The Centre for the Book is delighted to be able to host Nicolas Barker and his wife Joanna at the end of May. Nicolas has enjoyed vast experience in all aspects of book production, curation and scholarship, and will deliver a talk entitled, “Fifty Years On: The Book Collector and ‘Printing and the Mind of Man’.”  His talk will be held on Thursday, 29 May at 5:30 pm in Archway 2.  We hope you will all be able to join us.

Nicolas Barker began writing for The Book Collector in 1958, and he has been editor since 1965. In 1947 he was fortunate enough to inherit the fine Cope & Hopkinson Albion press used by C.H. St John Hornby at the Ashendene Press. With it he printed a number of books, including Frances Cornford’s last book of poems, On a Calm Shore (1960). Between 1958 and 1976 he was production manager or director of, successively, Rupert Hart-Davis, Macmillan and Oxford University Press, moving to become Head of Conservation at the still new British Library in 1976. He retired in 1992 to become libraries adviser to the National Trust and the House of Commons. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and is on the Advisory Board of the Science Museum. He is also a Director of Print Quarterly. He has written or edited over twenty books on typography, calligraphy, art history and the history of books and libraries, among them the perennial ABC for Book Collectors.

Nicolas Barker’s talk will focus on the important and enduring role of the 1963 catalogue for the printing exhibits held in London by the International Printing Machinery and Allied Trades Exhibition. The catalogue’s full name–“Catalogue of a display of printing mechanisms and printed materials arranged to illustrate the history of Western civilization and the means of the multiplication of literary texts since the 15th century, organised in connection with the eleventh International Printing Machinery and Allied Trades Exhibition, under the title Printing and the Mind of Man, assembled at the British Museum and at Earls Court, London, 16-27 July 1963”–is usually shortened to “Printing and the Mind of Man.” Originally printed by Oxford University Press, the publication later developed into a book-length survey of printed materials and their historical role in spreading knowledge, developing Western civilization and impacting human thought over many years.