Materializing the immaterial. Recovering the lost books of early modern Europe
The importance of lost books, editions where no copy has yet been identified, has long been recognised by book historians.
Bibliographies concerned with a single printer, the works of a single author or a particular place of publication regularly record contemporary references to works that cannot now be located. But historians of the book have been more hesitant in applying this approach to the analysis of the early modern print world as a whole. In a St Andrews conference, subsequently published as Lost Books (2016), we explored a diverse range of methods for identifying lost books, ranging from mathematical modelling to the analysis of manuscript booklists, with a special concentration on genres of print, particularly susceptible to loss, including, but not exclusively, broadsheets, forms other forms of printed ephemera. In this presentation we review our own contribution to the recovery of lost books, and the essential role these previously unrecognised items played in sustaining the publishing industry, particularly outside the major centres of production, between 1450 and 1700.
Chair: Sandra Toffolo, FBK-ISIG
Scientific coordination:
Massimo Rospocher, FBK-ISIG
Sandra Toffolo, FBK-ISIG
Enrico Valseriati, FBK-ISIG
To connect to the event, registration is required by Wednesday 9 March 2022 at 11.59 pm
Source:isig.fbk.eu
The webinar will be held in English
