Friday, 3 January 2025

Goals for 2025

We're officially a quarter century into the second millennium. Time is madness.

Like many people, I find the changing of the calendar an opportunity for reflection. What have I done and what would I like to do? Blogging about my goals helps me hold myself accountable to them. My goals span different areas of my life, from my academic and research work, to my hobbies. Over the past few years I've developed a system of setting small, medium, and large goals in each category--which is also a learning experience in its own right. In the rearview mirror, some object(ive)s are larger or smaller than they initially appeared. Behind all of what follows is the intention to be calm, curious, generous, and joyful in the year ahead.

What are your hopes or intentions for the coming year? Whether you have many New Years' Resolutions or none, I wish you a peaceful and productive 2025.


A year of good reading! [Source via Tumblr.com]

In academia... 

  • My SMALL goal is to reach out to the Weaving Media research network for conversations about the intersections between textiles and poetry.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to develop a weekly practice of Latin translation and grammar revision on Wednesday mornings.
  • My LARGE goal is to find a new academic position by the end of August.

In blogging...

  • My SMALL goal is to post at least one addition to my growing collection of modern poems about late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to write or finish at least three posts about books, including a round-up post about my engagement with the delightful Books in Translation reading challenge.
  • My LARGE goal is to finish my series of posts, Learning New Words with Lymond, about word choice and storytelling in Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings.

In crafting...

  • My SMALL goal is to knit a pair of fingerless gloves in a pattern that is new to me.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to learn and memorize a new and more elastic cast-on for socks.
  • My LARGE goal is to make a good start on two big sewing projects: a quilt kit I brought the summer I moved to the Netherlands, and a dress using fabric I bought at the Lapjesmarkt.

In living in the Netherlands...

  • My SMALL goal is to be a tourist at a Dutch parkrun outside of Utrecht.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to go to at least two new museums: I'm particularly eyeing a trip or trips to Leiden to visit the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (for their exhibit on the Bronze Age) and the natural history museum Naturalis.
  • My LARGE goal is to visit Terschelling, one of the Wadden Islands.

In publication...

  • My SMALL goal is  to finish all three of my outstanding book reviews, and to politely decline any further review requests in 2025, so I have time and energy to focus on other things.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to finish and submit at least two of my ongoing projects.
  • My LARGE goal is to cultivate a regular writing practice, with the goal of producing at least 500 words per week. With three two week breaks (one in March, one in July, and one in December), this will hopefully lead to forty-six weeks of writing and at least 23,000 new words.
2025 Books in Translation Reading Challenge

In reading...

  • My SMALL goal is to read Joanna Russ's The Female Man and Jane Gaskell's Strange Evil, two books which have been on my shelves for over a year.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to finish reading Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a project I began ten years ago.
  • My LARGE goal is to participate in the Books in Translation Reading Challenge. I had such fun with it last year! I also want to collect some of the adorable badges from the 2025 Fantasy/SF Badge Collection. I have a new reading challenge of my own, which I'm calling the Bancroft Prize Reading Challenge. Awarded annually by Columbia University, the prize is given to books on American history and/or diplomacy. Two of my favourite works of history I've read for fun have been by Bancroft-winning authors, so I'm setting myself the goal of reading a previous winner or the 2025 winner when it is announced in March or April.

In running...

  • My SMALL goal is to go for a long run (10+ miles) in a park where I've never been for a run before.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to complete one parkrun a month between January and August 2025.
  • My LARGE goal is to finish the Utrecht Marathon with a smile on my face and free from injury, in under five hours.

In teaching...

  • My SMALL goal is to complete and submit the reflective writing necessary for a University Teaching Qualification at Utrecht University.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to keep a reflective log about my teaching, recording what went well, what could be improved, and my ideas for future sessions.
  • My LARGE goal is to complete a pedagogical publication, growing out of my Professional Practice Fellowship research.
Line drawing of a graffito from Pompeii. Very excited to see it in person. [Source]

In traveling...

  • My SMALL goal is to visit the British Library exhibit Medieval Women: In Their Own Words.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to plan and take a trip to Pompeii and Herculaneum over my teaching spring break in March.
  • My LARGE goal is to attend Eurocon 2025.

