Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Foreword
- Introduction: Towards a pedagogy of Bibliography
- Part I Rationales
- Part II Creating and Using Resources
- Part III Methodologies
- Teaching ‘History of the Book’
- Teaching Bibliography and Research Methods
- The Bibliography and Research Course
- Integrating ‘Bibliography’ with ‘Literary Research’: A Comprehensive Approach
- The Hidden Lives of Books
- Learning from Binders: Investigating the Bookbinding Trade in Colonial Philadelphia
- Papermaking, History and Practice
- The Bibliographical Analysis of Antique Laid Paper: A Method
- Teaching Textual Criticism
- Part V Resources
- Index
Learning from Binders: Investigating the Bookbinding Trade in Colonial Philadelphia
from Teaching Bibliography and Research Methods
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Foreword
- Introduction: Towards a pedagogy of Bibliography
- Part I Rationales
- Part II Creating and Using Resources
- Part III Methodologies
- Teaching ‘History of the Book’
- Teaching Bibliography and Research Methods
- The Bibliography and Research Course
- Integrating ‘Bibliography’ with ‘Literary Research’: A Comprehensive Approach
- The Hidden Lives of Books
- Learning from Binders: Investigating the Bookbinding Trade in Colonial Philadelphia
- Papermaking, History and Practice
- The Bibliographical Analysis of Antique Laid Paper: A Method
- Teaching Textual Criticism
- Part V Resources
- Index
Summary
I assign the following question in my undergraduate Literary Research course:
In the cluttered and dusty rare book stacks at the university library, you find a large folio printed in paris, 1557, bound in sheepskin with a gilt central ornament. On closer inspection you find a name ‘Gilbert Erle of Cassillis’ embossed in a circle around the ornament. The word ‘Cassillis’ has been written on the title page; this is evidently provenance, and the hand looks contemporary with the imprint. Your local book historian believes that the binding is about the same age as the volume (certainly no earlier, and no more than twenty years older); it is typical of sixteenth-century French binding styles. For whom was this book bound? Why do you suggest this ownership?
This question is difficult for most students. They don't know what ‘folio’ or ‘provenance’ means; they have never regarded ‘gilt central ornaments’ as belonging on books. When they consider the details, however, students identify three lines of research: Parisian printing, French bookbinding, and the name, ‘Gilbert Erle’. They find, to their surprise, a large body of research on Parisian printing. The answer, alas, is not found through that avenue. They also discover extensive scholarship on Renaissance bookbinding. Unfortunately, the volume in question is not ornate enough or famous enough to have been described in print. Students work through biographical dictionaries, hoping to find a Frenchman (or anyone!) named Gilbert Erle. They discover that Erle is an obsolete spelling for earl, and that Cassillis is the name of an earldom. Cassillis in the Dictionary of National Biography directs readers to Kennedy, and the Third and Fourth Earls of Cassillis, both named Gilbert Kennedy, are the ultimate candidates.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Teaching Bibliography, Textual Criticism, and Book History , pp. 132 - 141Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014