Revolution and the antiquarian book : reshaping the past, 1780-1815 /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Jensen, Kristian, 1954-
Imprint:Cambridg, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Description:x, 318 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.
Language:English
Subject:Book collecting -- Social aspects -- Europe -- History -- 18th century.
Book collecting -- Social aspects -- Europe -- History -- 19th century.
Incunabula -- Collectors and collecting -- Europe -- History -- 18th century.
Incunabula -- Collectors and collecting -- Europe -- History -- 19th century.
Antiquarian booksellers -- Europe -- History -- 18th century.
Antiquarian booksellers -- Europe -- History -- 19th century.
Books and reading -- Social aspects -- Europe -- History.
Printing -- Social aspects -- Europe -- History.
Enlightenment -- Europe.
LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Antiquarian booksellers.
Book collecting -- Social aspects.
Books and reading -- Social aspects.
Enlightenment.
Incunabula -- Collectors and collecting.
Intellectual life.
Printing -- Social aspects.
Europe -- Intellectual life -- 18th century.
Europe.
History.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/8302003
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781107000513
1107000513
Notes:Machine generated contents note: Introduction; 1. Enlightenment ideas and revolutionary practice: incunabula and freedom; 2. Aristocratic aspirations and the war-time market: competing for the past and the future; 3. An object-based discipline emerges: old books, new luxury; 4. Competing for authority. 'The insolence of English wealth'; 5. Commemorating and obliterating the past: 'old books, very displeasing to the eye'; 6. Conclusion.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:"At the end of the eighteenth century, noblemen and revolutionaries spent extravagant sums of money or precious military resources competing to acquire old books, which until then had often been regarded as worthless. These books, called incunabula, achieved cultural and political importance as luxury commodities and as tools for mastering a controversial past. Men of different classes met in a new, shared marketplace, creating a competition for social authority, as books were no longer seen merely as sources of textual information but as a way of controlling the past in the service of contemporary concerns. The old books themselves were often changed to meet new expectations of what important historic objects should be. Focusing on Paris and London, but taking a resolutely pan-European view, this book examines the emergence of this commodity and of a new historical discipline created by traders and craftsmen"--

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