Marginal Notes, Now Published

Marginal Notes: Social Reading and the Literal Margins, edited by Patrick Spedding, Paul Tankard and Mia Goodwin (London: Palgrave, 2021)—the latest volume in the New Directions in Book History series—was issued on 29 March 2021. However, as far as I am concerned it was only really published yesterday, when I got to sit down on a quiet and relaxed Saturday morning, with a fresh coffee, and with the book in hand, like this:

The book, which is extremely satisfying to handle, is the final product of a conference collaboration that I first discussed with Paul Tankard in late 2015. The cover is also illustrated with the same image that graced the poster for our original conference (of the same name, and from which the book sprung) in September 2016 (announced on this blog, here).

I am inordinately proud of the cover image, since it contains a rebus—made slightly more obvious, I hope, by the positioning of image and title on the cover. As you can see in the original photo above, the annotator of my copy of Samuel Croxall's Fables of Aesop, not only glossed difficult words and phrases in the text, but also illustrated the silver tankard that is a central feature of this tale (which the thief is seeking at the bottom of the well). Not only is Paul's surname thus illustrated by way of annotation and rebus on the cover, mine is kind-of implied too: the "arch dissembler" being in the process of running or speeding (!) away. (Yes, this is lame, but it is a little less lame to me since, if I do not spell out my name, letter by letter, it is unfailingly recorded as "Speeding"!)

Moving on … of course, once I had a calm, reflective browse of the contents of our collection—I found one alarming error after another. And so I stopped, picked up my pencil, and annotated my copy with the corrections illustrated below. If you happen to read the book, or any of the essays in this collection, and find any more errors, please don't tell me. Rather, do as I have done, and as readers have long done, correct your copy too.

CFP: Marginalia Conference and Masterclass, 23 September 2016

Below is the CFP for the Marginalia Conference and Masterclass that Paul Tankard, Shef Rogers and I have been organising for the last few months—and which has occupied so much of my "free' time that I have done little more than update old posts on this blog. More details will follow as they become available.

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The Centre for the Book, Monash University, in collaboration with the Centre for the Book, University of Otago and The State Library of Victoria, are hosting:

Marginal Notes: Social Reading and the Literal Margins.
 A One-Day Conference and Masterclass.

Keynote Speakers: Prof. Bill Sherman, Director of Research and Collections, Victoria and Albert Museum, London and Prof. Pat Buckridge, Griffith University, Queensland

Conference date: Friday 23 September.
Venue: State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

There are margins to both traditional print- and paper-based texts as well as virtual texts. Whatever text they surround, encompass, define or limit, margins are the spaces in which ideas are contested and debated. Historically, readers have used the physical margin as a space in which to respond to the voice of the author, and to communicate with other readers. As it has become increasingly easy to add marginal notes to virtual texts, and for readers to share their electronic marginalia with each other, scholars are able to scrutinise marginalia in new ways and to reconstruct social reading practices on an unprecedented scale. While contemporary and historical annotation practices have much in common, and there is much to be learned about historical practices from studies of contemporary marginalia, historical practices raise unique and challenging interpretative issues of their own. And, although a range of recent studies have increased our knowledge concerning the distribution and availability of books, the identity and diversity of readers and annotators, the spread and even the nature of literacy in the early modern and modern periods, there remain significant challenges for scholars encountering marginalia.

This conference will investigate marginalia in texts from the early modern period to the present, with a particular focus on the interpretative challenges posed by marginalia in the literal margin—whether encountered directly, via digital surrogate or in mediated form. Topics may include:

• Studies of historical marginalia and annotation
• Theoretical models and methodological protocols for conceptualising marginalia
• The reproduction of marginalia in virtual environments
• The location and use of marginalia via digital surrogate
• Studies of virtual marginalia that shed light on historical practices
• Changing or limiting contemporary reader practices in virtual environments
• Marginal notations as “signs of engagement”
• The nature and interpretative challenges of pictures, doodles, stains and traces etc.
• Interpretative issues posed by anonymous vs. celebrity marginalia
• Particular annotators, or particular annotated texts
• Marginalia as literary work
• Commentary as writing, writing as commentary
• Marginalia as (auto)biographical record or life writing
• Annotation in combination with inter-leaving and grangerising

It is anticipated that the papers from the conference will form the basis of an edited collection to be published by a quality academic press.

Length of papers: 
Papers will be twenty minutes each (with ten minutes for Q and A).

