Making Books, Shaping Readers

"Making Books,

‘Making Books, Shaping Readers’ is a research unit within the English Department of UCC. Its aim is “to focus on the materiality of the text, and how the physical appearance of the text shapes and informs both authors and readers”. The group’s second annual conference took place on 2-4 April, and was accompanied by an exhibition which was on display in the Boole Library. The theme of this year’s conference was the role of the editor in selecting and manipulating the text and thus determining the impression a book makes on its readers. The exhibition displayed a wide variety of works from our Special Collections and Archives, chosen with the assistance of Crónán Ó Doibhlin and Julian Walton. The oldest work that we chose is the collected letters of St Jerome, edited by Erasmus, and printed by Jacques Mareschal at Lyon in 1526. For the forces of the Counter- Reformation, Jerome may have been one of the Fathers of the Church but Erasmus was regarded as a dangerous heretic, and our copy has been extensively censored by officials of the Spanish Inquisition. The second oldest book in the exhibition is A booke of presidentes [precedents] exactly written in maner of a register, by Thomas Phayer (London, 1546). This tiny legal textbook belonged to succeeding members of the Nicholson family of Kendal, several of whom have emphasised their ownership by inserting forceful comments in the margins. The first surviving page, for instance, bears the inscription: “I Rolande Nycholson owe this booke whoso fyndes it lyinge bringe yt a gayne and I will do as much for yow”.

The modern section includes different versions of Cúirt an mheán Oíche; some fine bindings of the works of W.B. Yeats; Elizabeth Friedlander’s beautiful calligraphic designs for Penguin Books; and the first page of a story by William Trevor, both in the author’s MS and the text eventually published."

View the newsletter at: http://booleweb.ucc.ie/news/publications/newsletter/libnews/summer08/ucclibrarynews.pdf