Fall/Winter 2006 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

B O O K H I S T O R Y
Old Books and
New Histories
An Orientation to Studies in Book and Print Culture
Leslie Howsam
STUDIES IN BOOK AND PRINT CULTURE
Studies in the culture and history of the book are a
burgeoning academic specialty. Intriguing, rigorous,
and vital, they are nevertheless rooted within three
major academic disciplines – history, literary studies,
and bibliography – that focus respectively upon the
book as a cultural transaction, a literary text, and a
material artefact. Old Books and New Histories serves
as a guide to this rich but sometimes confusing territory,
explaining how different scholarly approaches
to what may appear to be the same entity can lead to
divergent questions and contradictory answers.
Rather than introduce the events and turning
points in the history of book culture, or debates
among its theorists, Leslie Howsam uses an array of
books and articles to offer an orientation to the field
in terms of disciplinary boundaries and interdisciplinary
tensions. Howsam’s analysis maps studies of book
and print culture onto the disciplinary structure of the
North American and European academic world.
Old Books and New Histories is also an engaged
statement of the historical perspective of the book.
In the final analysis, the lesson of studies in book
and print culture is that texts change, books are
mutable, and readers ultimately make of books
what they need.
Leslie Howsam is a professor in the Department of
History at the University of Windsor.
The Illustrated Old English
Hexateuch, Cotton Ms. Claudius B.iv
The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in
Anglo-Saxon England
Benjamin C. Withers
STUDIES IN BOOK AND PRINT CULTURE
The Old English Hexateuch is a manuscript of the
earliest vernacular translation of the Old Testament
books of Genesis through Joshua. The texts belong,
in part, to the Anglo-Saxon monk Aelfric (950–
1010) and to several anonymous translators and
at least one artist who compiled these translations
and illustrated them with nearly four hundred narrative
images, which are carefully integrated into
the manuscript.
The Hexateuch testifies to the creativity and
innovation of Anglo-Saxon bookmakers and stands
as an important, if little known, witness to the relationship
between early book-making technology
and the history of literacy. Benjamin C. Withers
examines codicological features of the manuscript,
focusing on the working processes of the artist and
scribes and seeking to understand how they integrated
newly translated text with newly developed
imagery so deftly. Grounded in art history and
literary theory, this work considers the narrative
relationships created by the careful design and seeks
to place the Hexateuch within the broader social
and cultural development of vernacular literacy in
the eleventh century.
Benjamin C. Withers is an associate professor and
chair in the Department of Art at the University
of Kentucky.
Approx. 128 pp / 5 ½ x 8 ½ / September 2006
4 figures
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-9196-2 / 978-0-8020-9196-3
£25.00 $40.00 E
Paper ISBN 0-8020-9438-4 / 978-0-8020-9438-4
£9.95 $16.95 C
Approx. 464 pp / 6 x 9 / December 2006
115 black and white illustrations, CD of digital reproductions
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-9104-0 / 978-8020-9104-8
$85.00 E
WORLD RIGHTS EXCLUDING UK AND EUROPE
CO-PUBLISHED WITH THE BRITISH LIBRARY.
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