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#ManuscriptZoo: Erik Kwakkel’s menagerie
Last Friday paleographer Erik Kwakkel charmed thousands of book and animal lovers on Twitter with hourly pics of creatures in medieval manuscripts. Here’s his #ManuscriptZoo. [View the story “Erik Kwakkel’s #ManuscriptZoo” on Storify]
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A brief literary history of cocktails: The Mint Julep
Since the time of Homeric libation rituals and Plato’s wine-soaked Dionysian revels, alcohol has been an abiding fixture in the works and lives of many of our greatest writers, poets and philosophers. Their liquid inspiration and sustenance—to say nothing of ruin—has played a surprisingly major role in the development of literary history. Our new series…
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TRB Podcast: William St Clair’s “Image and Word: Towards a Political Economy of Book Illustration”
On October 3rd, the Toronto Centre for the Book together with the Friends of Victoria Library invited Professor William St Clair to give the inaugural J.R. de Jackson Lecture for the 2012 Book History and Print Culture Lecture Series. In this lecture, titled “Image and Word: Towards a Political Economy of Book Illustration,” Prof. St…
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TRB Podcast: John Baird on Dickens and Great Expectations
On September 20, lauded U of T professor John Baird visited the Deer Park Branch of the Toronto Public Library to give a reading and lead a discussion of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. As part of the TPL’s lecture series “Celebrate Dickens,” which commemorates the bicentennial of the author’s birth, Prof. Baird addressed the social mores…
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TRB Podcast: Ruth Panofsky on The Literary Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada
Listen here: [audio: May2012/panofsky.mp3] On March 19, Ryerson University hosted an interview and launch for Ruth Panofsky’s new book, The Literary Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada: Making Books and Mapping Culture, at the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre. This event featured the author in conversation with Steven W. Beattie (book review editor, Quill and…
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In Defense of Obsolete Knowledge
On March 13, 2012, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Jorge Cauz, announced that the organization, which published the first edition of the pre-eminent English-language encyclopaedia in 1768, has decided to cease production of printed editions as it shifts all major editorial energy to the maintenance of its online edition. My first thought, I confess, was…
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e-Reading! An Interdisciplinary Toronto Review of Books Symposium on March 31 at Massey College
Join The Toronto Review of Books at Massey College next Saturday, March 31st for the interdisciplinary symposium on e-Reading we’re hosting in collaboration with the University of Toronto’s program in Book History and Print Culture and the Toronto Centre for the Book. All are welcome to attend what promises to be a fascinating afternoon. The…
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TRB Podcast: Polar Imprints: Book Historian Hester Blum at the University of Toronto
[audio:Hester.mp3] On November 17 as part of the Toronto Centre for the Book lecture series, and in Association with the Centre for the Study of the United States, Hester Blum (Penn State University) spoke on “Polar Imprints”: Narratives of polar voyages enjoyed wide circulation in Anglo-American cultural and political spheres during the long nineteenth century.…
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Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern: Unearthing a forgotten literary feud of the 1850s
Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern. Anonymous. New York: H. Long and Brother, 1855. Condition: Cover very worn, pages water-stained. Inside front cover bears a small sticker reading “B. Dawson, Bookseller & Stationer, Montreal”. Acquired: Sometime in the mid-1980s, from a thrift shop in Ottawa, for maybe $0.75 A little poking around on the Internet…
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TRB Podcast: Bill Sherman at the University of Toronto
On September 23, 2011, Bill Sherman, Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Renaissance & Early Modern Studies at the University of York, spoke at the Toronto Centre for the Book lecture series. His talk was entitled “The Reader’s Eye: Between Annotation and Illustration.” Listen here! [audio:Shermanlecture.mp3] Or read his abstract: The margins…
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Samizdat: Material Texts and Extra-Gutenberg Publics
On January 20, 2011, University of Toronto Professor Ann Komaromi spoke in the Toronto Centre for the Book lecture series on “Samizdat: Material Texts and Extra-Gutenberg Publics.” (Samizdat is a form of grassroots and DIY publishing that circulated dissenting texts in Soviet Europe.) [audio:annkomaromi.mp3]