In writing...

  • My SMALL goal is to participate in 1000 Words of Summer and the shorter versions that occur throughout the year.
  • My MEDIUM goal is to sign up for and take a writing class.
  • My LARGE goal is to read, reflect on, and engage the exercises in Ursula Le Guin's Steering the Craft.

I accidentally failed to save my intended version of this post, so this is a second, shorter draft. Trying not to take this as an omen for the year ahead. The original post ended with Emperor Gregor Vorbarra's immortal line "Let's see what happens," which I gingerly tack onto this version.

Previous New Years' Posts:  2021 2022 2023 2024

Wednesday, 1 January 2025

No wintry skies can harm

To the Nightingale
which the author heard sing on New Year's Day, 1792
 
Whence is it, that amaz'd I heard
    from yonder wither'd spray
This foremost morn of all the year
    The melody of May?
 
And why, since thousands would be proud
    of such a favour shewn
Am I selected from the crowd,
    To witness it alone?
 
Sing'st thou, sweet Philomel, to me
    For that I also long
Have pratis'd in the gorer like thee
Though not like thee in song?
 
Or sing'st thou rather under force
        Of some divine command,
Commision'd to presage a course
        Of happier days at hand?
 
Thrice welcome then! for many a long
    And joyless year have I
As thou today, put forth my song
    Beneath a wintry sky.
 
But thee no wintry skies can harm
who ony need'st to sing,
To make ev'n January charm,
    And ev'ry season Spring.
 
~William Cowper, in William Cowper: Selected Poems, edited by Nick Rhodes, p. 64.

Tuesday, 31 December 2024

What I Read and Watched in 2024

A happy and healthy New Year to you and yours! I hope you have had a joyful and wide-ranging year of reading, whatever that means in your particular circumstances.

For the past four years, I've kept a running list of books I've finished over the course of the year. Previous lists can find found at the following links:

In 2024 I read 82 books...

Out of all of those books, there are a few that particularly stood out to me, which I would enthusiastically encourage you to check out. Part of the fun of recommending books is the connection it can create with another reader, so if you do read or listen something below and enjoy it, I'd love to hear about it!

Books in bold were read as part of my 2024 reading challenges. Interestingly, my reading challenges led me to enjoy bigger, more challenging books this year, with the result that I read fewer books than I have since I began recording, but cannot think of a year I enjoyed my reading more.

My Recommendations 

  1. Lies of Locke Lamora!!! For the setting, the clothes, and the characterisation of twisty bastards who are supposed to be cleverer than anyone else. Lynch writes his characters' mistakes with such breathtaking believability. If you are a fan of Lymond, you want to meet Locke.
  2. Thornyhold by Mary Stewart. Instant addition to my list of comfort reads.
  3. Les Trois Mousquetaires, both parts. A costume drama the way costume dramas should be. Eva Green's performance as Milady is indelible.
  4. The essay "Food Slut" by Binyavanga Wainaina, which is some of the sharpest, funniest and enthusiastic writing about food I have ever read. 
  5. Augustus by John Williams is one of the most perfect works of historical fiction I have ever read. Yes, it sometimes reads like a nineteenth century epistolary novel rather than Roman letters. No, I utterly do not care, because the things it does with narrative time and character development are so unique and remarkable. None of the letters, except the second to last, are from Augustus himself--the emperor's character and motivations are developed entirely through the eyes of other people. Williams' command of structure--the letters and documents are not arranged in chronological order--and the intricacies of that structure, is just impossibly good. And like all amazing historical fiction, Williams builds on what's already there and uses the details of what we know about the past in new and fascinating ways.
  6. Literary Fiction: Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is a little black dress of a short novel--timeless, elegant, and accessible to a wide range of readers. Plotwise, it's about a friendship between an elderly woman and a young man who wants to be a writer. Thematically, it's about loneliness and old age. It's both funny and tragic, and the last two sentences are a sucker punch from which I have not yet recovered. I can think of no higher praise for it than to say that it is now on my list of books I would give as gifts. I also adored Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand, with its wildly playful language, and sharp, funny portrayal of a strong older widow seizing the opportunity to live life in her own terms, dragging her hapless family, used to thinking of her as helpless, in her forceful wake. These two books would be wonderful read as a pair, too.
  7. Books in translation: I read books originally written in Russian, Danish, Dutch, French, Swedish, Korean, Spanish, and Hindi. Each of them was remarkable in its own way, to the point where they will get their own post. It was particularly fun to read translated historical fiction, and I'd especially encourage other fans of the genre to check out the work of Zoe Oldenbourg and Hella Haase.

