This interdisciplinary conference will explore relations between book production, distribution and content to re-examine our notions of textual culture in the eighteenth century. Taking intersections in current scholarship between Book History and Literary Studies as its starting point, it will explore the ways in which we can expand our knowledge of eighteenth-century literary production by revisiting the circumstances of material life in the period.

The book as object is fraught with issues of critical feedback, textual instability, editorial intervention and branding, all of which challenge our notions of author-ity.  By focusing on cultural exchange, the conference will pursue questions about the significance and necessity of viewing material culture and print in conjunction. It will address theoretical and historical understandings of the complex ideological, technological and social processes that bear on the creation of print.

Programme:

9:45-10:15       Registration and tea/coffee

10:20-11:20     Keynote: Professor James McLaverty (Keele), ‘Troublesome Works: Swift in 1735 and Other Problem Authors’

11:30-1:15       Panel 1: The London Trade in Words

                        Jennifer Batt (Oxford), ‘Miscellanies and the Poetic Canon’

Hazel Wilkinson (UCL), ‘Printers’ Flowers as Evidence in the Identification of Unknown Printers: Two Examples from 1715’

Kelly Centrelli (RHUL), ‘“The Drapier is Set up and Wood is Cry’d Down”: Ephemeral Performative Response to Swift’s Drapier’s Letters, 1723-25’

Jennifer Chenkin (QMUL), ‘”That spirit of uncommon disinterestedness”: Robert Dodsley’s Correspondence’

1:15-2:00         Lunch

2:05-3:25         Panel 2: The Paratexts of Print

Mark Yates (Salford/Ghent), ‘William Blake and the Chapbook: Exploring the Formats of the Early Illuminations’

Adam James Smith (Sheffield), ‘Real and Imagined Sites of Textual Production in Joseph Addison’s The Free-Holder’

Michelle Wallis (Cambridge), ‘Performing in Print: “Public Practice” and the Quacks of Early Modern London’

3:25-3:45         Tea

3:45-4:45         Panel 3: Textual Circulation in Europe

                        Laura Carnelos (Venice), ‘Venice and the “common books”’

Nick Treuherz (Manchester), ‘Importing Banned Books: A Book History Perspective on Cultural Transfer of the Materialist Philosophy from France to Germany in the Enlightenment’

4:50-5:50         Keynote: Dr John Hinks (Leicester), ‘“Life, the Universe and Everything?” The Scope and Structure of Book History’ 

6:00-6:45         Drinks

7:00-9:30         Conference Dinner (The Empress, Lauriston Road)

Best wishes,

Ms Alice Ford-Smith

Principal Librarian

Dr Williams's Library
14 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0AR

www.dwlib.co.uk

Catalogue: http://mailgate.dwlib.co.uk/Heritage