SHARP

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing

INTRODUCTION

"Book history," reports the Chronicle of Higher Education, has become "a particularly hot topic in the humanities and not just in the United States." The history of the book is not only about books per se: broadly speaking, it concerns the creation,
  • dissemination, and reception of script and print, including newspapers, periodicals, and ephemera. Book historians study the social, cultural, and economic history of authorship; the history of the book trade, copyright, censorship, and underground publishing; the publishing histories of particular literary works, authors, editors, imprints, and literary agents; the spread of literacy and book distribution; canon formation and the politics of literary criticism; libraries, reading habits, and reader response.

    A GLOBAL SCHOLARLY NETWORK

    The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing was created in 1991 to provide a global network for book historians, who until then had usually worked in isolation. SHARP now has over 1000 members in over 20 countries, including professors of literature, historians, librarians, publishing professionals, sociologists, bibliophiles, classicists, booksellers, art historians, reading instructors, and independent scholars.

    SHARP works in concert with a number of affiliated scholarly organizations around the world to encourage the study of book history. We were very proud that one of these societies, the American Printing History Association, chose SHARP as the winner of its Institutional Award for 2001. This award is given each year to an institution that has made "distinguished contributions to the study, recording, preservation, or dissemination of printing history." Past recipients have included the Gutenberg Museum, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the St Bride Printing Library and the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. Accepting the award for SHARP, the Society's co-founder and first president, Jonathan Rose, delivered an address in which he re-envisioned the field's future as an academic discipline. Since that time SHARP has continued to be an advocate, and a home, for historians of the book all over the world. Join SHARP today and play a part in this expanding community.

    CONFERENCES

    Each year SHARP holds an annual conference that brings many of these scholars together for stimulating discussion of an enormously wide range of issues. Memorable conference programs have included: Plan to join us in 2008, when SHARP comes to Oxford, England, hosted by The Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University. Watch the official conference website for details. Meanwhile, plans are already under way for SHARP 2009: Tradition & Innovation: the state of book history/le point sur l'histoire du livre. June 23 - 27, 2009 in Toronto, Canada.

    • James Kelly of the Unversity of Massachusetts has compiled an illuminating checklist of papers delivered at SHARP conferences between 1993 and 2007. Recently, he has taken this project further by compiling an even more informative bibliography of published work that has derived, in whole or in part, from SHARP conference papers. If you are the author of such a work, please contact James Kelly at jrkelly [AT] library.umass.edu

    ORGANIZATION AND OFFICERS

  • Roster of SHARP's officers and board members

    • Becoming a SHARP officer or member of the Board of Directors means joining a special comradeship, and opens up satisfying opportunities to help build the kinds of connections among diverse enthusiasts for which SHARP is so well known. The current (2005-2009) president of SHARP is Robert Patten of Rice University in Houston; his Vice-President is Leslie Howsam of the University of Windsor. If you would like to get more involved with helping SHARP to encourage and support book history worldwide, we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch with us through the website at webmaster AT sharpweb.org (substituting an "@" sign for "AT" in the address).

    PUBLICATIONS

    SHARP News, the society's quarterly newsletter, features stimulating essays, book reviews, calls for papers, conference announcements, a listing of new publications, notes and queries, and reports on book studies throughout the world. You can download a sample issue here (in PDF format). Members wishing to contribute to SHARP News should contact Sydney Shep, the editor-in-chief, who may be reached at the following address (please replace the word "AT" in this and other addresses with the "@" sign in your email):

    Dr. Sydney Shep
    Wai-te-ata Press
    Victoria University of Wellington
    P.O. Box 600
    Wellington
    NEW ZEALAND

    Phone: +64-4-463-5784
    Fax: +64-4-463-5446
    email: editor AT sharpweb.org

    Suggestions about books to review as well as offers to review should be sent to one of SHARP News's three book review editors:

    Fritz Levy, Europe Review Editor
    History Dept., Box 353560
    University of Washington
    Seattle, WA 98195
    or by email to reviews_europe AT sharpweb.org

    or

    Gail Shivel, North America Review Editor
    5783 S.W. 40th Street
    PMB 221
    Miami, Florida 33155
    USA
    or by email to reviews_usa AT sharpweb.org

    or

    Simone Murray, Asia/Pacific Review Editor
    School of English, Communications & Performance Studies
    Monash University
    Clayton VIC 3800, AUSTRALIA
    or by email to reviews_ap AT sharpweb.org

    Notices about exhibitions or offers to review exhibitions pertaining to book history may be sent to Lisa Pon at reviews_exhibs AT sharpweb.org or by mail to

    Lisa Pon
    Assistant Professor of Art History
    SMU Meadows School of the Arts
    PO Box 750356
    Dallas, TX 75275

    SHARP News also features news of recent publications; information about these should be sent to Robert N. Matuozzi at matuozzi AT wsu.edu

    SHARP members also have access to the SHARP Membership and Periodicals Directory, a vital reference tool.