Reading


Fiction 


Anthologies and Short Stories (6)

  1. Driftglass by Samuel R. Delaney
  2. Queer Africa 2: New Stories, edited by Makhosazana Xaba and Karen Martin
  3. Furies, with an introduction by Sandi Toksvig
  4. Fellowship of the Stars: Nine Science Fiction Stories, edited by Terry Carr
  5. The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories by Nikolai Leskov, translated (from Russian), annotated, and introduced by Richard Pevear and Larisa Volokhonsky
  6. How to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina 

Children's Book and Young Adult (4)

  1. Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
  2. The Stolen Heir by Holly Black
  3. Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo
  4. The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner (reread)

Historical Fiction (10)

  1. The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett (reread)
  2. The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
  3. The Liars' Gospel by Naomi Alderman 
  4. The Emperor's Son by Vamba Sherif 
  5. The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken
  6. In a Dark Wood Wandering, Hella S. Haase, translated from Dutch by Lewis C. Kaplan, revised and edited by Anita Lewis 
  7. Augustus by John Williams 
  8. The Long Song by Andrea Levy    
  9.  The World is not Enough by Zoe Oldenbourg, translated from French by Willard R. Trask
  10. Land of Wooden Gods by Jan Fridegård, translated from Swedish by Robert E. Bjork

Literary Fiction (11)

  1. The Blazing World and Other Writings by Margaret Cavendish, edited by Kate Lilley
  2. Half a Lifelong Romance by Eileen Chang, translated from Chinese by Karen S. Kingsbury
  3. Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim 
  4. Evelina by Frances Burney 
  5. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
  6. Bright Air Black by David Vann
  7. Ogadinma, or Everything Will Be Alright by Ukamaka Olisakwe 
  8. Simpatía by Rodrigo  Blanco Calderón, translated from Spanish by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn
  9. Go As A River by Shelley Read
  10. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
  11. How to Read a Book by Monica Wood

Poetry (4)

  1. Fierce Fairytales and other stories to stir your soul by Nikita Gill
  2. Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake, with introduction and Commentary by Geoffrey Keynes
  3. The War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon, arranged and introduced by Rupert Hart-Davis 
  4. The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

Romance (5)

  1. Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn
  2. Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail by Ashley Herring Blake
  3. The Gentleman's Gambit by Evie Dunmore
  4. Wreck the Halls by Tessa Bailey
  5. The Long Game by Elena Armas

Science Fiction and Fantasy (26)

  1. Voyager by Diana Gabaldon (reread)
  2. Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon (reread)
  3. Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett 
  4. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
  5. The Snail on the Slope by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, translated from Russian by Olena Bormashenko
  6. The Wolf in the Whale by Jordanna Max Brodsky
  7. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
  8. The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker
  9. The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden
  10. The Testament of Loki by Joanne M. Harris
  11. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
  12. She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore
  13. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros 
  14. Winter Lost by Patricia Briggs
  15. Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
  16. Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
  17. Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
  18. Thornyhold by Mary Stewart
  19. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
  20. Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher
  21. A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen
  22. The Books of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, illustrated by Charles Vess
  23. Paladin's Strength by T. Kingfisher
  24. When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
  25. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
  26. The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden


Nonfiction 


Autobiography, Biography, and Memoir (3)

  1. The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me by Jon Katz 
  2. Woodsqueer: Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life by Gretchen Legle
  3.  Salt and Roses by May Davidson 

Cookbooks (10)

