Enfilade

The volume focuses on materials produced before 1700, though the final essay addresses 18th-century trade cards. From Routledge:

Callan Davies, Hannah Lilley, and Catherine Richardson, eds., Practices of Ephemera in Early Modern England (New York: Routledge, 2023), 252 pages, ISBN: 978-0367528362 (hardback), $160 / ISBN: 978-1003058588 (ebook), $40.

This collection is the first to historicise the term ephemera and its meanings for early modern England and considers its relationship to time, matter, and place. It asks: how do we conceive of ephemera in a period before it was routinely employed (from the eighteenth century) to describe ostensibly disposable print? In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—when objects and texts were rapidly proliferating—the term began to acquire its modern association with transitoriness. But contributors to this volume show how ephemera was also integrally related to wider social and cultural ecosystems. Chapters explore those ecosystems and think about the papers and artefacts that shaped homes, streets, and cities or towns and their attendant preservation, loss, or transformation. The studies here therefore look beyond static records to think about moments of process and transmutation and accordingly get closer to early modern experiences, identities, and practices.

c o n t e n t s

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Biographies

1  Introduction: Spawning

Concepts/ Emerging
2  Megan Heffernan — Expired Time: Archiving Waste Manuscripts
3  Anna Reynolds — What Do Texts and Insects Have in Common?; or, Ephemerality before Ephemera
3  Bruce Boehrer — Time’s Flies: Ephemerality in the Early Modern Insect World
4  Robert Bearman — What Is an ‘Ephemeral Archive’? Stratford-upon-Avon, 1550–1650: A Case Study
5  Alison Wiggins — Paper and Elite Ephemerality

Matter / Metamorphosing
6  Elaine Leong — Recipes and Paper Knowledge
7  Katherine Hunt — More Lasting than Bronze: Statues, Writing, and the Materials of Ephemera in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall
8  Hannah Lilley — Uncovering Ephemeral Practice: Itineraries of Black Ink and the Experiments of Thomas Davis
9  Helen Smith — Things That Last: Ephemerality and Endurance in Early Modern England

Environments / Buzzing
10  Michael Lewis — Toy Coach from London
11  Jemima Matthews — Maritime Ephemera in Walter Mountfort’s The Launching of the Mary
12  Callan Davies — Playing Apples and the Playhouse Archive
13  William Tullet — Extensive Ephemera: Perfumer’s Trade Cards in Eighteenth-Century England

From Thames & Hudson:

Julius Bryant, ed., The Art of the Illustrated Book: History and Design (London: Thames & Hudson, 2022), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-0500480694, £45 / $60.

This is the story of the illustrated book, from the earliest printed examples to the present day, told through the collections of the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London—a library that was created to bring together examples of superlative book-making on almost every subject. Gathered here are some of the most influential, compelling and striking examples of the illustrated book, arranged thematically in chapters devoted to subjects such as art, literature, religion, architecture, natural history, fashion, and shopping. Brimming with innovative and beautiful examples, ranging from well-known titles, such as Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament and James Audubon’s Birds of America, to other wonderful but less familiar publications, this collection offers a fascinating overview of some of the finest illustrated books ever created—demonstrating their enduring appeal.

Julius Bryant is the Emeritus Keeper of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction
1  Religion
2  Natural History
3  Travel
4  Fables & Folk Tales
5  Literature
6  Art Making
7  Art History
8  Architecture
9  Ornament and Pattern
10  Festivals
11  World Fairs
12  Fashion
13  Shopping

Now available in paperback from Yale UP:

Margaret Willes, In the Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral: The Churchyard that Shaped London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-0300249835 (hardcover), $35 / ISBN: 978-0300273380 (paperback), $17.

The extraordinary story of St. Paul’s Churchyard—the area of London that was a center of social and intellectual life for more than a millennium

St. Paul’s Cathedral stands at the heart of London, an enduring symbol of the city. Less well known is the neighborhood at its base that hummed with life for over a thousand years, becoming a theater for debate and protest, knowledge, and gossip. For the first time Margaret Willes tells the full story of the area. She explores the dramatic religious debates at Paul’s Cross, the bookshops where Shakespeare came in search of inspiration, and the theater where boy actors performed plays by leading dramatists. After the Great Fire of 1666, the Churchyard became the center of the English literary world, its bookshops nestling among establishments offering luxury goods. This remarkable community came to an abrupt end with the Blitz. First the soaring spire of Old St. Paul’s and then Wren’s splendid Baroque dome had dominated the area, but now the vibrant secular society that had lived in their shadow was no more.

Margaret Willes, formerly publisher at the National Trust, is author of several books, including The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, Reading Matters, and The Gardens of the British Working Class. She lives in London.