SHARP News
banner
sharpnews.bsky.social
SHARP News
@sharpnews.bsky.social
An open-access publication of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (@sharpweb.org).

Read Bookish Feature Articles, Book Reviews, Pedagogical Materials, and Bibliographies here: https://sharpweb.org/sharpnews
Pinned
🌟 Deadline to apply to be the next SHARP NEWS Editor in Chief has been extended!

👉 Apply by November 28, 2025!

Details here:

sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#BookHistory #Editor #OnlinePublishing #EditorOpportunity #Academic #SHARP #Bookishness #BookCommunity
Reposted by SHARP News
Booking is now open for Making Medieval Manuscripts! A practice-based course where we make ink, cut quills, illuminate, make pigments and bookbind, using #medieval techniques and materials. We also explore early medieval art. No experience necessary! #bookhistory ies.sas.ac.uk/study-traini...
Introduction to Making Medieval Manuscripts (Practice Based)
This course introduces students to the complicated and messy processes of production through which pre-modern manuscripts were created
ies.sas.ac.uk
December 3, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Reposted by SHARP News
V for Vendetta! Looks like this example of #scanninghands is calling for a revolution...
October 20, 2025 at 6:18 AM
Reposted by SHARP News
Say hi. This is an example of how human labor will be remembered when all books are digitized and we all work with digital copies only. And maybe, hand on heart, this hand was intentionally raised to greet us from the past. #skystorians #bookhistory #digitalhumanities
March 21, 2025 at 7:10 AM
Reposted by SHARP News
Don't miss! 🌿 Pocket Books and Floating Libraries: Books as Collecting Tools in Instructions to Travelers. Anna Svensson will discuss how books haven’t just described the natural world, they’ve also helped collect it. Wed. 10 Dec, 15:00–16:00 CET Zoom link, email: instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se
December 8, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted by SHARP News
*small embarrassed voice*
A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s.
doi.org/10.1093/libr...
A Provincial Market in Second-Hand Books: Book Sales in Devon, 1688–1725
Abstract. Comparatively little is known about England’s early book-auction trade outside of London and the university towns, with few catalogues surviving
doi.org
November 27, 2025 at 11:44 AM
Reposted by SHARP News
Typographica Scoto-Gadelica: Scottish Gaelic Typographic Visual Identity through Print & Book Culture
3 Dec @sabhalmorostaig.bsky.social & online – free

Exploring Scottish Gaelic’s contemporary visual identity & typographic heritage
#BookHistory #typography #Gaelic
www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/edwin-pickst...
Edwin Pickstone - Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
Edwin Pickstone lives and works in Glasgow. Focusing on the material nature of print Pickstone uses letterpress technology, collaborating with artists and
www.smo.uhi.ac.uk
November 27, 2025 at 12:39 PM
❤️
It has been a pleasure and an honor to be SHARP bibliographer the last 3 years, and I’m looking forward to seeing what @juliaboechat.bsky.social and Shu do for the next 3!
Announcing: The SHARP News Bibliography Team

We are delighted to welcome Julie Boechat Machado and Shu Wan as our incoming collaborative team of Bibliographers.

Thank you to our outgoing Bibliographer @bibliowingate.bsky.social for everything.

#BookHistory #Bibliography @sharpweb.org
November 28, 2025 at 12:19 AM
Reposted by SHARP News
It has been a pleasure and an honor to be SHARP bibliographer the last 3 years, and I’m looking forward to seeing what @juliaboechat.bsky.social and Shu do for the next 3!
Announcing: The SHARP News Bibliography Team

We are delighted to welcome Julie Boechat Machado and Shu Wan as our incoming collaborative team of Bibliographers.

Thank you to our outgoing Bibliographer @bibliowingate.bsky.social for everything.

#BookHistory #Bibliography @sharpweb.org
November 27, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Deadline to apply to be the next SHARP News Editor in Chief is fast approaching. As in, it's tomorrow, November 28!!

Application details here: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#BookHistory #Editor #Academic #OnlinePublishing
a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application
Alt: A penguin (from the movie Madagascar) is sticking his head out of a hole in a box, tapping a sign that says "job application."
media.tenor.com
November 27, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Announcing: The SHARP News Bibliography Team

We are delighted to welcome Julie Boechat Machado and Shu Wan as our incoming collaborative team of Bibliographers.

Thank you to our outgoing Bibliographer @bibliowingate.bsky.social for everything.

#BookHistory #Bibliography @sharpweb.org
November 27, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by SHARP News
Scotland’s Gutenberg: William Ged & the Invention of Stereotype Printing, 1725–49

Dr William Zachs hypothesises the existence of a group of previously unknown stereotyped books, thus offering a revised history of book production in #C18th Britain
#BookHistory
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMcE...
Scotland’s Gutenberg: William Ged and the Invention of Stereotype Printing, 1725–49
YouTube video by UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies
www.youtube.com
November 26, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Have you recently published a book history, publishing, or otherwise bookish book and want to have it reviewed?

Consider SHARP News!

Submit your book to be considered for review in SHARP News at this link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

#BookHistory #BookReview
Suggest a Book for Review in SHARP News
If there's a book you think should be reviewed in SHARP News, please provide the details below.
docs.google.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by SHARP News
Another fabulous book from the recent #NewAcq: a spectacular #earlymodern Flemish panel stamped #binding! This is a monochrome embossed image, so difficult to photograph, but trust me! 📚💙 📜
November 25, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Want to review a book for SHARP News?

Check out the updated list of books to review: docs.google.com/document/u/0...

#BookHistory #BookReview
SHARP News - Books Available for Review
SHARP News Books Available for Review To express interest in writing a review, please read the book review guidelines and contact coeditors Jolie Braun and Madeline Zehnder at reviews@sharpweb.or...
docs.google.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by SHARP News
Read Gillian Silverman's "Reading in the Flesh: Anthropodermic Bibliopegy and the Haptic Response" from the Fall 2021 issue of Book History

Available at @projectmuse.bsky.social

muse.jhu.edu/article/839033

@sharpnews.bsky.social
November 24, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by SHARP News
If you're interested in writing a book review for SHARP News @sharpnews.bsky.social, a new batch of available books is now live! docs.google.com/document/d/1.... & if there's something you'd like to review that's not on this list, feel free to contact me.
SHARP News - Books Available for Review
SHARP News Books Available for Review To express interest in writing a review, please read the book review guidelines and contact coeditors Jolie Braun and Madeline Zehnder at reviews@sharpweb.or...
docs.google.com
November 24, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Reposted by SHARP News
New batch of book reviews up at SHARP News @sharpnews.bsky.social! Topics covered include the early modern European book trade, writing in Hindi, women in publishing, notebooks, Shakespeare folios, & the Yiddish press: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/.
November 19, 2025 at 2:01 PM
📚 New Book Review!

Ruth-Ellen St. Onge reviews:

Publishers, Censors and Collectors in the European Book Trade, 1650-1750, edited by Ann-Marie Hansen and Arthur der Weduwen (Brill, 2024).

Read it here: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#BookHistory #Publishing #Enlightenment #BookTrade #Europe
November 20, 2025 at 4:50 PM
📚 New Book Review!

Sonal Acharya reviews:

Tyler W. Williams's If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi Columbia University Press, 2024).

Read it here: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#BookHistory #Writing #Hindi #IndianBookHistory #Manuscript
November 20, 2025 at 4:47 PM
📚 New Book Review!

Ellen Barth reviews:

The Edinburgh Companion to Women in Publishing, 1900-2020, edited by Nicola Wilson et al. (Edinburgh University Press, 2024).

Read it here: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#BookHistory #Publishing #WomeninPublishing #WomeninPrint #FeministBookHistory
November 20, 2025 at 4:45 PM
📚 New Book Review!

Corinna Norrick-Rühl reviews:

Roland Allen's The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (Profile Books, 2024).

Read it here: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#BookHistory #Notebooks #Stationery #journaling #MaterialCulture
November 20, 2025 at 4:43 PM
📚 New Book Review!

Lindsey L. Jones reviews:

The Four Shakespeare Folios, 1623-2023: Copy, Print, Paper, Type, edited by Samuel V. Lemley (Penn State University Press, 2024).

Read it here: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#BookHistory #Shakespeare #PrintHistory #PublishingHistory #Folios
November 20, 2025 at 4:41 PM
📚 New Book Review!

Lindsay Katzir reviews:

Shelby Shapiro's Words to the Wives: The Yiddish Press, Immigrant Women, and Jewish-American Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#BookHistory #YiddishPublishing #WomenPrintHistory #Publishing
November 20, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by SHARP News
Also, we had the terrific Reid Byers come up and talk to us yesterday about his imaginary books as a form of reading what you can't actually read. Maine is really a very good place for to be doing bookish things www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
The Best Fake Books—Made Real
At the Grolier Club, in midtown, a collection of imaginary volumes—the play within “Hamlet,” Hemingway’s lost first novel—are bound, scuffed, and shelved.
www.newyorker.com
November 18, 2025 at 1:12 PM
🌟 Deadline to apply to be the next SHARP NEWS Editor in Chief has been extended!

👉 Apply by November 28, 2025!

Details here:

sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#BookHistory #Editor #OnlinePublishing #EditorOpportunity #Academic #SHARP #Bookishness #BookCommunity
November 18, 2025 at 2:14 PM