Please send abstracts of 250–300 words to the convenors by 15 June:
Dr. Patrick Spedding (Patrick.Spedding@monash.edu)
Dr. Paul Tankard (paul.tankard@otago.ac.nz)

To allow for delegates to make their travel plans and/or apply for funding in a timely fashion, proposals will be considered and confirmations issued as they come in.

Masterclass: Prof. Bill Sherman will conduct a masterclass at the State Library of Victoria, using items from the Rare Books Collection to demonstrate some of the interpretative challenges that annotated material presents to scholars and librarians. Seating is limited. For further details, or to book a seat, please contact Dr. Patrick Spedding (Monash University): Patrick.Spedding@monash.edu.

[UPDATE: 2021.03.20: for details of the book, which Paul Tankard, Mia Godwin and I later prepared based largely on papers delivered at this conference, see my My Publications etc.; UPDATE 2021.05.23: for a post on the published book, see here.]

Book History at Monash in the 1960s

I have been planning for some time to do a series of posts on the early history of the Centre for the Book, which celebrates its thirtieth birthday this year. To this end I have been picking the brain of Prof. Wallace Kirsop and Dr Brian McMullin and reading over the small number of published accounts of the rise of bibliography, textual editing and book history at Monash, to put together this post on the history of the Centre and the study of book history at Monash. (Not covered in the recently-published history of Monash University.)

Fortuitously, Dr Per Henningsgaard has also been collecting information on the teaching of bibliography in Australian institutions and Wal has allowed me to reproduce here some of what he recently sent to Per.

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[Wallace Kirsop writes] "Despite the wishes of some of us at Monash in the early 1960s, Librarianship did not get off the ground till the middle of the 1970s. Consequently, the history of teaching bibliography and book history at Monash—bound up with Brian McMullin in particular—did not begin till later than the events I am going to note and gloss.

I saw the English Department as an outsider only till I began to teach courses for the Department in the 1980s. (I filled in for Harold Love one year in his “Methods of Scholarship” course for Fourth Year Honours, and later offered a Second/Third Year unit on “Publishing in Australia” for almost a decade till my retirement at the end of 1998.)

At the beginning, the English Department avoided falling into the neo-Leavisite morass characteristic of the University of Melbourne. In other words, it stuck to more conventional literary history, which did not exclude physical bibliography, of course. R. C. Bald was appointed to a Chair in 1965, but died before taking it up (and returning to Australia from North America). The major figure for four decades was Harold Love, but one must not forget Philip Ayres and Clive Probyn and, indeed, for relatively brief passage in the 1970s of Arthur Brown.

In the 1960s, the lead was taken by the French Department, led by my then boss Roger Laufer (whose bibliography you can no doubt download). He created the Australian Journal of French Studies, whose editorship I inherited when he returned to France at the end of 1967. An enthusiastic convert to bibliography, he planned a special emphasis on the subject in AJFS. In 1966 there was a special number on the subject in which we joined forces with Oxford colleagues, notably Richard Sayce and Giles Barber.

I was encouraged to tackle book studies in a sort of three-pronged approach: first “The bibliography of French literary history: progress, problems, projects,” AJFS 1 (1964): 325–64, then, in the special number, “Vers une collaboration de la bibliographie matérielle et de la critique textuelle,” AJFS 3 (1966): 227–51 (later expanded as Bibliographie matérielle et critique textuelle: vers une collaboration (Paris: Minard, 1970)), finally “Literary history and book trade history: the lessons of L’Apparition du livre,” AJFS 16 (1979): 488–535.

Alongside this—as the result of an enforced six-month rest with TB—I was exploring the Australian book world from a similar standpoint (reference and physical bibliography, book history). See, for example, a lecture given in Sydney in November 1966 and published as Towards a history of the Australian book trade (Sydney: Wentworth Books, 1969).

Laufer organised an informal seminar on textual editing in 1966, at which Harold Love and, if I remember correctly, Bill Cameron spoke. The whole event lasted through a series of weekly sessions.** French pushed for the creation of a coursework and minor thesis M.A.—a first for Australia, when it was launched in 1966. Naturally, bibliography—reference and physical—was part of the curriculum.

We were severally and individually in close touch with Henri-Jean Martin and Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer at the IVe Section of the École pratique des Hautes Études. In other words we approved of and espoused the marriage of book history and physical bibliography that is characteristic of the French book-history school (despite what is sometimes erroneously claimed in the Anglosphere).

