'Waste Sheets,' Disintoxicating Italians, Paper Production in Venice

Bibliographical Society Posts Lectures

Founded in 1892, the Bibliographical Society is the senior learned society dealing with the study of the book and its history. ¹ It publishes The Library: Transactions of The Bibliographical Society. For more than a hundred years it has been the pre-eminent UK scholarly journal for the study of bibliography and of the role of the book in history.

Recent Lectures to Watch Online

GEOFFREY DAY, The preservation and recycling of 'waste' printed sheets in the eighteenth-century book trade

‘Waste’ printed sheets were preserved for various reasons: commercial, idealistic, and occasionally felonious. Records of such preservation illuminate many areas of the eighteenth-century book trade, from the identification of responsibility for anonymous publications to demonstrating customer expectations.

ANNA LANFRANCHI, Italian Readers, American Books and the Second World War: Propaganda and Publishing History in the Archive

During WWII, the United States employed books to foster the Allied war effort and “disintoxicate” audiences from Fascist propaganda in liberated territories (Hench 2010). This paper considers the publishing and translation activity targeting Italy and Italian-speaking readers to explore how archives may help us problematise the relationship between cultural diplomacy, the transnational book trade, and the response of target reading communities.

SILVIA PUGLIESE, The paper production in the eighteenth century Venetian Republic through its use in large format prints and books

In the eighteenth century, several paper districts were active in the Venetian Republic, producing different qualities of paper for both the internal and foreign markets. The material examination of some examples of luxury large size books of prints, combined with archival documentation, offers the possibility to start tracing a map of the paper makers involved in the manufacture of the finest papers throughout the century.

MAUREEN BELL and TOM LOCKWOOD, Ordered That the Clerke henceforward shall keepe a Wast Booke

This paper identifies and explores ‘The Wast Register booke for entring of Coppies’ that the Stationers’ Company started to keep on 7 April 1687, locating that document among the Company’s records, and showing the ways in which it provides a new opportunity both to investigate the practices of the Stationers and to cast new light on Restoration authors and their work.

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