Call for papers--Oxford Companion to the Book

Call for Contributors
Oxford Companion to the Book

Work has begun on The Oxford Companion to the Book, a one-volume
global encyclopedia of book history, scheduled for publication in
September 2005. The General Editor is Jonathan Rose, with Michael
Suarez serving as Consulting Editor.  The volume will cover the
following broad subject areas:

    1.  Genres of Books: e.g., cookbooks, confession books,
        commonplace books, dictionaries, medical books, atlases.

    2.  The Physical Book: e.g., scroll and codex, paper and other
        surfaces, bindings, furniture, ink, type, typography,
        design, illustration.

    3.  Authorship: General essays on the history, sociology,
        economics, organization, and theory of authorship.

    4.  Reproduction: e.g., scribes, printers, printing technology,
        lithography, typesetting, mimeograph, xerography, desktop
        publishing, the electronic book.

    5.  Publishing: Publishers, imprints, patrons, literary agents,
        publishers' readers.

    6.  Property: Copyright and other forms of literary property,
        such as royal privileges.

    7.  Distribution and Sales: e.g., booksellers (retail and
        wholesale), colporteurs, postal systems, book clubs.

    8.  Preservation: e.g., libraries and librarians, archives and
        archivists, preservation techniques, classification and
        cataloguing, private book collecting.

    9.  Suppression: Censorship, bookburning, surveillance,
        pornography.

    10. Scholarship: e.g., bibliography, editing, teaching and
        historiography of literature, translation.

    11. Reading: e.g., literacy, literary critics and criticism,
        reading habits, reception studies, literary prizes.

    12. Case Studies: Of course it will be impossible to include
        entries on all the world's major authors and titles, but The
        Oxford Companion to the Book will selectively cover books
        with particularly important publishing and reception
        histories.  The entry on William Shakespeare, for example,
        will deal not with his plays in performance, but with their
        publication, editing, critical reception, and scholarly
        treatment.  Other likely candidates include the Dead Sea
        Scrolls, the Book of Kells, Beowulf, The Tale of Genji, The
        Canterbury Tales, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Don Quixote,
        Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Diderot's Encyclopedia,
        Uncle Tom's Cabin, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Das
        Kapital, Mein Kampf, How to Win Friends and Influence
        People, Animal Farm, The Second Sex, Silent Spring, and the
        holy books of all the world's major religions.

    13. National Histories: Concise surveys of the book histories of
        all the nations and regions of the world.

Prospective contributors should send a short c.v. and a list of
areas of expertise to

    Jonathan Rose
    Department of History
    Drew University
    Madison NJ 07940, USA
    jerose [at] drew__edu

The editors also welcome (1) suggestions for entries that might
otherwise be overlooked and (2) any bibliographies that will help in
covering the entire literature of book history.


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