Revolution and the antiquarian book
Subtitle: reshaping the past, 1780-1815
By: Kristian Jensen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 318
ISBN-13: 9781107000513
Subjects: Book collecting; History; Incunabula; Collectors and collecting; Antiquarian booksellers; Books and reading; Printing; Enlightenment; Intellectual life; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Description: "At the end of the eighteenth century, noblemen and revolutionaries spent extravagant sums of money or precious military resources competing to acquire old books, which until then had often been regarded as worthless. These books, called incunabula, achieved cultural and political importance as luxury commodities and as tools for mastering a controversial past. Men of different classes met in a new, shared marketplace, creating a competition for social authority, as books were no longer seen merely as sources of textual information but as a way of controlling the past in the service of contemporary concerns. The old books themselves were often changed to meet new expectations of what important historic objects should be. Focusing on Paris and London, but taking a resolutely pan-European view, this book examines the emergence of this commodity and of a new historical discipline created by traders and craftsmen"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 270-310) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction; 1. Enlightenment ideas and revolutionary practice: incunabula and freedom; 2. Aristocratic aspirations and the war-time market: competing for the past and the future; 3. An object-based discipline emerges: old books, new luxury; 4. Competing for authority. 'The insolence of English wealth'; 5. Commemorating and obliterating the past: 'old books, very displeasing to the eye'; 6. Conclusion.