I have lived to see some French literary scholars take up physical bibliography, to the point one could claim the discipline is now more lively on the Continental side of the Channel. Monash played a little part, but Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer and her pupils were more important.

This, then, is part of the background to the creation of Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand in 1969. It will be clear that, in my mind, physical bibliography, textual editing and book history were all part of the enterprise from the beginning.

When the Monash Centre for Bibliographical and Textual Studies was made formal in the 1980s, the sharing of teaching tasks meant that Brian McMullin did physical bibliography, Harold Love did textual editing and I did book history. However, in our own work, the borders were not so fixed, of course. But all that concerns more recent publications and projects."

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** Recordings of five of these early seminars survive, as I will explain in a later post. Wal's teaching archives are held by the University.

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UPDATE 15 Feb 2013: Wal Kirsop has sent me a copy of a French Department memo he found when moving offices recently. It is dated 13 April 1964 and states, in part:

During Second Term a course of lectures will be given on Fridays at 4.15 pm in Room 210 by Dr W. Kirsop as an introduction to the history of printing, to bibliography and to the editing of texts. A guide to reading and some more detailed indication of the problems to be discussed will be circulated later. This course is compulsory for Research Students and will be followed by a written examination at the beginning of third term."

From this memo it is clear that postgraduate students (HDRs) in the French Department were undertaking bibliography and book history subjects at Monash at least as early as 1964. And so, it seems, 2014 will mark fifty years of bibliography and book history at Monash.

The Centre for the Book at Monash

I was recently asked by Dr Stephen Herrin, Rare Books Assistant Librarian, to write the Preface to an exhibition entitled "Books Never Die: An Exhibition on the History of the Book" (see here). While I was writing it I wanted to say a few words about the study of Book History at Monash and it occurred to me it was time to do a post on the subject here. It has been difficult piecing together information on the subject so I will do what I can now and correct, update or add information as it comes to hand.

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Since 1982, The Centre for the Book has existed, at different times, under changing University (1982–84), Faculty (1985–97), Department (1998), and School (1999–) management. The Centre for the Book was reconstituted as a School of English, Communications and Performance Studies "research unit" in 2010. The management of all research units at Monash is in flux and so the future of the Centre for the Book is unclear. Again. But to look backwards …

In terms of name, as far as I can tell, The Centre for Bibliographical and Textual Studies existed from 1982 until 1998, when it was re-named The Centre for the Book. Apparently, Monash is unhappy about the liberal use of the term centre across the university, and there was some suggestion in 2009 that the name would have to be changed in 2010, but fortunately this did not happen.

As I said, the Centre for the Book is presently a research unit in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies (ECPS; 2005–), previously the School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies (LVPS; 1999–2005), which was formed in 1999 from an amalgamation of two departments (including English) and three centres (including the CftB).

(It is unclear whether the recent amalgamation, and renaming, of the English Department to create the "Literature Section" will force another name-change on the School—ECPS being the "School of English…" etc.)

Wal Kirsop was the "Chairman of the Committee for the Centre" from 1982 to 1991, then it was Ross Harvey (1992–93); Bryan Coleborne (1994–96); Harold Love (1997); Wal Kirsop (1998–2009). In 2010 Simone Murray became the Director of the Centre and in 2012 Anna Polletti and I became Co-Directors.

* * * * *

The Centre is the institutional body that represents bibliographers and book historians at Monash, but Monash had an active group of researchers in this field before the Centre was formed in 1982. (Wal Kirsop provided some details about this period, including the roles of Roger Laufer, Harold Love, Arthur Brown, Clive Probyn, Mary Lord etc, which I posted here.)

Monash academics (especially Wal Kirsop and Harrold Love) were instrumental in the establishment of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) in February 1969. Indeed, Wal was both a foundation-member of the BSANZ and its foundation-President (from 1969-73). And, as Brian McMullin noted recently, the journals published by BSANZ:

[have had] an Australian emphasis: within Australia it has had a Melbourne emphasis, and within Melbourne a Monash University emphasis, in that Monash has supplied several of the editors (among them two of its graduates) and has been the institutional home of what might be seen as a disproportionate number of its authors (B. J. McMullin, "Forty Years On" Script and Print 35:2 (2011): 106–7)

Since Brian does not enumerate the BSANZ Bulletin and Script & Print editors, I will do so, with details of which issues were edited by each editor where I have that information

Harold Love [staff] (vol.1, no.1–vol.2, no.3; March 1970–December 1975)
Brian McMullin [staff] (vol.2, no.4–vol.7, no.2; August 1976–July 1983)
Brian Hubber [Graduate], John Arnold [Graduate], Richard Overell [staff] (1993)
Ross Harvey [staff] (1995?)
Ian Morrison [Graduate] (vol.24, no. 3—vol.27, no.4; 2000–2003)
Patrick Spedding [Graduate] (vol.30–33; 2006–8)

As you can see, there are more than two Monash graduates in this list.

