Here are some examples from Kresge Library's Special Collections of handwriting and print interacting with one another.
- Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book (18??). Compare our hand-copied version to that online via the Smithsonian Libraries.
- The queen-like closet, or, Rich cabinet, stored with all manner of rare receipts for preserving, candying and cookery. (1684). Compare the manuscript additions in ours to a clean copy online via the Library of Congress.
- Diary of Captain George H. Starr, 1863-1864. More information on George H. Starr through the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
- Discontented letter to Henry Stephens Randall, author of Life of Thomas Jefferson.
- Ellen, a Ballad (1815), with the author's corrections. FInd out more about author Melesina Trench via Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present.
Interested in learning more about the interaction of manuscript hand and the printing press?
David McKitterick. Print, manuscript, and the search for order, 1450-1830.
"This book re-examines fundamental aspects of what has been widely termed the printing revolution of the early modern period. David McKitterick argues that many of the changes associated with printing were only gradually absorbed over almost 400 years, a much longer period than usually suggested. From the 1450s onwards, the printed word and image became familiar in most of Europe. For authors, makers of books, and readers, manuscript and print were henceforth to be understood as complements to each other, rather than alternatives. But while printing seems to offer more textual and pictorial consistency than manuscripts, this was not always the case. McKitterick argues that book historians and bibliographers alike have been dominated by notions of the uses of the early printed book that did not come into existence until the late nineteenth century, and he invites his readers to work forward from the past, rather than backwards into it."--Jacket.
K. S. Whetter. The manuscript and meaning of Malory's Morte Darthur: Rubrication, commemoration, memorialization.
The red-ink names that decorate the Winchester manuscript of Malory's Morte Darthur are striking; yet until now, no-one has asked why the rubrication exists. This book explores the uniqueness and thematic significance of the physical layout of the Morte in its manuscript context, arguing that the layout suggests, and the correlations between manuscript design and narrative theme confirm, that the striking arrangement is likely to have been the product of authorial design rather than something unusual dreamed up by patron, scribe, reader, or printer. The introduction offers a thorough account of not only the textual tradition of the Morte, but also the ways in which scholarship to date has not done enough with the manuscript contexts of Malory's Arthuriad. The book then goes on to establish the singularity and likely provenance of Winchester's rubrication of names. In the second half of the study the author elucidates the narrative significance of this rubrication pattern, outlining striking connections between manuscript layout and major narrative events, characters, and themes. He argues that the manuscript mise-en-page underscores Malory's interest in human character and knighthood, creating a memorializing function similar to the many inscribed tombs that dominate the landscape of the Morte's narrative pages. In short, Winchester's design creates a memorializing tomb for Arthurian chivalry.
A. S. G Edwards. "Chaucer from Manuscript to Print: The Social Text and the Critical Text." Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature vol 28(4): 1995, 1-12.
Jane Griffiths. Diverting authorities: Experimental glossing practices in manuscript and print.
Arthur Marotti. Manuscript, print, and the English Renaissance lyric.
David McKitterick. Print, manuscript, and the search for order, 1450-1830.
"This book re-examines fundamental aspects of what has been widely termed the printing revolution of the early modern period. David McKitterick argues that many of the changes associated with printing were only gradually absorbed over almost 400 years, a much longer period than usually suggested. From the 1450s onwards, the printed word and image became familiar in most of Europe. For authors, makers of books, and readers, manuscript and print were henceforth to be understood as complements to each other, rather than alternatives. But while printing seems to offer more textual and pictorial consistency than manuscripts, this was not always the case. McKitterick argues that book historians and bibliographers alike have been dominated by notions of the uses of the early printed book that did not come into existence until the late nineteenth century, and he invites his readers to work forward from the past, rather than backwards into it."--Jacket.
