawing on examples ranging from the seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century, this lecture examines how these different modes of creation and survival complicate familiar ideas about what a library can be. Looking for such associations—and for the ways book collections are formed, dispersed, and remade—offers insight into how women and girls lived with books, and into the limits and possibilities of collecting these materials. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿: Elizabeth Canning is a collector of early modern books and manuscripts, with a focus on how women used books to shape their intellectual, social, and professional lives. Her collection brings together printed and manuscript materials that document women as authors, readers, and participants in the book trade, with particular attention to evidence of ownership and use. Canning has studied book history at Rare Book School, London Rare Book School, and the Harvard Extension School, and holds a BA in English from Reed College. She serves on the board of the Book Club of Washington, where she helped launch a scholarship program supporting Washington students at Rare Book School. Her writing has appeared in the 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 of the Book Club of Washington and the 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘉𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘚𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴, and she has presented on book collecting at the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair and early midwifery books at Bastyr University.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗞𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 When London viewers opened elegant folio books like Oriental Scenery or The Costume of China they were not just engaging with visual and cultural difference. They were also seeing an image process that was quite familiar. Polite interest in picturesque sketching meant that many Britons had experience drawing outlines, “dead coloring” shadows, and adding enlivening watercolor touches. This three-stage process also occurred in aquatint printmaking; a finely etched outline was made, broad washes of tone were added, and then strategic watercolor flourishes completed the print. This lecture frames that familiarity as the “haptic picturesque,” which surely sounds like an oxymoron for those who think of the picturesque as a purely visual encounter. Aquatint travel books, which were at their height between 1780 and 1830, took the familiar process of “tinted drawings” to distant lands. These luxury books enabled metropolitan viewers to imagine themselves sketching an Indian market or a Chinese temple. They constructed an empire of imaginative projections. As a term, the haptic picturesque unsettles rigid categories between periphery and center, and it suggests that landscapes of sense and sensibility were also landscapes of tactile sensation. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿 Douglas Fordham is Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia where he currently serves as Department Chair. As a historian of art and the British empire, Fordham is interested in a wide range of visual arts from the seventeenth century to the present in the Anglophone world. He is a co-editor of 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦 (2007) which helped to place empire at the center of the study of British art. His first monograph, 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴’ 𝘞𝘢𝘳: 𝘈𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘺 (2010) examined the relationship of imperial politics to artistic organization in eighteenth-century London. His second monograph, 𝘈𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥𝘴: 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭, 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦 (2019) considered how the newly discovered medium of aquatint printmaking conditioned the representation of cultures beyond Europe circa 1800. Douglas has worked with the Fralin Museum of Art and the Kluge-Ruhe Collection of Aboriginal Art on a number of exhibitions including Boomalli Prints & Paper: Making Space as an Art Collective (2022). His most recent article, “English Graffiti and the Printed Image,” will appear shortly in the journal 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺

RBS faculty member Paul Needham (Princeton Univ.) gave a public lecture on "The Catholicon Press Revisited: The Evidence of Nailheads" on 29 July 2025. You can watch the full recording of the lecture on YouTube at https://youtu.be/o4aMEB38slw?feature=shared. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸: The 𝘊𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘰𝘯, whose colophon states that it was printed in Mainz, 1460, has been the subject of controversy for more than fifty years. Paul Needham argues that it was printed from thin two-line stereotypes, used for three typographically identical impressions, dating to 1460, 1469, and 1472-73. Others maintain that it was printed directly from movable types, like all other incunables; that the colophon date is wrong; and that all copies were printed in 1469. Needham, working with Eric White, has recently discovered new evidence which strongly supports the stereotype hypothesis. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿: Paul Needham became Scheide Librarian at Princeton University in 1998 and retired in 2020. Before coming to Princeton, he worked at Sotheby’s and at the Pierpont Morgan Library. Among his books is 𝘛𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦 𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨: 400–1600 (1979). He has given Rare Book School courses on early printed books both at the Morgan and at the Huntington.