  1. Tava by Irina Georgescu
  2. Big Heart, Little Stove by Erin French
  3. A Splash of Soy by Lara Lee 
  4. Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi 
  5. Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds by Heidi Lui McKinnon
  6. My Vermont Table by Gesine Bullock-Prado
  7. Simply Chinese: Recipes from a Chinese Home Kitchen by Suzie Lee
  8. Zoë Bakes Cookies by Zoë François
  9. Fields of Greens: New Vegetarian Recipes from the Celebrated Greens Restaurant by Annie Somerville
  10. Lidia's a Pot, a Pan, a Bowl, and a Spoon by Lidia Bastianich and Tanya Bastianich Manuali 

History (3)

  1. The Bookshop of the World. Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen 
  2. Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh 
  3. Our Beloved Kin: a New History of King Philip's War by Lisa Brooks

Viewing and Listening

 

Movies

  1. Les Trois Mousquetaires : D'Artagnan (2023)
  2. Les Trois Mousquetaires : Milady (2023)
  3. Dune: Part One (2021)
  4. Dune: Part Two (2024)  
  5. Mr Malcolm's List (2022)
  6. Die Hard (1988)

Podcasts

  1. Nobody Asked Us with Des and Kara
  2. Ali on the Run

TV Shows

  1. Avatar the Last Airbender (2005-2008), seasons 1-3
  2. Stranger Things (2016-present), seasons 1-4
  3. Bridgerton (2020-present), season 3
  4. A Discovery of Witches (2018-2022), season 1
  5. Wheel of Time (2022-present), seasons 1-2

Youtube

  1. Vlogbrothers
  2. Todd in the Shadows
  3. Allie Ostrander

Thursday, 26 December 2024

#AHA Reads 2024: The Bookshop of the World by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen

One of my goals for the 2024 AHA Reads challenge was to read and blog about a co-authored history book. My choice was The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age, a history of the book trade in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen. As the publisher's page describes it:
The Dutch Golden Age has long been seen as the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, whose paintings captured the public imagination and came to represent the marvel that was the Dutch Republic. Yet there is another, largely overlooked marvel in the Dutch world of the seventeenth century: books.

In this fascinating account, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen show how the Dutch produced many more books than pictures and bought and owned more books per capita than any other part of Europe. Key innovations in marketing, book auctions, and newspaper advertising brought stability to a market where elsewhere publishers faced bankruptcy, and created a population uniquely well-informed and politically engaged. This book tells for the first time the remarkable story of the Dutch conquest of the European book world and shows the true extent to which these pious, prosperous, quarrelsome, and generous people were shaped by what they read.
In the first quarter of Utrecht's academic calendar, I co-taught my first book history course, which covered the development of the codex to the rise of print, and included several classes focused on digital techniques for studying book history. Reading this book was excellent preparation!

Not to say that it was easy, or light reading. Like many books published by Yale University Press, The Bookshop of the World is written by specialists, for specialists, while also being marketed to an interested general audience. Counting myself very much among those lay readers (to the best of memory, this was the first book on Dutch history I have ever read), I was fascinated by what I learned about the historical context in which the rise of the Dutch book trade took place. For instance, did you know that during a period of 132 years (1568 to 1700), the Dutch republic was at peace for only sixteen of them? (p. 5) The "rise of print," like many major historical developments, tends to get presented as an inevitability, but, as the authors point out, it wasn't: Europeans, from 1452 onward, had moveable type, but the printed book was not an instant success. As the authors put it (and I took care to emphasize to my students) "Print lacked a sustainable business model. Unsold copies piled up, and many of the first generation of printers, like Gutenberg, went bankrupt." (p. 28).
 
As someone working in a Dutch university, I also delighted at learning about the history of higher education in the Netherlands, as witnessed through their interactions with the book trade (printing copies of university dissertations was big business for Dutch printers). In the early modern period, the university at Leiden stood preeminent among Dutch universities; Utrecht, founded in 1634, became the second-most prestigious. The university at Harderwijk (which no longer exists) was reputed to be the easiest place to get one's higher degrees--it was claimed that the city's main products were "herring, blueberries and doctoral promotions" (p. 177). Pettegree and Weduwen ably balance between treating books as goods and service circulating within an increasingly complex economic network, and in drawing from their contents as primary sources. 
 