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The Graduate School of Librarianship was established at Monash in 1976, offering masters courses in book history shortly thereafter. The Ancora Press and a weekly seminar series were immediately established by Jean Whyte. Thanks to Brian McMullin—a foundation lecturer—I have recordings of some of these early seminars, which suggest the scope of the series:

1. John Spring, "The Use of Type-Evidence in the Identification of the Work of Joseph Bennett, A Printer of the Restoration" (27 February 1976), [39.18 mins]

2. Wallace Kirsop, "On Pierre Corneille's Le Cid" (22 April 1976) [46.03 mins]

3. David Bradley and B. J. McMullin, "Textual Problems and Playhouse Copy; Consideration of Some Editorial Orthodoxies" (23 July 1976) [1hr 59.45 mins]

4. Angus Martin, "Specialized Retrospective Checklists: the example of eighteenth-century French Fiction" (8 Oct 1976) [1hr 38.05 mins]

5. Wallace Kirsop, "Bibliographical Detection" (14 October 1977) [1hr 03.07 mins]

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From the above it appears that much of the energy of Harold and Wal went into establishing the BSANZ in the early 70s, and that it was only after they had been joined by Brian and others at Monash that the idea of a research Centre at Monash was seriously contemplated.

I am told that in the very early 1980s the Fraser Government proposed establishing ten research centres across Australia. A proposal was hastily assembled by Harold and Brian (Wal was in Cambridge at the time) for a Centre for Bibliographical and Textual Studies at Monash to undertake research for the Early Imprint Project** and to prepare scholarly editions. The Centre was unsuccessful in its bid, but redirected its proposal to the University (sans the request for money), and it was accepted.

Wal and Brian had been responsible for editing all issues of the BSANZ Bulletin from 1970 until this time. Shortly after the Centre was established (in 1982) the editorship was passed on to Trevor Mills (in 1983), allowing Brian and others at Monash to concentrate on Centre activities—including the development of an the interdisciplinary MA in Bibliographical and Textual Studies (restructured in 1994, but was still available in 2001).

Although, I am told, there were few graduates of the Monash "Master of Arts, Centre for Bibliographical and Textual Studies", I have been able to identify four students who produced important work between 1989 and 1999:

1. Linley Horrocks, "The creation of the Anzac market 1914-1918: the role of the press and the book trade" (MA thesis, 1989).

2. John Arnold, "The Fanfrolico Press: history and bibliography" (MA thesis, 1994). ¶ John's Fanfrolico Press: Satyrs, Fauns & Fine Books (Private Libraries Association, 2009) was reviewed by Nathan Garvey in Script & Print 36.2 (2012).

3. Laurel J. Clark, "Aspects of Melbourne book trade history: innovation and specialisation in the careers of F.F. Bailliere and Margareta Webber" (MA thesis, 1997).

4. Peter Pereyra, "Crime-fiction: from publisher to reader" (MA thesis, 1999).

Some significant work—both published and in theses—has also come out of both the "Bibliography and Textual Scholarship" unit and the "Analytical and Descriptive Bibliography" unit, which was offered by the Centre as an elective to M.A., M.Lib. and a few other candidates. This includes:

1. Annemie Gilbert and Sylvia Ransom, "The Imposition of Eighteenmos in Sixes, With Special Reference to Tranchefiles" BSANZ Bulletin 4:4 (1980), 269–75.

2. Penny McCristal, " '$^½’ as a statement of signing" BSANZ Bulletin 19:3 (1995), 209–12.

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By the time that the Centre was reconstituted in 2010 the principle academics involved in its earlier history had all retired and it was no longer possible for the remaining (emeritus) staff associated with the Centre to teach or take on higher-degree student supervisions. In the eyes of the university, this was a serious problem.

Of course, the Centre remained active in its research and publishing programme, in an academic seminar series, and in obtaining grant funding. And Wal and Brian took an active role in mentoring scholars like myself. (Without the assistance of Wal, Brian and others associated with the Centre, I would never have been able to take on the editorship of Script and Print and get it back up to date in such a short period.)

