<b><i>What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria?</i></b> Eds. Mostafa El-Abbadi and Omnia M. Fathallah. Leiden: Brill, 2008. 260p. $129, cloth (ISBN 9789004165458). LC 2008-4209.

Abstract

Book Reviews sets the stage for what follows. Feather takes as his point of departure the thesis that “[i]n the … context of the British book trade, there are many groups … whose history has been neglected, misrepre- sented or marginalized” (p. 2): the number of axes along which such groups may form is large, for marginalization can take place along geographical, linguistic, cultural, political, religious, or sexual lines—or, for that matt er, a combination of these. Argu- ing that, in resistance to the socially (and often legally) sanctioned arrangements of the mainstream book trade, members of the trade catering to minority groups developed their own networks of produc- tion and distribution, he presents a series of suggestive, but broad-brush, vignett es of how these oft en clandestine networks oper- ated in diff erent contexts from Elizabethan times into the twentieth century and issues a clarion call for further research in these oft en overlooked areas of English book history in the name of developing a more richly textured—and complete—history of the British book trade. All of the subsequent papers contribute, in one way or the other, to Feather’s program of foregrounding litt le-trodden byways of publishing history. Although they have been arranged by the editors to accord with the chronological order of the topic treated, they can also be organized into broad thematic clusters: for the sake of convenience, we adopt the latt er strategy here. No less than fi ve of the contributions deal with various aspects of the periodi- cal press, covering the whole range of the British Isles. Susannah Randall presents an impressive study of the “unoffi cial” (i.e., unlicensed) newspapers published in London during the politically volatile period from 1677 to 1685 and their pub- lishers: combining statistical analysis of newspaper production with biographi- Book Trade Connections from the Seven- teenth to the Twentieth Centuries. Eds. John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong. New Castle, Del.; London: Oak Knoll; The British Museum (Print Networks), 2008. 265p. $49.95 (ISBN 15845622930; 0712350640). LC 2008-17892. Ever since its inception a little over a decade ago, the Print Networks series has served as a venue for the proceedings of the annual Conference on the History of the British Book Trade. Insofar as the purpose of this conference is to explore all aspects of the book trade in England, with special emphasis on the provinces and its (former) colonies, past installments of this series have presented, under the cover of broadly construed themes (such as “diversity,” “continuity and change,” or “the human face of the book trade”), sets of papers notable not only for the luxuriant diversity of topics that they cover but also for the stimulating variety of methodological approaches that they represent. The volume under review—the ninth in the series and the third pub- lished under the care of the current team of editors—is no exception to this rule. Comprising twelve papers delivered at the 2005 conference held at the University of Birmingham, it takes as its theme the personal, social, political, economic, and cultural connections that bind together the various (groups of) persons—authors, printers, publishers, distributors, and members of the reading public—involved in the book trade. Such a theme off ers the possibility for an almost unending series of variations as to subjects of inquiry and method of analysis: the authors, whose numbers are drawn from the worlds of academia, librarianship, and publishing, have made good use of this spacious Spiel- raum to cover a broad range of topics from a number of scholarly perspectives. The initial essay, penned by John Feather, is programmatic in character and