Christopher N. Warren delivered the 2025 Sol M. and Mary Ann O’Brian Malkin Lecture, “What is Computational Bibliography?”, on 30 July 2025. You can watch the full recording of the lecture on YouTube at https://youtu.be/ElvNacFyoWQ?feature=shared. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸: Book historians have long faced a methodological dilemma. Do we want to study particular material objects in granular detail, or are we primarily concerned with more general patterns connected to larger questions about politics, economics, censorship regimes, or ideology? While not strictly mutually exclusive, these two approaches nevertheless exist in tension, and scholars frequently orient themselves toward one side or the other. In this talk, Christopher N. Warren will explore how the new field of computational bibliography is helping to resolve this dilemma through its ability to connect granular, material details to larger, more consequential patterns. Computational bibliography, Warren argues, makes it newly possible to move fluidly between scales—bringing into focus material features like individual type sorts and paper stocks while also uncovering large-scale clandestine printing campaigns and historical print networks. Warren’s talk will show how such dynamic scaling is not merely a technical convenience but a methodological breakthrough—one that enables book historians to ask and answer fascinating new questions. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿: Christopher N. Warren is Professor of English and History and incoming Head of English at Carnegie Mellon University. Warren is the author of 𝘓𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴, 1580–1680 (2015), which was awarded the 2016 Roland H. Bainton Prize for Literature. A former member of the Modern Language Association’s executive committee for 17th-Century English, Warren co-founded 𝘚𝘪𝘹 𝘋𝘦𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘍𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘴 𝘉𝘢𝘤𝘰𝘯 and directed the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded digital humanities project “Freedom and the Press before Freedom of the Press,” which used machine learning and artificial intelligence to discover and center the anonymous craftsmen and -women responsible for printing controversial clandestine materials.

Rachael DiEleuterio gave the inaugural Sue Allen Lecture for Women in Book History, on “Curious and Creative Women,” on 28 July 2025. She was joined by Daphne Sawyer, who endowed the lecture in memory of her mother, Mary Sawyer (1925–2024), and of longtime RBS faculty member Sue Allen (1918–2011). You can watch the full recording of the lecture on YouTube at https://youtu.be/2YurCWdLYIo?feature=shared. About the Talk: What do mother-and-daughter book collectors, nineteenth-century book cover designers, and an art museum librarian have in common? Rare Book School, of course! But there's more to the story. All of them are women, deeply passionate about the history of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century publishers' book bindings. These bindings, many of which were designed by women, are stunning works of art. As the commercial book market boomed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, decorative bindings became an essential part of book production. These publishers' bindings showcased technological advancements in mass production while reflecting contemporaneous artistic movements. Book cover design was one of few creative professions open to women, whose innovations transformed the field until the more cost-effective paper dust jacket took over in the 1920s. By the 1960s, these beautiful covers had fallen out of fashion, relegated to attics and basements, and even destroyed. However, a few dedicated individuals began collecting these bindings as works of art, gradually identifying their unique design styles, designers, and histories. This presentation will focus on a few RBS alumnae who have made it their mission to preserve these remarkable bindings for posterity. About the Speaker: Rachael DiEleuterio has been Librarian and Archivist at the Delaware Art Museum since 2008, where she singlehandedly oversees the Helen Farr Sloan Library & Archives. She is a Certified Archivist and has B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Delaware and an M.S.L.S. from Clarion University of Pennsylvania. She first became fascinated with decorative book bindings in 2011, when she attended Sue Allen’s class at Rare Book School and hasn’t stopped talking about them since.

James H. Marrow gave a public talk on “Iconographic Disjunction in the Ruskin Psalter/Hours: A Flemish Illuminated Manuscript of ca. 1470–80,” on 23 July 2025, as part of Rare Book School's 2025 Summer Lecture Series. You can watch the full recording of the lecture on YouTube at https://youtu.be/LxIPOQ6ehss?feature=shared. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸: Illustrated by a cycle of nine historiated initials of scenes from the Old Testament, which function typologically as prefigurations of events from the life of Christ, and by ten full-page miniatures of events from Salvation History, the Ruskin Psalter/Hours appears at first glance to be a sophisticated example of Flemish manuscript illumination from the turn of the third to the fourth quarters of the fifteenth century. On closer examination, the cycles of illumination are not correctly synchronized. In this lecture, James H. Marrow will discuss the iconographic “slippage” or disjunction found in the cycles of illustration of the Ruskin Psalter/Hours and propose a novel explanation for the striking anomalies in what otherwise appears to be a refined and deluxe manuscript of the period. Marrow suggests that the example of the Ruskin Hours can be viewed against the backdrop of the growing production of relatively high-end illuminated manuscripts at this time, qualified in this case by the exigencies of an atypical commission. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿: James H. Marrow is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Princeton University and Honorary Keeper of illuminated Manuscripts (former Acting Keeper) at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (UK). He has published widely on northern European art of the late Middle Ages, with special attention to questions of meaning in works of religious art, and on manuscript illumination in the Low Countries, Germany, and France.

