Meetings will be held at the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BE, beginning at 5.30 p.m.
Tea will be served at 5.00 p.m. Members are welcome to bring guests, both to meetings and to the tea beforehand.
The Annual General Meeting will take place at Stationers’ Hall, The Stationers’ Company, Ave Maria Lane, London EC4M 7DD, on Tuesday, 20 October 2015 at 6.15 p.m. The AGM will not be preceded by tea, but refreshments will be served after the meeting.
20 October 2015
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING at Stationers’ Hall at 6.15 p.m. At the close of business, William Alden, Clerk, will introduce the collections.
17 November 2015
ADAM BUDD: ‘Thomas Hollis, his Library of Liberty, and his London Bookseller’.
While much is known of Thomas Hollis’s distinctively bound publications, relatively little is known about his principal collaborator, the London-based Scottish bookseller, Andrew Millar. This paper investigates their relationship in print and beyond.
15 December 2015
KAREN ATTAR: ‘Collecting Shakespeare at the University of London’.
How an institution which opened with no more than a German translation of Hamlet and a volume of Shakespeare within the Anderson poets came to boast early Shakespeare holdings as a major strength.
19 January 2016
SUZANNE REYNOLDS: ‘”The Munificence of the Rich, and the Industry of the Learned”: William Roscoe and the Holkham Manuscript Library reconsidered’
16 February 2016
MARTIN DAVIES: ‘Sweynheym and Pannartz in Pictures’.
This paper will consider visual evidence to discern patterns of production, decoration, ownership and use in the incunabula printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz (1465-73).
15 March 2016
Presidential Address
HENRY WOUDHUYSEN: ‘Before Moxon: The Public Face of the English Book Trade, 1475–1680’.
This paper will look at the popular and professional understanding of the making of printed books during the first two centuries of their production in England. It will pay particular attention to the language used in relation to the trade – including terms for paper and for book-binding.
19 April 2016
Graham Pollard Memorial Lecture
MATTHEW PAYNE: ‘Settling the account: new evidence on the importing of books to London in the late 15th century’.
This paper investigates two previously-unknown sources for the continental activities of London booksellers in the last years of the 15th century, and the financial arrangements of their trade.
17 May 2016
Homee and Phiroze Randeria Lecture
DAVID PEARSON: ‘Elkanah Settle’s bookbinders’.
This paper will reassess evidence of 18th-century bindings associated with the City Poet Elkanah Settle which have in the past been the subject of myths and misconceptions, and update our understanding of these bindings.
Summer visit: Details will be announced in The Library for March 2016.