But, when all ECPS research units were reconstituted in 2010 as research-only units, the Centre needed a director with an outstanding research record who could supervise MA and PhD students. This was Simone.

Interestingly, teaching was specifically excluded from the purview of the new research units, although mentoring—and building the number of—M.A. and Ph.D. students were each among the KPIs. But with the recent university-wide move to force a coursework component on all MA and PhD students—it may be that research units will have some involvement with teaching in future. If so, there is a slight chance that some sort of Centre for the Book unit will be available to MA and PhD students again.

(A brief explanation: All research units and all new MA and PhD students will be administered within a program which is aligned with Field of Research codes (such as 2005–Literary Studies), by a program-manager, and will be supervised by Monash Institute of Graduate Research-approved, research-active staff, affiliated with that program. It seems likely that MA and PhD students will be offered coursework units that are aligned—at least to a certain extent—with the focus of research units within each program. If so, it seems likely that staff in the research units within each program will be called on to do the coursework teaching, as well as the supervision.)

Whether or not research units return to coursework teaching, the Centre for the Book at Monash has a small group of talented PhD students associated with it already and a steady stream of enquiries from would-be students suggests that this group will continue to grow.

**The aim of the Early Imprint Project (subsequently the Australian Book Heritage Resources Project) was to compile a short-title catalogue "in machine readable form" of all books published before 1801 held in Australasian libraries. See B. J. McMullin, "The Australia and New Zealand Early Imprints Project: The Background" BSANZ Bulletin 6:4 (1982), 163–73.

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Bryan Coleborne, Chairman of the Committee for the Centre from 1994–96, records some of his thoughts about both the centre and the future of teaching bibliography and book history in his "Course Design and Analytical Bibliography" BSANZ Bulletin 20:3 (1996), 213–17.

Brian McMullin records some of his thoughts in "Bibliography in the Library School at Monash" BSANZ Bulletin 20:3 (1996), 218–20; "Forty Years On" Script and Print 35:2 (2011): 106–7.

CFP: Revealing The Reader. A Symposium

Recent developments in the history of the book demonstrate that an interest in the material history of print culture inevitably leads us to the question of readers. How well can we understand the past, present and future of print culture without examining the uses to which it is put by its audience? This question serves not only to remind us of the primacy of the economic relationship between readers, writers and publishers, but draws our attention to the variety of cultural, social, political, and interpersonal roles that reading has played and continues to play.

The "Revealing The Reader" symposium at Monash's Centre for the Book, aims to bring together scholars with a common interest in contemporary and historical reading practices with the aim of showcasing current research in this rapidly expanding field, and providing a forum for discussion and debate on the state of reading research.

Paper proposals may address topics such as:

• Case studies of reading practices and reading communities
• The relationships between reading communities, publishers, authors etc.
• The relationships between reading communities and genre
• Methodologies for researching readers and their practices
• The material trace of reading
• Historical and contemporary evidence of reading
• Locations of reading
• The relationship between individual readers and reading communities
• Histories of reading
• Technologies of reading
• The role of existing and emerging technologies in revealing readers

This list is not exhaustive, and the conveners welcome submissions from researchers whose work investigates reading practices and readers from the perspective of the sociology of literature, book history, literary studies, mixed methods research, reader response theory, history, cultural studies, and the study of material culture. Submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers are particularly welcome.

Keynote speakers:
• Danielle Fuller (University of Birmingham): a chief investigator in the Beyond The Book research project into mass reading events.
• Susan Martin (La Trobe University): co-author of Sensational Melbourne: Reading, Sensation Fiction and Lady Audley's Secret in the Victorian Metropolis.
• Julie Rak (University of Alberta): author of a forthcoming study on the memoir boom in North America.

Please email 300-word proposals for 20 minute papers, and 50-word presenter bio-notes by Friday 27 April 2012 to conference organisers Anna Poletti and Patrick Spedding. Pre-constituted panel proposals welcome. Please include the conference title in the subject heading of your email.

The symposium will follow a one day masterclass, led by Danielle Fuller, on Thursday 28 June at the Wheeler Centre Melbourne as part of the "Readers and Reception" Masterclass series, presented by the National Centre for the Australian Studies, School of Journalism, Australian and Indigenous Studies. Information on the Masterclass series is available from Jinna.Tay@monash.edu or Louise.Poland@monash.edu.