Conference Announcement:
Journeys Through the Market: Travel, Travellers
and the Book Trade
Annual two day conference on book trade history
Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 November 1998 at
Royal Geographical Society
(with the Institute of British Geographers)
1 Kensington Gore, London SW7
Chair: Robin Myers
Organiser: Michael Harris
Fee: £75
The annual conference on book trade history, organised
through the Faculty of Continuing Education at Birkbeck
College, will be held this year at the Royal
Geographical Society in London. This provides an
appropriate setting for the discussion of the
production, collection and use of books on travel. Such
material rapidly became a staple in the output of the
book trade, crossing the boundaries of text and
illustration and forming an area in which fact and
fiction mingled together. Leading specialists will
explore areas of the trade in travel books since the
16th century and examine publications ranging from
accounts of voyages and shipwrecks to the publication
of guide books. The papers given at last year's
conference, published by St Paul's Bibliographies under
the title Medicine, Mortality and the Book Trade, will
be available at a special rate. A selection of
antiquarian books will also be available. The
conference fee covers coffee, tea and a buffet lunch on
both days, and anyone interested in book history will
be welcome.
Programme
Saturday
10.30am - 11.45am "Strange, remote, and farre distant
countreys": The travel books of Richard Hakluyt
Anthony Payne
11.45am - 12 noon Coffee
12 noon - 1.15pm The English Language Guidebooks to
Europe before 1870
Giles Barber
1.15pm - 2.30pm Lunch
2.30pm - 3.45pm The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in
the 18th century
Jeremy Black
3.45pm - 4.00pm Tea
4.00pm - 4.45pm The Printed Collections at the Royal
Geographical Society
Andrew Tatham
4.45pm - 6.00pm Tour of the Collections
Sunday
10.30am - 11.30am Shipwrecks and Print during the 18th
century
Michael Harris
11.30am - 11.45am Coffee
11.45am - 1.00pm Kingdoms of the Mind: The Scottish
Colonial Reader in the 19th century
Bill Bell
1.00pm - 2.30pm Buffet Lunch
2.30pm - 3.45pm Illustrating Books about the Middle
East, 1800-1850
Charles Newton
3.45pm - 4.00pm Tea
4.00pm - 5.00pm Research and the History of Travel
Books: Informal Panel Discussion
The Speakers:
Giles Barber worked in the Department of Printed Books,
Bodleian Library and was Librarian of the Taylor
Institution to 1996. He was Panizzi Lecturer at the
British Library in 1988 and Sanders Reader at the
University of Oxford in 1998 and is past President of
the Bibliographical Society. He is currently
cataloguing the books and fine bindings from the
Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor.
Bill Bell is Senior Lecturer in Literature and
co-director of the Centre for the History of the Book
at the University of Edinburgh. He is general editor,
with Jonquil Bevan, of A History of the Book in
Scotland, to be published in 4 volumes by the
University of Edinburgh, and co-editor with Peter
Garside of Volume 3 (1800-1880). He has written widely
on 19th-century literature and culture.
Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University
of Exeter. His many books include The British Abroad:
The Grand Tour in the 18th century (1992) and more
recently a study of the cultural and political uses of
historical maps, Maps and History: Constructing Images
of the Past (1997).
Michael Harris is Senior Lecturer in History in the
Faculty of Continuing Education, Birkbeck College and
is co-founder, with Robin Myers, of these conferences
in book history (from 1979). He has written on various
aspects of the history of print, mainly in serial form,
and is currently working on a study of the construction
and use of news.
Charles Newton is Deputy Head of the collection of
designs in the Department of Prints, Drawings and
Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He has
special responsibility for the Searight Collection of
images of the Middle East.
Anthony Payne is a Director of the London antiquarian
booksellers, Bernard Quaritch Ltd and Honorary
Secretary of the Hakluyt Society. His Hakluyt Society
lecture Richard Hakluyt and His Books, published in
1997, includes an interim census (compiled with P A
Neville-Sington) of surviving copies of Hakluyt's
Divers Voyages and Principal Navigations.
Andrew Tatham is Keeper at the Royal Geographical
Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). He
is Head of Information Resources at the Royal
Geographical Society and has written extensively on
tactile mapping. He is President of the British
Cartographic Society.
To participate, please request an enrolment form from,
and return it with your payment to:
Carol Watts
Faculty of Continuing Education
26 Russell Square
London WC1B 5DQ
Tel 0171 631 6652
Fax 0171 631 6686
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Please include your full postal address in your
message.
Payment may be made by cheque, or by Mastercard, Visa,
Switch or Delta cards.
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