1815 Parramatta Sunday School banner held by the National Library of Australia

Join us for a fascinating talk on the reasons for and challenges of printing on silk (and other materials).  Toitū is generously hosting this talk and we hope to have examples from their collections on display.  Dr. McMullin is the world expert on this topic, as well as a very clear presenter.  Come hear about one of the more public uses of the printing press, and its very attractive artifacts.

The talk will take place at Toitū, from 5:30 pm on Thursday 26 March.  The museum is open until 8 on Thursday, so you may wish to come early or stay late to enjoy its current exhibitions.

For the Dunedin TV 39 story about Kay Craddock’s visit, see http://www.dunedintv.co.nz/content/world-book-day-draws-limited-local-fanfare.  We are delighted to have kicked off a formal connection with Melbourne as a City of Literature and look forward to building links with other UNESCO cities around the world.  And a huge thanks again to Kay for a fantastic talk.

The Centre for the Book is pleased to announce a lecture by Prof. Barbara Ryan, visiting from the National University of Singapore.  She will speak on “New Zealand Literature ca. 1910, the Manawatu Times, and a US Quipster: A Reception Research ‘How to'” in the Central Library Cen 3 (east end of first floor) on Tuesday, 17 March at 5:15 pm.  Drinks and nibbles will also be provided.

As part of the English Department Staff Seminar series, Shef will be discussing ways that various editions of Aesop’s Fables sought to manage the meanings of the stories through different textual arrangements and apparatus.  The title of the talk is “Contested Meaning and Controlled Reading in Augustan Editions of Aesop’s Fables.” All are welcome, in Burns 4 at 4pm on the auspicious Friday, 13 March.

1925 MGM Film Poster

Prof. Barbara Ryan teaches in an interdisciplinary small college at the National University of Singapore. Her training in American literature, and interests in African American expression, have developed into courses on the post-soul aesthetic in literature, photography and film; on transactional exchanges of the Black Pacific; on nationalism and the arts in Singapore; on the Romance and the Realist novel; on African American drama; and on popular US fiction. At present, she is completing a book on early US reception of Lew Wallace’s book, Ben-Hur (1880) and starting work on reception of US best-sellers in New Zealand and Australia at the turn of the last century. Her first book, Love, Wages, Slavery (Illinois 2006) interrogates 19th-century US domestic advice literature, ex-slaves’ narratives, and the domestic lives of writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. She has also co-edited two collections of scholarly essays, Reading Acts (Tennessee 2002) and Bigger than Ben-Hur (Syracuse, forthcoming).

In the University Scholars Programme in Singapore, Barbara teaches writing and critical thinking in a course that draws on Ruskin, Latour, Turkel and research on human-technology interaction. She is interested in use of the personal essay to teach skills that transfer to academic writing, in probes of ‘modest’ reading, and in the varied ways in which readers of all kinds engage imaginative fiction. Before she arrived in Singapore, she taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Missouri-Kansas City after completing a Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill which included coursework at Duke University.

Barbara would be delighted to meet people interested in any of her interests, and can be contacted on email at usprbt@nus.edu.sg.  She will also be coming to Centre for the Book Events and we hope you will make her very welcome during her visit, which extends for about another month.  Toward the end of her visit, we will have an opportunity to hear from Barbara about her work.

February brings us a host of riches, including a visit from American academic Prof. Mona Scheuermann lecturing on Boswell’s Account of Corsica (1768).

Author of five books on eighteenth-century literature and culture examining figures such as Hannah More, William Godwin and Jane Austen, Prof. Scheuermann is currently working on a new book tentatively entitled The Orient and the Neighborhood: Eighteenth–Century European Travel Images.

When James Boswell decided, at the end of his quite standard Grand Tour, to add Corsica to his trip before he headed home he could not have expected that the Corsican fight for liberty would become his own life-long cause, nor that his written account of the trip instantly would make him famous.  But “Corsica Boswell” he became.  This lecture will discuss the themes of Boswell’s account as well as the specific aspects of Corsican culture he chose to highlight.

The lecture will take place in Archway 2 at 5:30–6:30 on Monday, 23 February.  We look forward to seeing you.

 The Centre for the Book is delighted to welcome Kay Craddock and her husband Jonathan Burdon across the Tasman from our sister City of Literature in Australia to help us celebrate World Book Day 2015.

Kay Craddock is a prominent figure in the rare book world. Starting out modestly fifty years ago in the inner Melbourne suburb of Essendon, she is a founding member of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers (ANZAAB), and a former President of that association. In 1996 she was the first bookseller from the Southern Hemisphere to be elected to the committee of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), and four years later she became the first Australian (and first and only female) President of ILAB.

Kay will talk about her life as a bookseller, drawing on the fascinating history of the rare book trade in the second half of the twentieth century – when antiquarian bookselling emerged as a recognised profession in Australia and New Zealand.

The lecture will be held in Archway 2 lecture theatre at 5:30 on Thursday, 5 March.  We do hope you can join us.

Check out the links below featuring Kay and her longstanding work in the world of books:

https://www.ilab.org/eng/booksellers_main_page/meet_the_ilab_booksellers/Kay_and_Muriel_Craddock.html

http://www.aba.org.uk/featured-shops/114-aba-bookshops-overseas/218-kay-craddock-antiquarian-bookseller-melbourne

If you are planning to attend Kay Craddock’s talk at 5:30 on Thursday, 5 March, and would like to join her and other friends of the Centre for the Book for dinner, here’s what you need to know.

Venue: Staff Club, downstairs in Gallery Restaurant space

Format: 3-course buffet with the following options:

Entree: Cream of Tomato Soup

Mains: Roast breast of chicken coated with mushrooms and white wine sauce
Fish parcels with lemon and asparagus

Accompanied by: Steamed green beans with toasled shaved almonds
Spiced vegetable cous cous

And: Tossed green salad
Asian coleslaw

Followed by: Chocolate brownies, washed down with coffee, black tea or herbal tea

A cash bar will also be available.

Cost $40/person, by advance purchase from Donald Kerr in Special Collections, cash or cheque.  We can accommodate 35 guests besides the speaker and her partner (Jonathan Burdon of Pilgrim Books, a dealer in books on special forces operations) and the Centre’s two directors, on a first-come, first-served basis.  If you cannot call in to pay immediately, please let Donald know by email of your wish to attend so that he can put you on the guest list.

We’ll have the usual raffles and good cheer, and hope you are able to join us

Interested in the black art?  Come along and watch a demonstration of handpress printing at the Otakou Press led by Dr. John Holmes, Donald Kerr and Shef Rogers.  The Centre for the Book is pleased to support Open Day and invites students to have a go at printing their own sheet.  Feel free to drop in any time between 11-2 on Tuesday, 28 April.  You will find us upstairs in the Central Library, overlooking the Otago Museum domain at the west end of the building.

If the current Special Collections exhibition on Joseph Mellor interests you, then you should plan to attend the lecture by Prof. Lyall Hanton, the Mellor Professor of Chemistry at Otago, to hear about the man himself and his impressive achievements.  Prof. Hanton is a member of the Centre’s Advisory Board, and will deliver his lecture on the same topic as the exhibition, “The World of Joseph Mellor.”  The lecture will take place in the Burns 2 lecture theatre on Thursday, 19 February at 5.30pm.  Come along and learn about this amazing chemist from an equally lively chemist, and enrich your appreciation of the exhibition.