This new book series provides a forum for studies that consider the material forms of texts as part of an investigation into early modern culture. The editors invite proposals of a multi- or interdisciplinary nature, and particularly welcome proposals that combine archival research with an attention to the theoretical models that might illuminate the reading, writing, and making of texts, as well as projects that take innovative approaches to the study of material texts, both in terms the kinds of primary materials under investigation, and in terms of methodologies. What are the questions that have yet be to asked about writing in its various possible embodied forms? Are there varieties of materiality that are critically neglected? How does form mediate and negotiate content? In what ways do the physical features of texts inform how they are read, interpreted and situated?
Consideration will be given to both monographs and collections of essays. The range of topics covered in this series includes, but is not limited to:
• History of the book, publishing, the book trade, printing, typography (layout, type, typeface, blank/white space, paratextual apparatus)
• Technologies of the written word: ink, paper, watermarks, pens, presses
• Surprising or neglected material forms of writing
• Print culture
• Manuscript studies
• Social space, context, location of writing
• Social signs, cues, codes imbued within the material forms of texts
• Ownership and the social practices of reading: marginalia, libraries, environments of reading and reception
• Codicology, palaeography and critical bibliography
• Production, transmission, distribution and circulation
• Archiving and the archaeology of knowledge
• Orality and oral culture
• The material text as object or thing
Proposals should take the form of either
1) a preliminary letter of inquiry, briefly describing the project; or
2) a formal prospectus including: abstract, brief statement of your critical methodology, table of contents, sample chapter, estimate of length, estimate of the number and type of illustrations to be included, and a c.v.
Please send a copy of either type of proposal to each of the two series editors and to the publisher:
Dr James Daybell, james.daybell@plymouth.ac.uk;
Dr Adam Smyth, adam.smyth@bbk.ac.uk;
Erika Gaffney, Publisher, egaffney@ashgate.com
