The History of the Maritime Book
The fourth international conference to be hosted jointly by Princeton
University and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
DATE: October 4-5, 2002
LOCATION: Princeton University
AIMS:
According to O.H.K. Spate, voyages outstripped divinity as the most popular
form of print in the first part of the Eighteenth Century. This
interdisciplinary conference aims to trace the reasons for the meteoric
growth in the popularity of voyage and travel books between 1680-1800, and
the methods by which copy was produced, exchanged, edited, published and
marketed.
THEMES:
We expect our contributors to deal with some of the following topics and
queries:
*The purposes of voyages such as Narborough's, Dampier's, Rogers's,
Shelvocke's, Anson's and Cook's, and the role played by their publication
in the larger designs of politicians, financiers, scientists, virtuosos and
(in the case of George III and Louis XV) monarchs themselves.
*The production, conservation and collection of manuscript journals--how
they were written, kept from destruction, copied, obtained by the
Admiralty, collectors such as Hans Sloane, and printers and booksellers.
What kinds of conflict existed between the Admiralty (which laid claim to
all journals as its own property) and individuals who were determined to
publish their own work? How did print-piracy affect the market for these
wares?
*When published how much additional material was inserted, and were these
additions commissioned by the bookseller, or were they the inspiration of
the editor himself? What theoretical justifications existed for
impersonating the first person singular of voyagers, and how did the
individual mariner as well as the public react to this fictionalizing of a
true account? Under what circumstances were editors themselves edited,
such as Richard Walter who wrote for Anson, and who in turn was written for
by Benjamin Robins? What relation might these editorial manipulations of
the original journal bear to fictional versions of voyages such as Swift's
and Defoe's?
*Why is it that certain booksellers such as Nourse, Strahan, Knapton and
Nicol started to specialize in maritime material? Nicol even had an island
named after him by Matthew Flinders, so what intimacy existed between them
and their clients? Publishers of maps such as Herman Moll were impatient
with their navigators, a division exploited for satirical purposes by Swift
- did this have any bearing on the evolution from the original to the
printed copy?
*In the marketing of voyages, how were the writers rewarded, and how was
the public lured to read them? Why were moralists such as Shaftesbury so
incensed by what they saw as the corruption of public taste by this rising
branch of literature? What, in effect, was the aesthetic dimension of the
maritime book?
*Did the great collections of voyages such as the Churchills' and Harris's
establish canons of voyages, and how did these compare to the foundational
collections of Hakluyt, Purchas and Heylyn, and to the great French
collections of De Brosses and Prevost? When Campbell revised Harris, was
the canon altered, and if so, why? When James Burney wrote his vast
catalogue of Pacific voyages at the beginning of the 19th century, was his
method of organizing and treating his material very different from
Churchills' at the beginning of the century? Does such an alteration
reflect changes in thinking about publishing and reading this genre of
literature? And does it reflect changes in thinking about trade, nation and
empire?
CONVENERS
The conference is convened by Professor Jonathan Lamb of the Department of
English, Princeton University, Professor Peter Lake of the Department of
History, Princeton University, Dr Nigel Rigby and Dr Margarette Lincoln in
the Center for Research, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
SPEAKERS:
This conference is intended to draw together specialists working on book
publication, maritime and imperial history, and voyage literature in its
various embodiments. The conference will consist of a number of keynote
lectures by invited speakers, including Professors Max Novak, Glyn
Williams, James Raven, and Beth Tobin, as well as a series of
simultaneously held roundtable sessions. The deadline for submission of
papers, accompanied by short abstracts, is March 30. Please email your
abstracts to: maritime@princeton.edu. It is also proposed to publish a
collection of essays as soon after the conference as possible so a text of
your paper thirty days before the conference would be much appreciated.
CONTACTS:
For further information, please contact:
Ingrid Horrocks and Alexandra Neel
Department of English
22 McCosh Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Email: MARITIME@PRINCETON.EDU
SUPPORT: This conference is supported by: J.D. Brown Fund, Princeton
University History Department, Princeton University English Department,
Princeton University National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
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From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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