This came over the SHARP listserv today:

Nov. 12, 2004 ó Johannes Gutenberg may be wrongly credited with producing the first Western book printed in movable type, according to an Italian researcher.

Presenting his findings in a mock trial of Gutenberg at the recent Festival of Science in Genoa, Bruno Fabbiani, an expert in printing who teaches at Turin Polytechnic, said the 15th-century German printer used stamps rather than the movable type he is said to have invented between 1452 and 1455.

More…

A beautiful website has been established for the 2005 meeting of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP) in Halifax, Nova Scotia to take place July 14-17.

Papers on any aspect of book history and print culture may be proposed. The conference theme “Navigating Texts and Contexts” suggests that examination of the varieties of relationships between texts and contexts would be welcome. In addition, because Halifax is located at one point of what a Canadian historian described as “The North Atlantic Triangle” (Britain, France, and North America), papers on aspects of the book trade in that region would be appropriate.

Paper and session proposals, in either English or French, should be submitted by November 30, 2004. Proposals may be submitted online…

I wish some of you digital/textual studies folks in the blogosphere would start presenting your work at SHARP.

I don’t think most people realize what a radical thing the First Amendment to the American Constitution was when it was first proposed:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (emphasis mine)

I tend to read eighteenth-century American history through the lens of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. This quote from Paula McDowell’s “Women and the Business of Print” (Women and Literature in Britain, 1700-1800, ed by Viven Jones. Cambridge, 2000) might help you see why:

Over the period from 1695 o 1774, the English press underwent some of the most important changes in its history. Before 1695, the guild which oversaw the book trade, the Worshipful Company of Stationers of London, held a royal charter granting its membership sole right to print, publish, or traffic in the printed word. Printing was confined to London and the two university towns, there were strict limits on the number of printers, and texts had to be licensed before they could be printed. During the Civil War period, press controls temporarily collapsed; political upheaval and increased literacy rates had contributed to an unprecedented demand for the printed word. In 1662, the Printing or Licensing Act would revive the principles of government censorship, yet the press would never again be as effectively controlled as it had been prior to the 1640s. In 1695, the Licensing Act was allowed to lapse for good, ending pre-publication censorship and limits on the number of master printers. The situation after 1695 was not that of a ‘free press’; government and trade restrictions still limited what could be printed and by whom. Nonetheless, the early eighteenth century was a period of anarchic expansion in the print trades. Whereas before 1695 there were only twenty-four legal printers in all of England, by 1795 there were between sixty-five and seventy printing-houses in London alone. (137-138))

Imagine if you had to get permission from the government before you could publish anything (e.g. on your blog). The idea seems ridiculous now, but prior to 1695, that was the norm in the most powerful nation of the English speaking world. This was a kind of dumb phrase, given that England was pretty much the only English speaking nation in the world at this time.

Here’s an update to my previous post on the two panels sponsored by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
In an essay entitled “Speech-Manuscript-Print,” D. F. McKenzie writes

“…a phrase like ‘the impact of print’–however carefully it is qualified–cannot help but imply a major displacement of writing as a form of record. In the same way, too great a preoccupation with writing and printing (as the technologies of literacy) may lead us to forget the superior virtues of speech. After all, we did not stop speaking when we learned to write, nor writing when we learned to print, nor reading, writing or printing when we entered ‘the electronic age.’ For those who market texts in those forms, some of them may seem mutually exclusive (do we read the book, hear it on tape, or see the film?), but for the speaker, auditor, reader or viewer, the texts tend to work in complementary, not competitive, ways. None surrenders its place entirely; all undergo some adjustment as new forms arrive and new complicities of interest and function emerge” (Making Meaning: ‘Printers of the Mind’ and Other Essays; ed by Peter D. McDonald and Michael F. Suarez, S.J.; U Mass Press, 2002; 238).

Panel 1: “The Fate of Script in an Age of Print”
Chair: George H. Williams, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Panelists:

Giles Bergel (Queen Mary, University of London), “Shifting the boundaries of ‘the shift from script to print’: the case of engraved lettering.”
Katherine Ellison (Emory University), “Tracing the Way of an Eagle in the Ayre: Script and Print in Seventeenth-Century Cryptography Manuals”
Eve Tavor Bannet (The University of Oklahoma), “Printed epistolary manuals and the rescripting of manuscript culture.”

Panel 2: “The Fate of Script in an Age of Print”
Chair: Eleanor F. Shevlin, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Panelists:

Betty Schellenberg (Simon Fraser University), “Vicarious Reading, Manuscript Culture, and Johnsonís The Rambler”
Rory Wallace (Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design), “Wish You Were Here”
Cheryl Nixon (University of Massachusetts Boston), “Circulating the Law in Manuscript and Print:Ý Chancery Court Cases and Narrative Forms”