John Baskerville: art and industry of the Enlightenment
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_B2002
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Liverpool University Press
- ISBN
- 9781786940643
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
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- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The researcher conceived, crafted, co-edited and contributed a chapter and introduction to <John Baskerville: art and industry in the Enlightenment>, a volume of eleven essays exploring the life and work of the famous Birmingham printer. The volume emerged from the 2013 Baskerville Society Conference and is part of LUP’s ‘Eighteenth-Century Worlds’ a peer-reviewed series promoting innovative research from a variety of historical, theoretical and critical perspectives.
Long-recognized as a central figure within printing history, the volume sheds new light on Baskerville the polymath, focusing on unexplored details of his life, contributions to fields beyond printing, and his relationship with the broader technologies and ideas of the Enlightenment. It rescues Baskerville from the eulogistic approach of earlier historians, placing him in the hands of social and cultural historians, as well as typographic historians, thereby locating him within a wider context. The volume is methodologically, historiographically and bibliographically diverse, and rich with primary material. Part biography, part study in reception and reputation, and part history of Birmingham, the book fills gaps in extant knowledge of Baskerville, creating a crucial reference point for future work and demonstrating his importance as a figure worthy of further study.
The researcher’s own chapter, ‘The Cambridge Cult of the Baskerville Press’, draws on primary and secondary historical and bibliographical sources and considers the Cambridge-based Baskerville Club whose members were avid collectors of Baskerville’s books. It explores the degree to which the Club’s bibliographical research spearheaded the twentieth-century revival of interest in Baskerville; its role in laying the foundations for subsequent scholarly Baskerville activity; and the extent to which it influenced the development of bibliographical studies. It concludes with a comparative chart of five earlier Baskerville bibliographies, which indicate the level of complexity attached to describing Baskerville’s books, and which will be of particular help to future researchers.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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