What did printers print?

Despite what the title of the book would lead one to think, a significant part of printers' business was not books at all. Official publications--pamphlets or broadsheets containing information about local market days or speculation about who would be pope were a backbone of the print trade (p. 15). Posters (for which printers were required to pay a tax) were also a huge part of printers' work now totally lost. Early newspapers are an important source for discovering the ephemera owned and bought by bourgeois readers: volumes such as almanacs, religious books in Dutch, self-help books, or mathematical books rarely survive, but were a key part of the printer's trade. Advertisements forthcoming titles in newspapers are the principle method of recovering these vanished books (p. 83). The importance of newspaper evidence is one that the authors return to multiple times (p. 383); such discoveries are made possible by the digitization of surviving newspapers. Indeed, the history and development of the newspaper is one of the book's most fascinating narrative threads. The early modern newspaper began as a single sheet, written in a highly formulaic style--far from the vehicle for breaking news we think of today! (p. 70). Another delightful bit of ephemera by which Dutch printers made their living was the wedding poem. In the seventeenth century, when Dutch people got married, a wedding poem in praise of the young couple was a key part of the ceremony. The happy couple might receive a poetry anthology as a gift, but they often also would also commission a poem, which would be presented to the guests as little booklets (p. 231-2). 
 
Wedding Poem Printed on Silk, Joannes Van den Eede, Batavia, 1674 [Source: White Rose Fine Art]
 
In addition to posters, newspapers, and wedding poems, Dutch printers also made their living printing a wide variety of books, ranging from the bestselling adventure stories summarizing the feats of Dutch explorers ("the sea could make anyone a hero," the authors note, mentioning in passing that many of these explorers came from humble social backgrounds); to Dutch translations of religious and other books originally written in English; to small format books of Roman authors; to manuals of navigation; to books in Oriental languages. Although Dutch printers engaged with many languages besides their own, this did not necessarily lead to appreciation of these languages; as the minister Johannes Ubelman delightfully remarked, English  is a language "botched together from all the languages of Europe" (p. 137).
 
Most fascinating for me are the letter writing manuals. In the early modern period, one of the barriers in the face of those seeking to climb the social ladder was learning the rules of correspondence. The popularity of these books is demonstrated by their incredibly frequent appearance in auction catalogues. Titles ranged from Jean Puget de la Serre's Secretaire à la mode, a collection of model letters, to Heyman Jacobi's Gemeyne Send-Brieven (1612) and many more besides (p. 385). 

Intriguingly, one area into which the all-encompassing reach of Dutch printers did not extend was books about scientific discoveries. According to the authors, communication about scientific discoveries largely bypassed print: scientists wrote to each other about their results, or they gave tours of their labs. Rather than printing new discoveries, Dutch printers preferred the more secure profits of publishing established scientific writers like William Harvey (p. 34).
 

Who bought printed books?

By early modern standards, I have a small book collection (and yet, I am still out of shelf space). Early modern scholars might own thousands of books, sometimes more than their local libraries (what a dream!) Auction records are a fascinating source, telling scholars not just what was sold, but who was buying. Thus, we know that Danish book collectors were particularly good customers of Dutch book auctions. The record also shows that ordinary men might also amass substantial libraries: a Dutch brewer in the 1680s had over a thousand books, a solider in the 1690s had 1500 (p. 3). Even ministers, who usually had very modest incomes, supplemented by a number of what we would now call side hustles, managed to build up their book collections. The authors leave the story of how such modest collections were built to be told by others. Their explanation "If you are always around books, books come your way. This is the art of collecting," (p. 296) leaves more questions than answers.

Superlative collectors stand out not just because they amassed more books than almost anyone else, but because there is in turn more evidence for their collections, due to their sheer size. Few collectors, were as prolific as the law professor Jacques Oisel, who owned approximately 14,000 volumes; preparing the posthumous auction catalogue took two years, and the sake of his collection was a national event (p. 292). For current and former librarians, who, like me, might be wondering how these prolific collectors organised their books, the authors refer us to the work of the seventeenth century French librarian Gabriel Naudé.

