Bibliographical Presses Questionnaire

We need your help!

In 1977, the BSANZ Bulletin published a census of bibliographical presses operating in Australia and New Zealand (NB: not private presses, as explained below). In the last thirty years, many of the presses then located—thirteen in all—seem to have been disbanded. It is not clear whether any new presses have since been set up to demonstrate hand-press printing methods to English or Librarianship students in universities and libraries. In order to get a definitive answer to this question, Per Henningsgaard has asked me to circulate a questionnaire (link to the 3-page pdf here) and I have transcribed an excerpt of our original article (below), which explains the features and function of a bibliographical press.

I hope anyone who knows anything concerning Bibliographical Presses in Australia and New Zealand will take the time to fill in this questionnaire even—in fact, especially—if all you have to report is that no such press is, or ever has been, active at your institution.

In fact, if this is the case, then the latter half of the questionnaire will be of particular interest to you, since it enquires more generally about the teaching of bibliography in your institution and how this teaching might have changed over time. The results of this questionnaire will be published in a future issue of Script & Print, along with some reflections on the teaching of physical bibliography in Australia today.

Please send replies to Per Henningsgaard via email (phenningsgaard at yahoo.com), fax (08 6488 1030), or mail (5 Megalong Street, Nedlands WA 6009). Please also forward to Per the name of any Australian or New Zealand institution or person that, to your knowledge, presently runs a bibliographical press or teaches bibliography and/or Book History.

What is a Bibliographical Press

By a “bibliographical press” is meant a workshop or laboratory which is carried on chiefly for the purpose of demonstrating and investigating the printing techniques of the past by means of setting type by hand, and of printing from it on a simple press. (P. Gaskell, “The Bibliographical Press Movement,” Journal of the Printing Historical Society 1 (1965), 1–13). The rationale for such “demonstrating and investigating” is explained by R. B. McKerrow’s statement of 1913:

It would, I think, be an excellent thing if all who propose to edit an Elizabethan work from contemporary printed texts could be set to compose a sheet or two in as exact facsimile as possible of some Elizabethan octavo or quarto, and to print it on a press constructed on the Elizabethan model. Elementary instruction in the mechanical details of book-production need occupy but a very few hours of a University course of literature, and it would, I believe, if the course were intended it turn out scholars capable of serious work, be time well spent. It would teach students not to regard a book as a collection a separate leaves of paper attached in some mysterious manner to a leather back, nor to think that the pages are printed one after another beginning at the first and proceeding regularly to the last. They would have constantly and clearly before their minds all the processes through which the matter of the work before them has passed, from its first being written down by the pen of its author to its appearance in the finished volume, and would know when and how mistakes are likely to arise; while they would be constantly on the watch for those little pieces of evidence which are supplied by the actual form and “make-up” of a book and which are often of the highest value, in that they can hardly ever be “faked.” (R. B. McKerrow “Notes on Bibliographical Evidence for Literary Students and Editors,” Transactions of The Bibliographical Society 12 (1911–13), 220).

Oz & NZ Bibliographical Presses in 1977

The University of Auckland, Mount Pleasant Press, Department of English
The University of Queensland, Shapcott Press, Department of English
The University of Otago, The Bibliography Room, University Library
Victoria University of Wellington, Wai-te-ata Press, Department of English
The University of Sydney, Piscator Press, Fisher Library
The University of Adelaide, Barr Smith Library
The Australian National University, Open Door Press, Department of English
Monash University, The Bibliographical Laboratory, University Library
The University of Canterbury, Underoak Press, School of Fine Arts
The University of Tasmania, New Albion Press, Department of English
Massey University, Department of English
The University of Melbourne, Baillieu Library
The University of Canterbury, Department of English

[As details concerning each press arrive, the font colour will be changed from red to dark green]

UPDATE 28 May 08: Per tells me that UNSW at ADFA had a bibliographical press from 1990 until 2000, which (of course) was not featured in the 1977 survey. As details arrive of post-1977 presses these will be added below, similarly colour coded.

The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy

'Creative' Bookshelf Designs

While searching the net yesterday I found an article on 30 of the Most Creative Bookshelves Designs at freshome.com. Apparently the 'mission' at Freshome is to 'inspire' and 'to give you ideas and make your home a better place to live'.

Some of these designs are undoubtedly pretty; but many would simply destroy the books that they are ostensibly designed to store or display; only a few of the 30 would do minimal or no damage. In fact, the question of whether a pretty design is likely to protect or harm the books seems not to have come into the heads of any of these designers and it seems to be only by accident that a few of them wouldn't destroy the books that they contain.

Here are a few of the worst examples. Imagine what each book that has been placed on these shelves would look like after only one year. Then imagine two, five or ten years!

