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THE LIBRETTO

Beth L. Glixon and Jonathan E. Glixon

in Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice

This chapter takes a broad look at the opera libretto; it considers the profession of librettist, the selection of the libretto for a particular season, publishing and printing privileges, revisions ... More

This chapter takes a broad look at the opera libretto; it considers the profession of librettist, the selection of the libretto for a particular season, publishing and printing privileges, revisions to the libretto, and the libretto as a source of income. During the 17th century, a number of men became professional rather than occasional librettists, and most librettos performed in Venice were written by Venetians themselves. The initial cost of the libretto was often borne by the printer, who then distributed profits either to the librettist or the impresario and his partners. The librettist also stood to gain a profit through the fees from dedication. As a result, an impresario could gain extra income for his company by mounting a revival — that is a previously performed libretto — thereby bypassing the need for a librettist altogether. Librettos were not just purchased for use at the theater, but were also preserved in collections, as well as sent to those unable to attend the performances themselves.Less

Companions in Now-Time

Alexander Kluge

Richard Langston (ed.)

in Difference and Orientation: An Alexander Kluge Reader

This chapter presents Alexander Kluge's oblique meditation on books and collecting. In a letter to a Mr. B., Kluge describes his library and his relation to books. He claims that books have a will of ... More

This chapter presents Alexander Kluge's oblique meditation on books and collecting. In a letter to a Mr. B., Kluge describes his library and his relation to books. He claims that books have a will of their own. They find each other on their own accord. That is the principle guiding their rows, stacks, and piles. He says he does not own books he most admires; he lives with them. What Kluge finds trustworthy about books is that they connect centuries. No other medium connects authors over 2,000 years so reliably as the book. Ultimately, how Kluge treats his beloved books cannot be compared to the nurturing of a library. He then details how, in his parents' house, books were kept in an orderly fashion in the so-called gentlemen's study. This room was not for reading, but rather was especially meant for playing bridge.Less

Cultures of collecting

David Pearson

in Book Ownership in Stuart England

Studies of private libraries and their owners invariably talk about ‘book collecting’—is this the right terminology? After summarizing our broadly held understanding of the evolution of bibliophile ... More

Studies of private libraries and their owners invariably talk about ‘book collecting’—is this the right terminology? After summarizing our broadly held understanding of the evolution of bibliophile collecting from the eighteenth century onwards, this chapter considers the extent to which similar behaviours can be detected (or not) in the seventeenth, drawing on the material evidence of bookbindings, wording in wills, and other sources. Do we find subject-based collecting, of the kind we are familiar with today, as a characteristic of early modern book owners? Some distinctions are recognized in ways in which medieval manuscripts (as opposed to printed books) were brought together at this time. The relationship between libraries and museums, and contemporary attitudes to them, is explored. The concluding argument is that ‘collecting’ is a careless word to use in the seventeenth-century context; just as we should talk about users rather than readers, we should use ‘owners’ rather than ‘collectors’ as the default term, unless there is evidence to the contrary.Less

Reactionary Materialism: Book Collecting, Connoisseurship and the Reading Life in J. C. Squire’s London Mercury

Patrick Collier

in Modern Print Artefacts: Textual Materiality and Literary Value in British Print Culture, 1890-1930s

The London Mercury attained popularity and notoriety as the leading anti-modernist voice of the early 1920s. It reached more than 10,000 circulation by presenting itself as a voice of reason in an ... More

The London Mercury attained popularity and notoriety as the leading anti-modernist voice of the early 1920s. It reached more than 10,000 circulation by presenting itself as a voice of reason in an age of critical anarchy, and its material form communicated seriousness of mission, tasteful restraint, and allusion to the great Victorian quarterlies. This chapter argues that, through a combination of economic necessity and editorial eccentricity, the Mercury went on to posit solid, material objects—particularly fine and rare books, but also collectible furniture and historic churches—as loci of stable value. The Mercury shored up its readership by appealing to rare and fine book enthusiasts and the businesses that catered to them. Combined with its literary partisanship, which began to appear increasingly reactionary, this emphasis on high-end textual materiality implicitly but powerfully posited reading as an activity of the leisured and educated, book-buying as a hobby for those with ample disposable income. Its ethos of value-in-the-object reached its reductio ad absurdum in the early 1930s, in two special issues on book production and typography, in which the magazine effectively became an advertiser-cum-trade-journal for London’s high-end printing concerns.Less