Libraries, at this stage of their history, were neither well-supported or well used, and were not among Dutch printer's star customers. An exception was the Utrecht municipal library. When founded in 1584, it had about five or six hundred volumes, the hardy (and lucky) survivors from the collections of the city's monastic monastic libraries, which had been plundered or destroyed during the civil wars between Dutch Catholics and Protestants. The library was house in the Janskerk and grew significantly by donations, rather than purchases. The first catalogue, printed in 1608, shows that the collection had grown to about 6,000 books (p. 308). Jacques Oisel would not have been impressed.

    The Bookshop of the World by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen

Who were the printers?

 
One of the most fascinating aspects of The Bookshop of the World was its focus on Dutch printing businesses as family businesses, many of which had histories spanning a few generations.  One printing family, the Elzeviers, who were infamous among their contemporaries for undercutting rivals (pp. 273-4; p. 408). (The infamous modern academic publisher, Elsevier, took their inspiration, name, and logo from this family, but have no direct connection to them.)
 
Women were actively involved in these businesses. Indeed, as the authors argue towards the conclusion of the book, they were central to family print businesses, part of a broader culture of female participation in business. Given that so many Dutch men during the early modern period worked at sea, many women managed households on their own. Scholars have calculated that approximately quarter of households were headed by women and many printing operations were too. 

I found the all-too-brief glimpses of women's stories absolutely fascinating. Early modern Dutch socetiy had high levels of literacy. The evidence for this shows up in some surprising places. There is a remarkable cache of Dutch letters, now in the National Archives at Kew after being seized by the Royal Navy: most of them are by women to family stationed in Curaçao and Batavia. The letters show that most women were literate, even if some relied on model letters to help them write. In one of these letters, a woman named Jannetje Jans writes that she was using a newspaper to teach her daughter how to read, a truly delightful example of the intersections between printing and literacy (p. 400-1).
 
My one substantial criticism of this book is that standard bugbear of book reviewers, that the writers didn't write the things I wanted to read--namely, more about the role of women in the Dutch book trade. There are so many fascinating stories choose from! Take, for example, Machteld van Wouw, who published the new States Bible, and fought a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful fight to enforce her monopoly on this translation (p. 128). Or Susanna Veseler, a Catholic married to a Protestant, Jan Jacobsz Schipper. (The seventeenth century Dutch Republic was not a time and place where interfaith marriage was common or easy.) Veseler survived her husband by thirty years and made her living printing devotional literature. When she died, she was an extremely wealthy woman (p. 344). One might also cite Abigail May, Mercy Arnold, and many others. Pettegree and Weduwen sum up the role of women in printing a bit retrogressively, writing, "These were on the whole tough, experience business women, prepared to strike a hard bargain, and not above a little rough practice to outmanoeuvre a rival. But they also brought a particular sensibility to the trade, not least the particular needs of female readers...Mothers understood the power of bedtime, and it was there that the piety and values of Dutch society were first inculcated" (p. 403). It makes me want to seek out scholarship specifically on early modern Dutch women--I'm unconvinced by the claim that printers like Susanna Veseler saw themselves as serving female readers first and foremost.
 
As a last word: historical novelists, please move on from writing about the Dutch Masters, and consider women printers as your subject. 

Beyond the Printshop

 
The history of the book trade involves a wide landscape of political, social and cultural history evoked by the printed word. This is perhaps where, as a reader unfamiliar with Dutch history, I lost the plot most often. The earliest chapters of The Bookshop of the World, which addressed the complex interactions of the print trade with conflicts between rival groups of Dutch Protestants, were hard going, although I did delight in learning the famous story of the jurist Hugo de Groot (Grotius), escaping what was supposed to be life in prison hidden in a book chest (p. 67).

