2014 DeLong Prize winner

PRESS RELEASE
The George A. and Jean S. DeLong Book History Book Prize 2014
The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) is delighted
to announce the award of the 2014 DeLong Book History Book Prize to Professor
David McKitterick, Librarian and Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge for the
book Old Books, New Technologies. The Representation, Conservation and
Transformation of Books since 1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
In announcing the Prize at SHARP’s annual conference in Antwerp on behalf of the
judging panel, Marie-Françoise Cachin commented:
‘Old Books, New Technologies offers a description of various technologies that have been
used to repair, replace, correct, perfect, and replicate parts of books or entire ones, both
manuscript or printed, primarily between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries (but
also with some reference to the late medieval and early modern periods). McKitterick’s
book is remarkable not only for its remarkably lucid prose style but also for its brevity.
Dealing specifically with none of the three areas of SHARP’s declared fields of
specialization — authorship, reading, and publishing — its ostensible focus nonetheless
allows McKitterick to offer a kind of prehistory for all of them. As a result, his book
presents what is in effect a ‘just so’ story, showing how scholars have come over time to
understand the importance as well as the difficulties of studying the material bases of the
construction, production, and reception of the objects that preserve our various literary
and historical records. This exceptional study indicates the need for careful consideration
of the evidentiary bases for book studies in all periods, not only our own. Its modest title
and apparently narrow focus should not conceal its immense significance for all students
and scholars of book history.’
David McKitterick receives $1,000 as winner of the DeLong Book History Book Prize.
A Highly Commended Award was also made to Dr Ellen Gruber Garvey, Professor in
the English Department at New Jersey City University, for the book Writing with
Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance
(Oxford University Press, 2013).
September 2014
[cont]
About SHARP
SHARP was founded to create a global network for book historians working in a broad
range of scholarly disciplines. Research addresses the composition, mediation, reception,
survival, and transformation of written communication in material forms including marks
on stone, script on parchment, printed books and periodicals, and new media.
Perspectives range from the individual reader to the transnational communications
network. With more than 1000 members in over twenty countries, SHARP works in
concert with affiliated academic organizations around the world to support the study of
book history and print culture. See http://www.sharpweb.org/
About the DeLong Prize
SHARP annually awards a $1,000 prize to the author of the best book on any aspect of
the creation, dissemination, or uses of script or print published in the previous year.
Owing to the generosity of the DeLong family in endowing the prize, from 2004 it has
been known as the George A. and Jean S. DeLong Book History Book Prize. Previous
winners include Helen Smith’s ‘Grossly Material Things': Women and Book Production in Early
Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2012), Barbara Hochman’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
and the Reading Revolution: Race, Literacy, Childhood and Fiction, 1851-1911 (University of
Massachusetts Press, 2011).John B. Hench’s Books as Weapons: Publishing, Propaganda, and
the Battle for Global Markets in the Era of World War Two (Cornell University Press, 2010),
Catherine J. Golden’s Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing (University Press
of Florida, 2009), Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic
Imagination (MIT Press, 2008), James Raven’s The Business of Books: Booksellers and the
English Book Trade (Yale University Press, 2007) and Rimi B Chatterjee’s Empires of the
Mind: A History of Oxford University Press in India During the Raj (Oxford University Press,
2006). Details of the 2015 prize submission process will be available shortly from
http://www.sharpweb.org/delong-book-history-prize/
Contact details
SHARP/DeLong Book History Book Prize
Professor Claire Squires
Director of Publications and Awards, SHARP
University of Stirling, Scotland, UK
Tel:+44 (0)1786 467505
[email protected]
Cambridge University Press
Samuel Cooke
Cambridge University Press, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 325176
[email protected]
Oxford University Press
Brendan O’Neill
Oxford University Press, USA
Tel: +212 726 6145
brendan.o’[email protected]
Professor David McKitterick
Trinity College, Cambridge, UK
Tel:+44 (0)1223 338400
[email protected]
Dr Ellen Garvey
New Jersey City University, USA
Tel: +201 200 2000
[email protected]

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