This NEH-SHARP Living American History in Primary Documents Lecture by E. M. Rose was part of Rare Book School's 2025 Summer Lecture Series. You can watch the full recording of the lecture on YouTube at https://youtu.be/VaN2qqFnPto?feature=shared. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸: What did American colonists need to know? What should they believe? The Virginia Company had clear ideas about such things as demonstrated by the significant sums spent on books for the use of the colonists. A recently unearthed list details 50 titles the Company purchased in December 1620 for shipment to America, most likely for a public library. E. M. Rose has been able to identify the author, title, edition, number of copies purchased, and cost per copy for most of the titles acquired for the benefit of the newest Americans. In this talk, Rose will review the assortment of religious texts for what they indicate about conventional Anglican orthodoxy in this period and will examine the agricultural and scientific texts intended for use in the colonies to get a sense of the technological interests and capabilities of the new Americans. Additionally, she will consider the books as a collection and library in contrast with other such collections and donations, discussing the medium of the printed book as an object for the light it throws on contemporary readers, book history, and the book trade. This lecture will further consider the role of the Virginia Company as an important publisher as well as a consumer of books and other printed ephemera. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿: E. M. Rose is a scholar of medieval and early modern Europe, whose work has been hailed as “a model of thoroughgoing historical scholarship presented to a general audience and should be studied by scholars who wish to bring the humanities to the public square." Rose has taught at five universities in America and is currently Visiting Fellow at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University. For the past three years, she was a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University. Her previous work in book history, “Books owned by a Renaissance Queen,” an essay on 80 books sent by James I to his daughter, appeared in 𝘋𝘦𝘳 𝘎𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘗𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘳 (2020). Rose’s articles have appeared in 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺, the 𝘏𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘵𝘰𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘘𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘺, the 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘢 𝘔𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘻𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺, 𝘚𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘶𝘤𝘦𝘳, the 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘎𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘤 𝘗𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺, and 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯. Her most recent essay on America’s first chart maker will appear in 𝘔𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 this summer. Rose’s first book, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘸𝘪𝘤𝘩 (2015) was named one of the “Ten Best History Books of the Year” by the 𝘚𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 of London and described by the 𝘞𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 as “a landmark of historical research.” The 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 called it “a significant achievement” and the 𝘈𝘑𝘚 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 described it as “a truly excellent book. It deserves to be read and studied by scholars in many if not all fields of medieval studies.”

Rare Book School's 2025 Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Lecture on the History of the Book Trades featured a talk by Mark McConnell on “Publishing in the Renaissance: Christophe Plantin’s Business Strategy." The event took place on 9 July 2025. You can watch the full recording of the lecture on YouTube at https://youtu.be/QFmRSz-laUE?feature=shared. About the Talk: Printing technology accelerated the forces of the Renaissance and the Reformation. But it also created a major new business problem: publishing risk. A publisher had to spend large sums of money to print a book before knowing how well it would sell. The publisher’s decision whether to accept this risk was a gateway through which all printed books had to pass. Mark McConnell has been investigating Christophe Plantin’s business records from the 1560s, still intact after 460 years. These records document in remarkable detail the activities of Europe’s largest printer at the time and make it possible to quantify the cost of individual books and the risk taken in publishing them. Applying modern business concepts to the data, McConnell will offer insights on key issues in publishing strategy: what types of books were printed, why books were produced in the forms we now see, how production costs shaped competition in the marketplace, and the steps that publishers took to control and reduce risk. About the Speaker: Mark McConnell comes to his historical research from his legal career, which he spent as a partner with the global law firm Hogan Lovells. McConnell specialized in international trade disputes, where he litigated questions like the competitive dynamics of industries and the efficiency of industrial processes. He applies the tools he developed in legal disputes to Christophe Plantin’s business records, examining Plantin’s operations from the perspective of modern business strategy. McConnell holds both a law degree and a master’s in business administration from Stanford University and did his undergraduate work in economics at Johns Hopkins University. He is now affiliated with Johns Hopkins again, where he is Associate Research Fellow at the Virginia Fox Stern Center for the History of the Renaissance Book.