At other points, the wider world beyond the print shop came to life. Consider the fact that the city of Amsterdam became a European center of Jewish printing and the home of the first Yiddish newspaper, a result of the city's large Jewish community, which was in turn a result of the expulsion of Sephardic Jewish communities from Spain and Portugal during the fifteenth century (p. 334).  Or the fact that selling printed materials was part of how Dutch schoolmasters supported themselves and their families--then as now, a teacher's had to supplement their salaries to make ends meet, and there are records of teachers offering private lessons, selling school supplies and calligraphic exemplars, and working as carpenters, glaziers, farmers, or even innkeepers (p. 161). Perhaps my favourite of all these stories, is that of the incredibly unlucky German botanist, Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, who worked for the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the Dutch East India Company, and wrote the Ambonese Herbal, an illustrated compendium of over a thousand plants from Ambon Island and its archipelago. Rumphius went blind over the course of writing the book,  his wife was killed by a tsunami, the plates of his nearly completed manuscript burned up in a fire, his dictated text sunk in a shipwreck, and then the (fortunately) copied text was then declared too sensitive for publication by directors of the VOC. It took fifty years for the book to be published at last (p. 352). 

Views from Outside 

 
The Bookshop of the World positions itself as recovering a forgotten history of Dutch prominence in printing (popularly forgotten, maybe; certainly well-remembered among scholars of early print!) Dutch printing, and printers, were famous their own day; as the London publisher Samuel Buckley commented,  "Great estates have been gained in Holland by reprinting books written in France, with which, as well as with the classics, and other books of literature, the Dutch have for many years largely supplied England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as Germany, and the Northern part of Europe." (p. 395) Dutch preeminence in the print trade did not last, but the books, newspapers, and other materials they printed, provide a window into this fascinating lost world.

Saturday, 21 December 2024

Great welcome to the snow

Snowy Night

Last night, an owl
in the blue dark
tossed an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something,
and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever is knowable – would have hurried
over the fields
to name it – the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world,
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.

~ Mary Oliver (source: a poem a day)

Wednesday, 18 December 2024

Every day took to the ladders again

Cathedral Builders

They climbed on sketchy ladders towards God,
With winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven,
Inhabited the sky with hammers, defied gravity,
Deified stone, took up God's house to meet him,

And came down to their suppers and small beer,
Every night slept, lay with their smelly wives,
Quarrelled and cuffed the children, lied,
Spat, sang, were happy, or unhappy, 

Lincoln Cathedral, 7 July 2024
And every day took to the ladders again;
Impeded the rights of way of another summer's
Swallows, grew greyer, shakier, became less inclined
To fix a neighbour's roof of a fine evening,

Saw naves sprout arches, clerestories soar,
Cursed the loud fancy glaziers for their luck,
Somehow escaped the plague, got rheumatism,
Decided it was time to give it up, 

Utrecht, Domtoren, 9 December 2024

To leave the spire to others, stood in the crowd,
Well back from the vestments at the consecration,
Envied the fat bishop his warm boots,
Cocked a squint eye aloft, and said, 'I bloody did that.'

~ John Ormond, anthologiszed in Good poems, ed. by Garrison Keillor (New York, 2003), p. 356. An A-level study guide for the poem.

Saturday, 30 November 2024

See you in Leeds!

The Leeds International Medieval Congress, or IMC, is one of the largest medieval studies conferences in the world, welcoming close to 3,000 medievalists to the city of Leeds for four intensive days of scholarship, networking, and conversation. The announcement of paper acceptances for 2025 includes a cute digital postcard. The full program is forthcoming early next year.

postcard with three photographs of medieval reenactors in armor and the text "I have been accepted for the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2025" against a red background
#IMC2025 Postcard
From 2025, the UK has introduced an electronic travel authorization, which costs £10 and lasts two years. For many it will be a new addition to the substantial costs of attending a multi-day international conference. If you are in a position to contribute, consider donating to the IMC Bursary Fund. The fund offers full or partial coverage of registration fees, food, and accommodation to students, independent scholars, pensioners, unwaged scholars, and delegates from outside Western Europe.

Each year, I look forward to the IMC as an opportunity to learn from some of the latest work in the field and meet up with colleagues and friends old and new. Hope to see you there!