HIST 259: Cultures of Collecting (HC)

Throughout human history, the world's knowledge and fruits of the creative imagination have been produced, circulated and received through the medium of the material text. This Companion provides a wide-ranging account of the history of the book and its ways of thinking about works from ancient inscription to contemporary e-books, discussing thematic, chronological and methodological aspects of this interdisciplinary field. See in particular "Handwriting and the Book" and "The Coming of Print to Europe."
Also available in print in Tripod.

This multivolume history presents an overview of the social, political and cultural developments in Britain involved in the dissemination and reception of the written word. The emphasis in these collections of essays is on the demand and use of books and the book trade.
Volume 3, 1400-1557
Volume 4, 1557-1695

Each of the 100 sections focuses on one book that represents a particular development in the evolution of books and in turn, world history and society. Titles include the first book of astronomy and the first book of anatomy as well as the first printed blockbuster and the first joke book.

Covers book history broadly. Note the treatment of paleography and the history of printing. The second part of the Companion offers brief entries on every aspect of the history of the book.

This bibliographic essay from Oxford Bibliographies Online Renaissance and Reformation summarizes scholarly discussions around the development of printing. It also identifies individual books and articles that are most important for a current understanding of the questions.

This lavishly produced volume presents a survey and analysis of a fascinating cabinet of curiosities established around 1750 by the Cobbe family in Ireland and added to over a period of 100 years. Although such collections were common in British country houses during the 18th and 19th centuries, the Cobbe museum, still largely intact and housed in its original cabinets, now forms a unique survivor of this type of private collection from the Age of Enlightenment.

A craze for collecting swept England during the 16th and 17th centuries. Why were these jumbles of artifacts so popular? Through a wide-ranging series of case studies, Swann addresses two important questions: How was the collection appropriated to construct new social selves and modes of subjectivity? And how did texts participate in negotiating the cultural significance of collecting?

Traces museum collecting in western Europe from the Renaissance to the 19th century. Covers topics including displays from the manmade and natural worlds, the specialization of areas such as fine arts, antiquities and natural history.

This collection explores how the study of nature changed profoundly between the Renaissance and the early 1700s. See, for example, "Objects of Art/Objects of Nature: Visual Representation and the Investigation of Nature" and "Time's Bodies: Crafting the Preparation and Preservation of Naturalia".