This recording of the 2025 Kenneth W. Rendell Endowed Lecture by Janine Barchas was part of Rare Book School's 2025 Summer Lecture Series. You can watch the full recording of the lecture on YouTube at https://youtu.be/BQNQuKHBdD4?feature=shared. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸: In the latter half of the nineteenth century, cheap and shoddy reprintings of Jane Austen’s novels performed the heavy lifting of bringing her work and reputation before the general public. Inexpensive reprints and early paperbacks of Austen were sold at Victorian railway stations for one or two shillings, traded for soap wrappers, awarded as book prizes in schools, and targeted to Britain’s working classes. At just pennies a copy, Austen’s novels were also squeezed into tight columns on thin paper. Few of these hard-lived books survive. Yet such scrappy everyday versions of her novels made a substantial difference to Austen’s early readership. These were the books bought and read by ordinary people. And these are the books that, owing to their low status and production values, remain uncollected by academic libraries and largely unremarked by scholars. About 15 years ago, Janine Barchas began hunting for these lost books of Jane Austen. This is the story of how private collectors, eBay, and some lucky breaks came to the rescue. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿: Janine Barchas is Chancellor's Council Centennial Professor in the Book Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. In 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘑𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘈𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯 (2019), she championed the importance of humble and error-filled reprintings to reception history. What a 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘠𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 reviewer termed her “smart detective work” owes much, Barchas admits, to her student days at Rare Book School. In addition to curating public exhibitions for the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Harry Ransom Center, and Jane Austen’s House Museum, Barchas is also the creator of the e-gallery, “What Jane Saw” (www.whatjanesaw.org), a digital heritage project that reconstructs two popular art spectacles witnessed by Austen in 1796 and 1813. Barchas’s most recent book is a graphic novel, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘑𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘈𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯, 𝘈 𝘎𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘤 𝘉𝘪𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘺 (2025), with London-based illustrator Isabel Greenberg.

This talk by Mindell Dubansky was part of Rare Book School's 2025 Summer Lecture Series. You can watch the full recording of the lecture on YouTube at https://youtu.be/SsTUbRhUYDs?feature=shared. 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸: Throughout the world, for hundreds of years, people have expressed themselves by making plain and decorated objects in imitation of specific titles and types of books. No genre of book or bookbinding has been ignored. Mindell Dubansky calls these objects 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴, a contraction of book-look. History has shown that infusing an object with bookish characteristics creates an emotional attachment to the object analogous to our feelings for a beloved or important book. This, in turn, increases our desire to own, share, and treasure our book-shaped objects. Love, friendship, humor, play, faith, enlightenment, and commemoration are all common and abiding themes of blooks. Dubansky’s lecture will touch on some of the areas in which real books and book-like objects most closely intersect. These include how the bookbinding trade was involved in making blooks, how blook-making followed publishing trends and popular titles, how disused books have historically been repurposed as blooks, and how the idea of the book has been translated into a myriad of unexpected objects by artists and inventors. Dubansky’s curated show on blooks for the Center for Book Arts in New York was profiled earlier this year by 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘠𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴: https://www.nytimes.com/.../review/bo.... 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿: Mindell Dubansky is Conservator at Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the author of numerous books and exhibition catalogs on the book and paper arts. These include 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘒𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘚𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘵: 200 𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 (2025); 𝘌𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴: 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘖𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘺𝘯𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘉𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘦 𝘏𝘦𝘤𝘬𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘎𝘪𝘧𝘵 (online catalog); 𝘙𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘔𝘦: 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯 𝘉𝘦𝘳𝘬𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 (2024); 𝘗𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘍𝘭𝘰𝘸: 𝘈 𝘎𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘈𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘋𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘗𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳 (2023); 𝘉𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘈𝘳𝘦𝘯'𝘵 (2016); and 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘋𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘊𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘊. 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘦 (2008). Dubansky's personal collection of book objects and her groundbreaking research on the subject have previously featured in exhibitions at the Grolier Club and Metropolitan Museum of Art, in publications including 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘠𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴, and on television shows such as CBS' 𝘚𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨. To facilitate research in the study of book objects, she has established the Blook Institute, a series of activities designed to promote the study of book objects, and their relation to book history, the book arts, material culture, and art history.

Aaron Pratt, “Buying a Book in Early Modern England,” 22 July 2024 by Rare Book School Lectures