Christmas card, 1961

Christmas card, 1961, a photo by Faber Books on Flickr.

This is a lovely David Jones illustration - done for a Faber Christmas card!

Waterstone's Postcards

 When I was in Oxford last week, I found these postcards in the Waterstone's there.  Part of their rebranding exercise (and missing apostrophe gripe taken for granted!), they have some impact.  But do they work?  There's a great blog post analysing them here, and the author comes up with some great alternative straplines that suddenly make these feel not-so-good. 

 Yet, it made me wonder again at the short-sightedness of bookshops and publishers in terms of responding to what readers like, and the potential -- the huge potential -- for so much more book-related merchandise to be produced.  I was drawn to these, by the till, instantly.  Would have paid a pound or two for a set, if they hadn't (joy!) been free.  With Christmas approaching, bibliotherapy gifts are still far too thin on the ground.  Yes, I could visit The Literary Gift Company (and have), several times.  This has some interesting products, but some are, frankly, dull as dull.  And there is so much that is creative and beautiful in publishing....

 In this area, branding is a big help.  Penguin and Faber already do a limited selection of branded gift goods, and who wouldn't love a boxed set of postcards for Christmas, or some playing cards?  But -- come on, publishers, you can do so much more! 

Maybe it's time to work up a proposal for some bibliotherapy treats.....

The Caxton Window at Stationers Hall, London

On Friday, we took the new students to visit Stationers Hall, in London.  One of my favourite things there is the Caxton Window, which shows Caxton with the young King Edward IV and his Queen, Elizabeth Woodville.  On the floor, bottom left, is Wynkyn de Worde.  The window was given by Joshua Butterworth, the law bookseller, as his gift as Master in 1894. 
My photograph doesn't do it justice at all - the colours are beautiful, and the story it tells and the details around the edges mean it's hard to tire of looking at it.  The rest of the Hall has further stained glass panels depicting Shakespeare, Tyndale, St Cecilia, Caxton and Cranmer:  it is a stunning location, and easy to feel centuries of publishing history pulsing in the atmosphere....

Weird and Wonderful!

A little something to lighten a dull Sunday afternoon:  take a look at this post from another blog, The Private Library (http://privatelibrary.typepad.com/the_private_library/2011/04/really-weird-titles-and-the-private-library.html)  

 

Medieval Authorship

I've just finished writing my half of a paper for the British Branch meeting of the International Arthurian Society next week in Oxford.  Programme can be found here.  It's the first time I've collaborated on a joint paper, and (with fingers crossed that Leah agrees!) it has been a remarkably smooth experience.  I've always wanted to work more closely with colleagues who research French medieval literature, and this paper shows what value you can get from joining areas of expertise.  I'm nervous about my input: the paper looks at medieval ideas of authorship, and how publishing uses the author as a paratext to promote texts, and I've used some very current publishing examples to try and draw parallels with what Caxton was doing in the fifteenth century.  Some of the books I've found useful are A J Minnis's Medieval Ideas of Authorship, N F Blake's William Caxton and English Literary Culture, and Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur, edited by K S Whetter and Raluca L Radulescu, particularly the essay by Tom Hanks.

After a long period with very little time for concentrated reading, am glutting on a long reading list that is in desperate need of attention.  It is taking a while to feel like my brain is connecting ideas again:  have found it difficult to switch off management / admin antennae that mean always thinking of several different tasks at once and how to achieve results, and find focussed space so that reading and thinking on one connected thread works.  I love it that my desk looks like the photo.  Bibliotherapy in a mind-muscle sense!  

Coleridge

“Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge