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For the past ten years, the Murty Classical Library of India (published by Harvard University Press) has sought to do for classic Indian works what the famous Loeb Classical Library has done for Ancient Greek and Roman texts. In this episode, Jacke talks to editorial director Sharmila Sen about the joys and challenges of sifting through thousands of years of Indic works and bringing literary treasures to the general public, as well as a new book, Ten Indian Classics, which highlights ten of the fifty works published in the collection so far. PLUS bookmaker and book historian Adam Smyth (The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives) discusses his choice for the last book he will ever read. Additional listening: 613 Celebrating the Book-Makers (with Adam Smyth) 381 C. Subramania Bharati (with Mira T. Sundara Rajan) 552 Writing after Rushdie (with Shilpi Suneja) The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Send us a textWhen we think of history of books, we often neglect the people who created them. We think of history as a figment of facts, connected together by time and advances in technology. But sometimes we overlook the humanity, the souls, the finger prints in the ink-stained margins of long-forgotten tomes. In this episode, I sit down with Oxford's Prof. Adam Smyth to discuss his The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives. How a book was made tells us about the people who created it, as well as what the culture valued about books. The way a book was formed changes how we interact with it. Topics:Humanizing the history of the book - the forgotten lives of the book-makersThe book - a blend of prose and productionHow culture influenced the design of booksHow hand-printing influences your view of writingDo you think the abstract nature and accessibility of text have changed how we view it?"What books have had an impact on you?""What advice do you have for teenagers?Bio:Adam Smyth is professor of English literature and the history of the book at Balliol College, University of Oxford. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the TLS. He also runs the 39 Steps Press, a small printing press, which he keeps in a barn in Oxfordshire, England. Affiliate book links: (Support the show by buying through these links :D)The Book-Maker: A History of the Book in Eighteen LivesBooks of impact: Short stories of BorgesSocials -Lessons from Interesting People substack: https://taylorbledsoe.substack.com/Website: https://www.aimingforthemoon.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aiming4moon/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Aiming4Moon
Medieval manuscripts are so wondrously beautiful they deserve comparison with the world's finest works of art. But what lay behind the book's production? We might think of rows of monks, patiently toiling away in a hushed chamber - but that would be to ignore the actual conditions of book production. Sara Charles (The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages) takes Jacke into the dirty, smelly, boring, and back-breaking world of an actual medieval scriptorium. PLUS Dante scholar Elizabeth Coggeshall (On Amistà: Negotiating Friendship in Dante's Italy) stops by to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read. Additional listening suggestions: 589 Dante and Friendship (with Elizabeth Coggeshall) 613 Celebrating the Book-Makers (with Adam Smyth) 569 The Man with a Passion for Medieval Manuscripts (with Christopher de Hamel) The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Even in our increasingly digitized world, the print book endures as a technology at the heart of human culture. Throughout its 550-yearhistory, the book has transformed at the hands of countless printers, bookbinders, typographers, and illustrators who have yet to see their own stories of innovation on the printed page.In “The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives,” today's guest Adam Smyth demonstrates the role of human agency in the evolution of technology, from binding to paper-making, typography to illustrations, and libraries to small presses. Beginning with the early printed books made by Dutch immigrant Wynkyn de Worde in 1490s London and ending with the zines in 2023 New York City, we look at the evolution of the print book through eighteen biographical portraits of bookbinders, typographers, illustrators, and more.
Books are beloved objects, earning lots of praise as amazing pieces of technology and essential contributors to a civilized society. And yet, we often take these cultural miracles for granted. Who's been making these things for the last several centuries? How have they influenced what we've been reading? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Adam Smyth, an Oxford professor of literature who opened up his own small press, about his new work The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives. Then medieval manuscript expert Christopher de Hamel (The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today I sit down with historian, Adam Smyth, and we discuss his latest book: The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives.Books tell all kinds of stories—romances, tragedies, comedies—but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture's most important object, the book, through dynamic portraits of eighteen individuals who helped to define it.Books have transformed humankind by enabling authors to create, document, and entertain. Yet we know little about the individuals who brought these fascinating objects into existence and of those who first experimented in the art of printing, design, and binding. Who were the renegade book-makers who changed the course of history?From Wynkyn de Worde's printing of fifteenth-century bestsellers to Nancy Cunard's avant-garde pamphlets produced on her small press in Normandy, this is a celebration of the book with the people put back in.Buy the book HERE. Support the show HERE.
Historically Thinking: Conversations about historical knowledge and how we achieve it
Books have been made for over 530 years. That is, they have been created from raw materials– sometimes lovingly, sometimes not–printed, bound, and sold, only then to be read. When we think only of what is written in books, we ignore much of the history of the book. So ubiquitous is the book, so commonplace is the book, that we often neglect it both as a brilliant technology; the product of multiple technologies; and as an art. My guest has written the story of how books have been made over that long half millennium by focusing on the individuals who have created the different aspects of the book that we now take for granted. It is a history of the physical printed book for a world that is increasing online–but a word which, curiously enough, the sale of ebooks is down, and that of printed books is up. Adam Smyth is Professor of English literature and the history of the book at Balliol College in the University of Oxford. He is also one of the members of 39 Steps Press, “a small and unusual printing collective” that is housed in an old stables in Elsfield, Oxfordshire. His most recent book is The Book Makers: A History of the Book in 18 Lives, which is the subject of our conversation today. For Further Investigation Previous conversations that relates to this one are: Episode 251, with Tom Misa, in which he discussed printing as beginning as a "courtly technology"; Episode 271, with Martin Clagget, in which among other things we discussed the marvelous place that Birmingham was in the eighteenth century An introduction to Baskerville's typographical art, with fine examples of the uppercase Q and the lower-case g, presented by A Type Supreme, a website that proclaims itself to be "a love letter to typography". Of course you can get a poster of the Baskerville Q, and I must say that I'm tempted. And Zuzana Licko's beautiful creation, Mrs Eaves Here is Sonnet 126, as printed by 39 Steps Press. Another guest, Kelsey Jackson-Williams who featured in Episode 162, has also experimented with printing. He's a member of the Pathfoot Press at the University of Stirling.
Adam Smyth loves books - as well as being a Professor of English Literature he runs an experimental printing press from a cold barn in Oxfordshire. Who better then to tell us about the quirky pioneers of print, the subject of his new publication The Book-Makers? In this programme he takes us to 1490s London to tell the story of Wynken de Worde, a Dutch immigrant who came to work at William Caxton's press, the very first printing enterprise in England. A canny businessman, de Worde set about making all things printed into Early Modern must-haves.At the same time as books and printing took hold in England, a network of communications grew across Early Modern Europe. Dr Esther van Raamsdonk is an expert in Anglo-Dutch relations and the people, goods and ideas that moved back and forth across the North Sea at the time. We will learn how myriad changes they brought continue to shape our society and also about the many cheese-based jokes published about the low countries when relations soured.And Dr Elise Watson researches books and early modern Catholicism. She has stories to tell about crafty Dutch Catholic lay sisters running bookshops, establishing schools and outselling the guilds in Amsterdam with their book stalls and door-to-door peddling. What sort of influence did they have on Early Modern England?Producer in Salford: Olive Clancy
Novelist Jonathan Coe joins book historians Roland Allen, Prof Lesley Smith and Dr Gill Partington and presenter Lisa Mullen. As Radio 3's Late Junction devotes episodes this September to the cassette tape and the particular sound and way of recording and assembling music which that technology provided, we look at writing. At a time when there's a lot of chat about AI and chatbots creating writing, what does it mean to write on a page of paper which is then printed and assembled into a book. The author Jonathan Coe's many books include The Rotter's Club, What a Carve Up! Mr Wilder and Me and his latest Bournville is now out in paperback Roland Allen has worked in publishing and has now written The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper Gill Partington (with Simon Morris and Adam Smyth) is one of the founding editors of Inscription: Journal of Material Text, which brings together artists, book historians, and academic theorists. After editions looking at beginnings, holes and folds, the new issue coming soon looks at touch. Lesley Smith is Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Harris Manchester College, Oxford and has chosen a selection of handwritten documents from the collections of the Bodleian Library published as Handwritten: Remarkable People on the Page. Producer: Ruth Watts
What is queer bibliography? How does it intersect with other critical bibliographies, (feminist, Black and liberation bibliography)? How does it relate to traditional bibliographic practice? What opportunities might queer methods and approaches provide? Following the inaugural symposium Queer Bibliography: Tools, Methods, Practices and Approaches in early February 2023 at the Institute of English Studies, hear Sarah Pyke and JD Sargan discuss this emerging subfield with Adam Smyth. Organised by Oxford Bibliographical Society. Speakers, Sarah Pyke (Institute of English Studies, London), and JD Sargan (University of Limerick). Chaired by Adam Smyth (Oxford University).
-Playing for Brian Kilrea and the first class Ottawa 67's and becoming a force -Loving coaching the kids and the joy of watching them improve -Trouble follows him and he had some dust ups on his way to 2,229 pro pims -Mucking it up with the Shallow Lake Crushers and the Barn Cat -Missing the game and going to work or playing hockey
From paper bullets to Tibetan rituals, early printing presses to present day recycling: Laurence Scott explores the cultural and social history of paper, from the Chinese Han Dynasty in 105 AD to the 20th-century workplace. His guests are: Adam Smyth, a Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at the University of Oxford. His books include Material Texts in Early Modern England; Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary (co-edited with Dennis Duncan) and Book Parts: A collection of essays on the history of parts of a book; Therese Weber, an artist who has made paintings out of pulp, paper tearing and dipping and is the author of The Language of Paper: A History of 2000 Years; Nicholas Basbanes, a writer and journalist, whose books include On Paper: The Everything of its Two Thousand Year History and Emily Cockayne, an Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia and author of Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go. Laurence Scott is the author of books about digital life including The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic Comma Lightning. How did such a mundane substance revolutionise modern warfare, enable Imperialism and transform art? Can there ever be a blank page? Is recycling the answer to waste? The conversation ranges across the relationship between paper and religious history in the printing of the Quran and Tibetan rituals for the dead; to C17 Swedish paper bullets; Dickens' Bleak House - in which a pile of paper leads to a fatal fire; the Bristol company who specialised in papier-mâché – a material used for elaborate decorations in C18 homes – and then used by artists like Jean Dubuffet in the 1940s and 50s and a scrap of paper, which survived 9/11 and told a widow, about her husband's final moments. Producer: Jayne Egerton
Luke doesn't make a big deal of it, but passages like this one in Acts 14 remind us that ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit was part and parcel of how Paul worked. We see Paul and Barnabas heal a leper… but things take a very strange turn from there. The crowd assume they are Greek gods, in human form. The apostles' response gives us an interesting insight into how healing ministry fits into their way of operating. They are quick to point out it's not their power—it's God's. Rather than lean into their success—from a worldly perspective—they use it as a chance to share the good news about Jesus. For them, the proclamation and demonstration of the Kingdom of God go hand in hand. Unfortunately, some Jews get involved, and it doesn't go well for Paul and Barnabas. They survive the experience, and extraordinarily, go back into the city that left them for dead, before moving on. But back to the topic at hand… what does this passage tell us about the way Paul ministered in the spirit?
What is the prophetic and why should we be interested? Adam introduces our new series, 'Hearing From God', with a biblical overview of the prophetic and a beginners guide to giving it a go.
The word ‘beginning' in Mark 1:1 implies an ending, but this gospel has no proper ending. It is good news beginning in the life of Jesus but which continues to unfold in the lives of those who come to share in his identity through belief in him to this very day. Some scholars think that Mark did write an ending, but that the last page of his Gospel was lost. While this is possible, it seems more likely that Mark intended to end his Gospel this way. In many respects, the whole Gospel is a call to faith in the face of trials and suffering. Mark's readers, who were likely suffering for their faith, have heard the announcement of the resurrection, but they do not see Jesus physically with them. In this way, they are in the same position as the women. Mark's whole Gospel, including the empty tomb story, is a call for faith instead of fear in the face of an uncertain future? How are we able to carry on the legacy of Jesus today? The call to bring the Gospel to the world is one of perseverance.
#53: Two-thirds of young people were unemployed in April and a recent study has showed that Ireland had the highest educated workforce in Europe. So what is going wrong?Three young people involved in politics have their say about the issues of unemployment, education and housing they are facing and discuss what can be done to support them.Listen in as John Kerr, Social Democrats Dublin South West Chairperson, Vanessa Mulhall, Tallaght South representative and Dublin South Green Party Chairperson, and Adam Smyth, Chairperson of Dublin South West Ógra Fianna Fail join host Hayden Moore.Want to watch the debate? This episode of Local Voices is available on The Echo Newspaper's YouTube channel.
Adam Smyth from our Evening Community spoke on Crossing the Jordan, as part of the Turning Points series - considering how God wants to shape the key moments of change in our lives.
What does it mean to writ(e) in water? And even more, what does it mean to write 'writ in water' on stone? Or is that in stone? These are all questions raised by John Keats' epitaph, 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'. Which is why the Keats-Shelley Podcast called Adam Smyth, Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford, and an expert in Material Texts: or the study of people writing with weird things on weird surfaces.----more---- Subscribe to the Keats-Shelley Podcast or Follow us on Spotify. We began by asking Adam to describe what a 'material text' might be, and what it means to study them. As well as telling us about poems written in glass and invsible ink (lemon juice to you and me), he cast an eye over Keats' epitaph, and pondered the fine distinction between writing 'in water' and 'on water'. Read about 2021's Keats-Shelley Prize. Read about 2021's Young Romantics Prize. Visit the Keats-Shelley Blog for more Prize Resources, including poems, articles and podcasts. Texts. John Keats, Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 28th June 1818 (scroll down). John Donne, A Valediction of My Name in the Window. Abraham Cowley, Written in Lemon Juice. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Plate 14. Thomas Hardy, During Wind and Rain. Fans of Tom Philips' A Humument: stay tuned to the very end of the podcast for a little lighthearted homage. Subscribe to the podcast for all new episodes. Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Instagram Subscribe to us on YouTube This podcast was written and presented by James Kidd. The KS Podcast theme tune is ‘Androids Always Escape' by Chris Zabriskie. Visit http://chriszabriskie.com/
Adam Smyth talks to Balliol College, Oxford archivist Anna Sander about an exciting new archive of letters relating to Graham Greene and his secretary, Josephine Reid.
Dr Adam Smyth (English, Oxford) Doing things with errors Nicholas Smith and Colin Clarkson (University Library, Cambridge) Practical printnig Abstracts Doing things with errors ‘God helpe the man so wrapt in Errours endlesse traine,’ laments Edmund Spenser’s Una in he Faerie Queene. But what can we, as readers and critics, do with errors in printed books? This paper suggests that the history of the Renaissance book is also a history of error, and proposes that we need to learn how to treat typographical slips seriously, or, at least, that we need to think more about their hermeneutical potential. The paper suggests two ways of proceeding: first, to treat errors as moments when, in breaking down, the book briefly but often vividly reveals the processes of its production; and second, to read errors and errata as literary forms that shaped the literary imagination of authors such as Spenser and Milton. Practical printnig This paper describes the practical difficulties and potential pitfalls associated with the stages in the production of a printed work in the hand press period: composition, imposition and presswork. The speakers will bring along some type, composing sticks and other exhibits to illustrate this process, and will also demonstrate on a tabletop printer, which, while rather different from those used for book work, will give some idea of what is involved. They will show a short film made to accompany the “Private lives of print” currently being exhibited at the University Library.
Adam Smyth talks to Professor Daniel Wakelin about his new book on cultures of correction in later medieval manuscripts. Adam Smyth talks to Professor Daniel Wakelin about his new book on cultures of correction in later medieval manuscripts.
Henry Woudhuysen joins Adam Smyth to discuss the history of facsimiles. Henry Woudhuysen joins Adam Smyth to discuss the subject of his 2014 Lyell Lectures in Bibliography, on the history of facsimiles, forgeries, and fantasies of authenticity.
Adam Smyth is joined by Professor Ian Gadd to discuss his just-published collection on the history of OUP.
Adam Smyth talks to Professor Will Noel about the potentials of digital technology for the study of manuscripts.
Professor Tiffany Stern joins Dr Adam Smyth to discuss her current research on the materiality of the early modern play text. What happens to our thinking about plays when prologues, epilogues and songs become mobile pieces, detached from the whole?
- Adam Smyth - Evening Service
- Adam Smyth - Evening Service