Suarez 2004

Suarez, Michael F., S.J. "Historiographical Problems and Possibilities in Book History and National Histories of the Book." Studies in Bibliography 56 (2003/2004), pp. 141-170. Web.

• 141 Book history is still a relatively new form of interdisciplinary inquiry that has yet the develop historiographical understandings adequate to the complexities of the questions it typically seeks to answer.
  • strong echo of Bowen 2009 for Victorian studies
• 1. Interdisciplinarity
  • 142 fighting "parochialism" with interdisciplinary knowledge, but also (as Darnton points out) this requires a formidable range of knowledge
  • 144 but "most book-historical scholarship published since the first issue of Publishing History appeared in 1976 has not been authentically interdisciplinary."
    • Cyndia Clegg's admonishment in "An Undisciplined Discipline" to have "a certain humility in the face of long traditions of bibliographic, historiographic, and critical practice"
  • the "promise [of] "new perspectives and innovative methods," [but] they discuss neither historiography nor any of the analytical, historical, sociological, or critical methods by which this new kind of historical investigation might be conducted"
• 2. Periodization
  • 145 Just as the periodization of literary history has had a thoroughgoing effect on how that subject is researched, taught, studied, and understood, so too do the ways in which we partition book history, both national and international, have a significant impact on future patterns of perception and knowledge.
  • 146 ...it is by no means clear how the reign of Queen Victorian...is especially meaningful for book history as an investigative tool for framing our inquiries, however well it might serve as a heuristic expedient.
  • differing chronologies based on national vs. international scale: e.g., a "Romantic century" 1750-1850 on European scale but different markers for more particular local events on national scale
• 3. Boundaries
  • 148 Darnton 1982 advocates for an international and interdisciplinary history of the book but most subsequent work has been neither, especially nationalist
  • 149 Cambridge History of the Book for 1830-2000 will be necessarily global -- but William Caxton's printing enterprise was international in the 15th century, too
  • 150 another significant boundary: literary vs nonliterary texts
• 4. The Sociology of Texts
  • 150 McKenzie 1999 - (good note that he was establishing this sociology of the text project well before the Panizzi Lectures)
    • 151 McKenzie basing his understanding of sociology in Herbert Spencer's 1873 Study of Sociology -- interesting note
  • "most of us currently undertaking book-historical investigations are not truly conversant...in either bibliography or sociology."
    • 152 "perhaps would-be students of book history would do well to read Anthony Giddens' New Rules of Sociological Method"
  • The sociology of texts should begin in the study of the practices and institutions of textual production, transmission, and reception...[153 and] should also seek a deeper understanding of how the practices and institutions of textual production, transmission, and reception are imbedded in and informed by larger social and political structures.
• 5. Role of Bibliography in Book History
  • 155 ...bibliographical literacy ought to be requisite to book history in the way that all physicians...have studied human anatomy.
  • quotes Tanselle's useful distinction: book history "the study of the role of printed books in society" and analytical bibliography "the printing history of individual books"
  • "rigorous and creative application of bibliographical knowledge to book-historical research is, in my view, the single most important desideratum for book history today."
• 6. Understanding What the Gaps in Our Knowledge Might Mean
  • 157 3 types: errors of perception/synthesis/analysis, a lack of knowledge that points to future research, ignorance arising from gaps in historical record
  • 158 "The candid disclosure of what we do not know, and the careful assessment of the reasons for our incomprehension, can help direct future investigations and lead us to more adequate understandings."
• 7. De Facto Culture oF Intellectual Property
  • Scrutinizing the contents of dictionaries, encyclopedias, poetic miscellanies, magazines, and other works teaches us that, for all the careful tracing of legal cases that scholars have done, we still know very little about the de facto culture of "intellectual property" as it has operated in the book trade
    • obvious and interesting implications for "collecting" vs "stealing"
  • 160 Imaginative works too manifest an attitude toward intertextuality and literary borrowing that suggests we need to think beyond the body of statutes and legal cases regarding copyright if we are to develop a more realistic understanding of how copyright and its attendant notions of intellectual property actually functioned in the period.
    • example of Sterne's diatribe against plagiarism in Tristram Shandy, which was itself plagiarized from Robert Burton
• 8. Some Problems Involved in Reading as a Subject of Book History
  • 161 obvious first problems: rubric for assessing literacy (signature in marriage registers inadequate, see Suarez 2009 above) and the nature of the "reading revolution"
  • the absence of data is the most insuperable problem
  • 162 quotes Price 2004 "Reading": "Familiarity makes reading appear deceptively knowable...studies drawing on autobiography or marginalia alike are biased toward certain kinds of readers and styles of reading."
    • how does Sherman 2010 situate the use of marginalia studies?
  • 163 at the same time, Carlo Ginzburg "has argued for the admissibility of incomplete and even distorted evidence, provided that the interpreters of such information have a thorough understanding of its limitations"
  • ...ground[ing] our reading and reception studies more thoroughly in physical bibliography [and I would argue following JTK in collecting practices, what Suarez then on 164 calls "reading as a social practice"]
• 9. Numbers
  • "Follow the money" is an excellent adage for book historians.
    • conveys the necessity of economic knowledge - a start with G.R. Hawke's Economics for Historians (1980) -- and quantitative/statistical knowledge (Roderick Floud's Intro to Quantitative Methods for Historians, tho surely with DH there are more current works) (166)
• 10. Producing a Printed History and Considering its Use and Readership
  • 168-9 asking of our work: "what kind of product is this and for whom is it intended"
  • "web based national history of the book which is free to all" (the Netherlands has Bibliopolis)
  • 170 the formidable requirements for a truly interdisciplinary book history necessitates collaboration between scholars