Contents of Script & Print, vol. 30 (2006)

Here is a complete contents-list for Script & Print, vol. 30 (2006 [issued 2007])

Articles and Bibliographical Notes:
• Keith Adkins, “John Glover and his Books” [S&P 30.1: 17–30]
• Patrick Buckridge, “Bookishness and Australian Literature” [S&P 30.4: 223–36]
• John Burrows, “Sarah and Henry Fielding and the Authorship of The History of Ophelia: A Computational Analysis” [S&P 30.2: 69–92]
• Sandra Burt, “The BSANZ archive” [S&P 30.1: 39–41]
• T. L. Burton & K. K. Ruthven, “William Barnes’s River Flowers and the 1844 Edition of His Poems of Rural Life in The Dorset Dialect.” [S&P 30.3: 138–54]
• John N. Crossley, “One Man’s Library, Manila, ca. 1611—a first look” [S&P 30.4: 201–9]
• Anthony J. Hassall, “Sarah and Henry Fielding and the Authorship of The History of Ophelia: Literary Considerations” [S&P 30.2: 93–100]
• Wallace Kirsop, “Museums, Lyceums, Athenaeums and Mechanics’ Institutes” [S&P 30.4: 210–22]
• Harold Love, “A New Source for Rochester’s ‘My Dear Mistris has a Heart’” [S&P 30.1: 12–16]
• B. J. McMullin, “Dawson Described.” [S&P 30.3: 174–80]
• B. J. McMullin, “J. D. Fleeman, A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson, 50.3R/21, 26, 27 (The Rambler, Hodges’s edition)” [S&P 30.1: 42–44]
• B. J. McMullin, “Silk for Posting: Sir Francis Burdett’s Address to The Constituents of The City of Westminster, 6 October 1812” [S&P 30.4: 237–40]
• Keith Maslen, “The Bibliography Room Press 1961–2005: A Short History and Checklist.” [S&P 30.3: 155–73]
• Pam Pryde, “John Noone, Government Photo-lithographer, 1861–1888” [S&P 30.1: 31–38]
• Patrick Spedding, “A Reading of Gay’s Fables.” [S&P 30.3: 181–85]
• Toni Johnson-Woods, “Pulp Friction: Governmental Control of Cheap Fiction, 1939–1959” [S&P 30.2: 101–15]

Obituaries:
• David Wooley 1924–2005 (by Clive Probyn) [S&P 30.1: 45–47]
• Harold Love (by Wallace Kirsop) [S&P 30.4: 241–49]
• Henri-Jean Martin 1924–2007 (by Wallace Kirsop) [S&P 30.1: 48–53]

Opinion Pieces:
• George Williams and Edwina MacDonald, “Academic Freedon and the ‘War on Terror’” [S&P 30.1: 7–11]
• Tara McLeod on “The Private Press in New Zealand in the Twenty-First Century” [S&P 30.3: 134–37]

Reviews:
• A Chronology and Calendar of the London Book Trade 1641–1700 (Harold Love) [S&P 30.1: 54–56]
• Gender, Society and Print Culture in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural World of the Athenian Mercury and The London Journal, 1845–1883: Periodicals, Production and Gender (reviewed by Roger Osborne) [S&P 30.4: 255–57]
• Memorial Volumes to Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust (reviewed by Marianne Dacy) [S&P 30.2: 124–25]
• Patrick White: A Bibliography (reviewed by Elizabeth Webby) [S&P 30.2: 122–24]
• Studies in Bibliography, vol. 54 (reviewed by B. J. McMullin) [S&P 30.3: 186–87]
• Studies in Bibliography, vol. 55 (reviewed by B. J. McMullin) [S&P 30.4: 252–55]
• Studies in Bibliography, vol. 56 (reviewed by Keith Maslen) [S&P 30.3: 188–90]
• Teaching Bibliography, Textual Criticism and Book History (reviewed by Roger Osborne) [S&P 30.3: 190–93]
• The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore (reviewed by Dennis Haskell) [S&P 30.2: 120–22]
• The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library (reviewed by Susan Reynolds) [S&P 30.1: 57–58]
• Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies, and Bibliomania (reviewed by Simone Murray) [S&P 30.4: 250–52]

Update for March 2008

S&P 31.2 went to the printer on Friday (contents below). And by virtue of the fact that 2008 is a leap year, this means that it actually went to the printers in February as planned, though it was the 29th and we have put 'issued March 2008' in the imprint. BPA usually returns bromides in about a week and deliver within two, so copies should be stuffed into envelopes and posted by 17 March. Subscribers should receive copies by the end of that week.

S&P 31.3 will contain an article by Dirk H. R. Spennemann & Jon O’Neill on the deBrum Library on Likiep, another by Craig Brittain on Steinbeck’s use of ledgers in the writing of East of Eden and Journal of a Novel and a Bibliographical note from Brian McMullin on an unrecorded title-page border from 1556. We are rich in reviews at present, so 31.3 will include three: Mary Jane Edwards on Elizabeth Morrison's edition of Ada Cambridge's A Black Sheep and Ross Harvey on Elizabeth Morrison's Engines of Influence as well as Angus Martin on Allan Holland's Manon Lescaut de l’abbé Prévost, 1731–1759. Full details of the contents of this issue will appear in April.

Contents of S&P 31.2

Article 1: Paul Eggert, "Textual Criticism and Folklore: The Ned Kelly Story and Robbery Under Arms"

Article 2: Paul Watt, "The Catalogue of Ernest Newman’s Library: Revelations about his Intellectual Life in the 1890s"

Article 3: Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario, "Don’t Steal a Book by its Cover: The Book Thief and Who Reads It"

Reviews: Edmund Curll, Bookseller (reviewed by Shef Rogers); Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms (reviewed by Peter L. Shillingsburg)