Böcker i Penn State Series in the History of the Book-serien

Explores the life of Henry Lawson's iconic Australian 1896 short-story collection While the Billy Boils, from its creation and publication to its evolving public perception over the years. Examines the literary history and publishing industry of Australia, from the 1890s to the present.

Traces the development of the American book trade from the colonial era through the twentieth century. Explores the technological, historical, cultural, political, and personal forces that shaped the trade, paying particular attention to the contributions of the German bookseller Frederick Leypoldt and his journal Publishers Weekly.

A collection of essays by editor, biographer, bibliographer, and book historian James L. W. West III, covering editorial theory, archival use, textual emendation, and scholarly annotation. Discusses the treatment of both public documents (novels, stories, nonfiction) and private texts (letters, diaries, journals, working papers).

Explores stereotyping and electrotyping in U.S. literature and history. Examines how printers, typefounders, authors, and publishers managed the transition as new technologies displaced printing traditions of the early nineteenth century.

A collection of essays by scholars of eighteenth-century literature, sharing their experiences as both producers and users of explanatory annotations.

Explores several classic works of social and political thought, examining how the history of their publication materially affected their meaning and reception over time. Case studies include works by Durkheim, Mead, Marx, Du Bois, and Weber.

In The Impossible Craft, Scott Donaldson explores the rocky territory of literary biography, the most difficult that biographers try to navigate. Writers are accustomed to controlling the narrative, and notoriously opposed to allowing intruders on their turf. They make bonfires of their papers, encourage others to destroy correspondence, write their own autobiographies, and appoint family or friends to protect their reputations as official biographers. Thomas Hardy went so far as to compose his own life story to be published after his death, while falsely assigning authorship to his widow. After a brief background sketch of the history of biography from Greco-Roman times to the present, Donaldson recounts his experiences in writing biographies of a broad range of twentieth-century American writers: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, Archibald MacLeish, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Winfield Townley Scott, and Charlie Fenton. Donaldson provides readers with a highly readable insiders' introduction to literary biography. He suggests how to conduct interviews, and what not to do during the process. He offers sound advice about how closely biographers should identify with their subjects. He examines the ethical obligations of the biographer, who must aim for the truth without unduly or unnecessarily causing discomfort or worse to survivors. He shows us why and how misinformation comes into existence and tends to persist over time. He describes ';the mythical ideal biographer,' an imaginary creature of universal intelligence and myriad talents beyond the reach of any single human being. And he suggests how its very impossibility makes the goal of writing a biography that captures the personality of an author a challenge well worth pursuing.

The letters contained in As Ever Yours, published here for the first time, reveal an epistolary love story-and they provide fresh insights into Perkins the man and Perkins the editor. The Perkins-Lemmon letters illuminate the thoughts and experiences of the greatest literary editor of the twentieth century.

The letters contained in As Ever Yours, published here for the first time, reveal an epistolary love story-and they provide fresh insights into Perkins the man and Perkins the editor. The Perkins-Lemmon letters illuminate the thoughts and experiences of the greatest literary editor of the twentieth century.

A collection of essays examining how print culture shaped the legacy of the Enlightenment. Explores the challenges, contradictions, and dilemmas modern European societies have encountered since the eighteenth century in trying to define, spread, and realize Enlightenment ideas and values.

Examines the founding in 1850 of the first library in the White House purchased with public funds, which was intended to remain there as a permanent collection. Documents the contents of the library and considers it within the political, social, and intellectual milieu of mid-nineteenth-century America.

Explores how the novels of Henry James reflect the significance of the visual culture of his society, and how essential the language and imagery of the arts, as well as friendships with artists, were to James's writing.

A collection of essays exploring the role of textual studies in understanding and editing texts, and in understanding the historical developments and cultural differences in editorial and archival systems.

Recounts the publication history of nearly fifty books illustrated by Henri Matisse, including Lettres portugaises, Mallarme's Poesies, and Matisse's own Jazz. Explores his illustration methods, typographic precepts, literary sensibilities, and opinions about the role of the artist in the publication process.

Examines the book collection of Thomas Connary, a nineteenth-century Irish Catholic New England farmer, to reconstruct how Connary read and annotated his books. Reveals how books can structure a life of devotion and social participation, and presents an authentic, holistic view of one reader's interior life.

John Williams and four other mediaeval scholars challenge conventional wisdom on biblical illustration, and find it to be an enterprise guided in its genesis by the dynamics of a new culture. They argue that illustrated Bibles were shaped by ad hoc decisions resulting in a variety of approaches.

An account of the working of the 18th-century German book trade as revealed by the career of Friedrich Nicolai (1733-1811). It draws upon Nicolai's correspondence and provides insights into how books came into existence, what tactics prospective authors used, and other matters.

This is a critical edition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper", the story of the victimization of a woman whose neurasthenic condition is completely misdiagnosed and mistreated, leaving her to face insanity alone. It is accompanied by contemporary reviews and letters.

This work is the story of an aspiring writer who failed and then, desperate for money, tried again and wrote himself out of penny-a-word pulp magazines and into a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. It is based upon Richter's letters, notebooks, journals and private papers.

A study of George Palmer Putnam, American 19th-century publisher. It discusses his productive life in print, interrelating this with the life of his family, with the changing patterns of life in New York City and the nation, and with the institutionalization of modern print culture.

Explores the life and work of Lydia Bailey, a leading printer in the book trade in Philadelphia from 1808 to 1861. Includes a list of almost nine hundred of her known imprints.

A bibliography of poetry composed in what is now the United States of America and printed in the form of books or pamphlets before 1821.

A bibliography of poetry composed in what is now the United States of America and printed in the form of books or pamphlets before 1821.

An interdisciplinary study examining the newspaper industry in Argentina during the regime of Juan Domingo Peron. Traces how Peron managed to integrate almost the entire Argentine press into a state-dominated media empire.

The Scottish publishing house of William Blackwoood & Sons, founded in 1804, was a major force in 19th- and early 20th-century British literary history, publishing a diverse group of important authors, including George Eliot and Joseph Conrad. This is a look at its success and eventual demise.

Explores the evolution of the idea that the rise of print culture was a threat to the royal government of eighteenth-century France. Argues that French printers did much to foster this view as they negotiated a place in the expanding bureaucratic apparatus of the state.

Traces the evolution of New York's publishing trade from the end of the American Revolution to the Age of Jackson. Explores the gradual development of local, regional, and national distribution networks in the early republic.

John Williams and four other mediaeval scholars challenge conventional wisdom on biblical illustration, and find it to be an enterprise guided in its genesis by the dynamics of a new culture. They argue that illustrated Bibles were shaped by ad hoc decisions resulting in a variety of approaches.