K. S. Whetter. The manuscript and meaning of Malory's Morte Darthur: Rubrication, commemoration, memorialization.
The red-ink names that decorate the Winchester manuscript of Malory's Morte Darthur are striking; yet until now, no-one has asked why the rubrication exists. This book explores the uniqueness and thematic significance of the physical layout of the Morte in its manuscript context, arguing that the layout suggests, and the correlations between manuscript design and narrative theme confirm, that the striking arrangement is likely to have been the product of authorial design rather than something unusual dreamed up by patron, scribe, reader, or printer. The introduction offers a thorough account of not only the textual tradition of the Morte, but also the ways in which scholarship to date has not done enough with the manuscript contexts of Malory's Arthuriad. The book then goes on to establish the singularity and likely provenance of Winchester's rubrication of names. In the second half of the study the author elucidates the narrative significance of this rubrication pattern, outlining striking connections between manuscript layout and major narrative events, characters, and themes. He argues that the manuscript mise-en-page underscores Malory's interest in human character and knighthood, creating a memorializing function similar to the many inscribed tombs that dominate the landscape of the Morte's narrative pages. In short, Winchester's design creates a memorializing tomb for Arthurian chivalry.
A. S. G Edwards. "Chaucer from Manuscript to Print: The Social Text and the Critical Text." Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature vol 28(4): 1995, 1-12.
Jane Griffiths. Diverting authorities: Experimental glossing practices in manuscript and print.
This book examines the glossing of a variety of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century texts by authors including Lydgate, Douglas, Chaloner, Baldwin, Bullein, Harington, and Nashe. It is concerned particularly with the use of glosses as a means for authors to reflect on the process of shaping a text, and with the emergence of the gloss as a self-consciously literary form. One of the main questions it addresses is to what extent the advent of print affects glossing practices. To this end, it traces the transmission of a number of glossed texts in both manuscript and print, but also examines glossing that is integral to texts written with print production in mind. With the latter, it focuses particularly on a little-remarked but surprisingly common category of gloss: glossing that is ostentatiously playful, diverting rather than directing its readers. Setting this in the context of emerging print conventions and concerns about the stability of print, Jane Griffiths argues that - like self-glossing in manuscript - such diverting glosses shape as well as reflect contemporary ideas of authorship and authority, and are thus genuinely experimental. The book reads across medieval-renaissance and manuscript-print boundaries in order to trace the emergence of the gloss as a genre and the way in which theories of authorship are affected by the material processes of writing and transmission.
Arthur Marotti. Manuscript, print, and the English Renaissance lyric.
Emily Spunaugle
Assistant Professor, Humanities Librarian
spunaugle@oakland.edu
248.370.2498
For background and identification of book parts:
ABC for Book-Collectors
New Introduction to Bibliography
Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book
Broadview Reader in Book History
Use some of the following subject headings for locating books in our library and from others via MelCat:
ABC for Book-Collectors
New Introduction to Bibliography
Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book
Broadview Reader in Book History
Use some of the following subject headings for locating books in our library and from others via MelCat:
- Authors and readers -- History
- Book industries and trade
- Bookbinding
- Booksellers and bookselling
- Early printed books
- Illustration of books
- Libraries -- History
- Manuscripts
- Printing -- History
- Publishers and publishing -- History
- Books and reading -- History
- Type and type-founding
- 17th century
- 18th century
- 19th century
- "early modern"
- renaissance
- colonial
- women
- victorian
- conduct
You can also consult individual journals for relevant scholarship related to textual scholarhip, book history, and reception. This list can also serve as a guide for determining which articles you've located will be most useful for book history scholarship (rather than the literary approaches with which we're most familiar). Here are some to which Kresge Library has access:
- American Periodicals
- Book History
- Huntington Library Quarterly
- Information & Culture
- Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Book History
- Printing History
- The Library
- Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
- Studies in Bibliography
- Textual Cultures
Library OneSearch
Use the catalog to find books, videos, recordings, and goverment documents we have at the library.
MelCat
A statewide catalog of many of Michigan's libraries. It allows you to request books at another library be sent to Kresge Library for you.