Humanist Books and Lawyers’ Libraries in Early Eighteenth-Century Scotland: Charles Areskine of Alva’s Library

Karen G Baston

in Reassessing Legal Humanism and its Claims: Petere Fontes?

Charles Areskine of Alva, a Scottish advocate of the first half of the eighteenth century, combined his professional activities with an academic interest in the sources of law. The books he collected ... More

Charles Areskine of Alva, a Scottish advocate of the first half of the eighteenth century, combined his professional activities with an academic interest in the sources of law. The books he collected for his private library show his interest in legal humanism but they are not limited to this tradition of legal scholarship. Areskine read and used his books in legal practice: any of his books, including those by classical authors and early modern humanists, had the potential to provide sources for legal arguments in the Scottish Court of Session. Areskine’s books offer a challenge to traditional interpretations of legal history since they reveal the continuing use of legal texts beyond set parameters of presumed stages in legal development. However, Scottish lawyers collected not just the books they needed to create legal arguments but also the texts they needed to engage with the sociable culture of the Scottish Enlightenment.Less

Introduction: Private libraries in Stuart England

David Pearson

in Book Ownership in Stuart England

Summary statistics are given for the distribution of private libraries across different professional backgrounds, considered in the context of work which has been done in this field, and assumptions ... More

Summary statistics are given for the distribution of private libraries across different professional backgrounds, considered in the context of work which has been done in this field, and assumptions which are commonly made (but which need to be challenged). The chapter considers methodological approaches to private library history, and describes those underpinning this book. The broader national context within which book ownership history should be considered is set out. The content (and exclusions) of the book are more fully described, with reference to other relevant work, and the limitations created by our imperfect evidence base are acknowledged.Less

Acquisitions on a Grand Scale

Kathy Peiss

in Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe

After the war, the new Librarian of Congress Luther Evans worked with State and War Department officials on a plan to send library agents to Europe. The agents would acquire every book published in ... More

After the war, the new Librarian of Congress Luther Evans worked with State and War Department officials on a plan to send library agents to Europe. The agents would acquire every book published in Germany and occupied countries and distribute them to American research libraries. The Library of Congress Mission to Europe was a unique collecting effort that acquired 1.5 million books, periodicals, and other materials. Initially a book-purchasing plan, it evolved into an industrial-scale acquisitions program under the American military government in Germany. It seized works from research institutes, specialized libraries, and Nazi collections, helped US Army document centers screen confiscated works, and acquired materials deemed to have no intelligence value. In its short existence, the mission embodied a new commitment among American research libraries, that large international collections were necessary to serve the national interest.Less

The Chap-Book (1894–8)

Giles Bergel

in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume II: North America 1894-1960

This chapter discusses the history of The Chap-Book — a magazine that was sometimes ambiguously positioned between a commercial mainstream and a more coterie publication of the bibelot variety. The ... More

This chapter discusses the history of The Chap-Book — a magazine that was sometimes ambiguously positioned between a commercial mainstream and a more coterie publication of the bibelot variety. The Chap-Book's main legacy was in its design and reinvention of the eighteenth-century ‘chap-book’ form for modern audiences. Even here, however, its uncertain status between commerce and culture can be discerned in the commercial origins of its name (a ‘chapbook’ being a pamphlet sold by an early incarnation of the travelling salesman) and in its instant appeal to the book-collecting market.Less

Book Collecting at the End of the Civil Wars, 1598‒1611

Tom Hamilton

in Pierre de L’Estoile and his World in the Wars of Religion

Following the defeat of the League, L’Estoile kept an increasingly detailed record of his collecting activities. This chapter demonstrates how L’Estoile’s responses to the books he collected were ... More