    In 1998 SHARP achieved an important milestone with the first appearance in members' mailboxes of Book History, an annual hardcover scholarly journal edited by Jonathan Rose and Ezra Greenspan. In December 1999, the Council of Editors of Learned Journals honored Book History as "the best new journal," with the CELJ awards committee praising its "impressive range" and "sustained engagement with the subject," and predicting "real staying power on the academic landscape." To browse the tables of contents of current and past issues, please visit the BH webpage, where you'll also find information about submitting articles and contacting the editors. Book History can be ordered directly through Johns Hopkins University Press.

    If you are already a SHARP member, you can access Book History online by creating a password and login.

    PRIZES

    Award for Distinguished Achievement
    In 2004 SHARP first presented an award for extraordinary achievement in the history of the book. Such achievement might be that of an institution, a research team or project, and it might take the shape of a printed volume or volumes, or it might appear in digital form as an Internet site or web-based publication. That first prize went to Bibles imprimés du XVe au XVIIIe siècle conservés à Paris, a catalogue of the early modern printed Bibles that survive in the main Parisian libraries. The catalogue is edited by Martime Delaveau et Denise Hillard.

    In 2006 the SHARP ADA was shared by two impressive projects. One is an institution, the Archive of Publishers’ Records at University of Reading (England) Library. To quote from the nomination, “Through its agency and that of its archivist Michael Bott, the University has rescued from oblivion several important publishers’ archives and continues to be active in seeking acquisitions in the field.” Mike Bott and his (very small and highly committed) staff at Reading not only take care of the papers and catalogue them magnificently, but also help researchers to make the best possible use of their rich intellectual contents. Materials from the Reading archive have been at the backbone of several works in the history of the book, and they will continue to support such works in the future. Members of the staff at Reading are themselves active researchers in book history, and knowledgeable about contemporary issues in the publishing industry.

    The other, and equal, award for Distinguished Achievement went to the Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800-1900. The nomination cited the Waterloo Directory as “one of the great feats of humanities scholarship in modern times, an essential reference to which anyone who works on the history of the printed word in the nineteenth century turns time and time again.” John North and a revolving team of fortunate graduate students have taught us that the volume of periodicals in the Victorian period is about 100 times as large as that of printed books for the same period, and have made their resources available by patient indexing. The Waterloo began in print form, back in 1976, and in addition to the 20 volumes, it is now published in searchable electronic form, just in time to support research in the new generation of electronic editions of the Victorian periodicals it has indexed.

    To nominate a candidate for the Award for Distinguished Achievement, contact the ADA Committee.

    DeLong Book History Book Prize

    SHARP annually awards a $1000 Book History Prize to the author of the best book on any aspect of the creation, dissemination, or uses of script or print published in the previous year. Owing to the generosity of the DeLong family in endowing the prize, from 2004 it has been known as the George A and Jean S DeLong Book History Book Prize. The winners of the last seven prizes have been:

    Book History essay prize

    The editors of Book History annually award a graduate student essay prize consisting of $400 and publication in the journal to the author of the best article submitted on any aspect of book history.

    BECOMING A MEMBER

    Annual dues for SHARP, which include subscriptions to SHARP News, the annual Membership Directory, and the hardcover journal Book History, are $55 (U.S. currency) in the United States and Canada, $60 elsewhere. Students and unwaged can opt for a rate that does not include a subscription to Book History: $20 in U.S., $25 elsewhere. Join now via the online membership form, or
    Libraries may subscribe to SHARP News alone at the following rates: $25 in U.S. & Canada, $30 elsewhere. Book History may also be purchased through Johns Hopkins University Press.
    Since 1 January 2007, all SHARP memberships have been handled by JHU Press. To join, simply visit SHARP's online membership portal, fill out the form, and away you go. Alternatively, you can join:
    By phone:
    Toll free within U.S.: 1-800-548-1784
    Outside the US: +1-410-516-6987
    By email to members AT sharpweb.org or jrnlcirc AT press.jhu.edu (substitute "@" for "AT" in the address).
    By printing and filling out the membership form here (in Word format) or from the portal (in PDF format) and mailing it to:
    The Johns Hopkins University Press
    Journals Publishing Division
    P.O. Box 19966
    Baltimore MD 21211-0966, USA
    If you would like to fax the form instead, you can do so to Johns Hopkins at this fax number: 410-516-3866
    Already a SHARP member? With the new online membership system, it's easy to:

    Have a question about your membership? Contact the Membership Secretary by email at .