Following the defeat of the League, L’Estoile kept an increasingly detailed record of his collecting activities. This chapter demonstrates how L’Estoile’s responses to the books he collected were characterized by exchanges in the society surrounding the Palais de Justice, made up of its printers, bookbinders, scribes, office-holders, and the erudite humanists whose legal training drew them into its orbit. It sets out how L’Estoile managed his library, how he read books with erudite, Gallican friends, and then how he inherited and passed them on within his family. At the end of the civil wars, L’Estoile was no passive observer of Parisian erudition, but a key figure in its intellectual culture whose collection attracted visits from friends and family, as well as collectors from across Europe.Less

Noël Golvers, Libraries of Western Learning for China. Circulation of Western Books between Europe and China in the Jesuit Mission (ca.1650–1750), ii: Formation of Jesuit Libraries. (Louvain: Ferdinand Verbiest Institute K.U. Leuven, 2013), 559 pp. ISBN: 9789082090901

Alexander Statman

in History of Universities: Volume XXIX / 1

The chapter discusses Western book collecting in China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It draws from Noël Golvers' Libraries of Western Learning for China and its volume Formation of ... More

The chapter discusses Western book collecting in China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It draws from Noël Golvers' Libraries of Western Learning for China and its volume Formation of Jesuit Libraries (2013), which contains accounts of Jesuit missions during the period and how the Jesuit-run libraries were built, maintained, and dismantled. Golvers relies almost entirely on archival documents, with lengthy quotations throughout the text in at least six European languages and many supplemental graphs, tables, and lists. The main argument is that in the early seventeenth century, the missionaries Nicolas Trigault and Niccolò Longobardo formulated a centralised program for procuring European books and organizing them in China, but it comes off largely as an afterthought. What Golvers actually shows is just how diverse the Jesuit libraries really were. He addresses themes, such as the division between communal and private libraries, the circulation of books, and the continuity of collections.Less

“My dearest dearest”—1631–1639

J. Sears McGee

in An Industrious Mind: The Worlds of Sir Simonds D'Ewes

Although D’Ewes and his wife expected to enjoy life at Stow Hall after Paul D’Ewes’s death, a series of conflicts with Richard Damport, the rector of Stowlangtoft, produced periods of exile in ... More

Although D’Ewes and his wife expected to enjoy life at Stow Hall after Paul D’Ewes’s death, a series of conflicts with Richard Damport, the rector of Stowlangtoft, produced periods of exile in Lavenham and elsewhere for the couple and their family in the 1630s. Eight of the ten children Anne bore died very young, and they agonized over those losses repeatedly. D’Ewes also saw to the completion of his brother Richard’s upbringing and education and corresponded with him when the young man went on lengthy journeys on the Continent. D’Ewes continued his research project and library building. He also completed his journals of the parliaments of Queen Elizabeth I.Less

Ulster-Scots Literature

Frank Ferguson

in The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Volume IV: The Irish Book in English, 1800-1891

This chapter outlines the history of publishing Ulster-Scots vernacular texts in Ulster in the nineteenth century and discusses the parallel activity of the collecting of these materials in Ulster, ... More

This chapter outlines the history of publishing Ulster-Scots vernacular texts in Ulster in the nineteenth century and discusses the parallel activity of the collecting of these materials in Ulster, together with examples of Scottish literature. It assesses the impact of Robert Burns on the production of vernacular poetry in the northeast of the province and explores the poets’ relationship to Burns and their wider sense of affiliation to Scotland and Ireland. It considers the example of two significant collectors of local and Scottish verse — William Fee McKinney (1832–1917) and Andrew Gibson (1841–1931) — who lived in or near Belfast in the late nineteenth century, and charts how the different approaches to book collecting in the latter part of the nineteenth century demonstrate the variety of ways in which Ulster-Scots and Scottish materials were embraced by northerners at a time of the literary revival.Less