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Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada
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This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 0067-6896
Published by U of Toronto

[41 journals]

A History of the Fascicle in Quebec
- Authors: Marie-Pier Luneau, Jean-Philippe Warren
  Pages: 1 - 38
  Abstract: Although the materiality of mass-printed fascicles in post-war Quebec throughout the 1940s and 1950s has previously been described, scholars have yet to thoroughly examine the heuristic potential inherent to the format itself, which once enjoyed a surging popularity in Quebec that was every bit as dazzling as it was short-lived. To carry out such an examination, we must first carefully analyze the advertisements and other direct addresses to the readership contained within these fascicles. Our essay draws upon a detailed analysis of editorial peritexts from forty fascicles of romance novels published between 1945 and 1963 with the aim of defining the very nature of the fascicle as a format in itself. The fictional fascicles published in Québec by Éditions Police-Journal are comparable to “small books”—each issue generally contains a single story spanning 32 pages, as well as the publisher’s branding, which ostensibly serves as a guarantee of its quality. Nonetheless, these hybrid objects, with their soft and colourful covers, are in constant dialogue with the magazine, often emulating its fundamental mechanisms. Through a detailed analysis of these little-explored romance novels, we hope to inspire a reflection on the popular print formats of the 20th century.
  
  PubDate: 2023-04-04
  DOI: 10.33137/pbsc.v60i1.34677
  Issue No: Vol. 60 (2023)
Making a Difference: Canadian Women Writers and the Fiction of Social
Change
- Authors: Carole Gerson
  Pages: 1 - 31
  Abstract: In January 1944, when the influential Toronto critic William Arthur Deacon lamented the absence of a Canadian “equivalent of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’” because Canadians are “still pioneering, still afraid of ourselves intellectually and emotionally,”[1] little did he know that a significant candidate was on the horizon. Gwethalyn Graham’s second novel, Earth and High Heaven, which appeared later that year, launched an analysis of anti-Semitism that was quickly embraced by cultural arbiters and the general public in both Canada and the United States. This essay situates the production and reception history of Graham’s book in relation to other novels by English-Canadian women writers that advocated for social change, and offers cases studies of the three most widely disseminated works that used the power of fiction to marshal empathy: Marshall Saunders’s Beautiful Joe (1894), Graham’s Earth and High Heaven (1944) and Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1981). [1]W.A. Deacon, “Gearing the Arts in Canada to Postwar Nation-Building,” Globe and Mail, 1 January 1944: 13.
  PubDate: 2023-03-21
  DOI: 10.33137/pbsc.v60i1.39213
  Issue No: Vol. 60 (2023)
Re-examining “the Book” through Ancient Egyptian Tomb Walls
- Authors: Chana Algarvio
  Pages: 1 - 40
  Abstract: This article investigates how the seminal focus placed on portability as the defining characteristic of the book is erroneous and misguided. Based on Western concepts and early-modern bias that ultimately equates codex to book, the notion of portability is inapplicable to all book cultures and deserves re-examination. By redefining the meaning of the book to be an idea, an idea that can then be transposed textually and/or pictorially onto a substrate, scholars can come to understand how in ancient Egypt wall inscriptions and art were considered books, and how stone was a primary and fundamental book medium. Using Western, modern, and even global examples to explain how the book in its original state is a metaphysical entity, the notion of the book as object is in turn discarded because defining the book by its medium causes numerous restrictions – the object is not the book, merely its carrier. The importance of physical portability therefore becomes replaced in favour of metaphysical portability and its various implications. By using ancient Egyptian tomb walls as a case study, the meaning and boundaries placed on the book in book studies will be reframed and redefined by drawing Egyptian cultural practices, literature, ideologies, and the use of stone to establish examples of non-portable books. Any discussion of ancient book cultures primarily remains focused on papyrus or clay tablets (i.e., portable materials), a focus that skews the reality of ancient book cultures and gives rise to bias due to the neglect of other mediums that were far more important for ideological purposes. Egyptian book culture was, in fact, more than papyrus; a variety of materials were used as substrates, not all of which were portable in the conventional sense, but neither their use nor their significance to ancient Egyptian society should be dismissed.
  PubDate: 2023-03-20
  DOI: 10.33137/pbsc.v60i1.37007
  Issue No: Vol. 60 (2023)
In Covers Green and Gold: Fin-de-siècle Evelina
- Authors: Svetlana Kochkina
  Pages: 1 - 30
  Abstract: The first novel by Frances Burney, Evelina, Or, a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, published in 1778, has enjoyed long-standing popularity, having never gone out of print in English. A distinct cluster of its editions appeared at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. This period in book history was marked by the creative work of private-press book designers, printers, binders, and illustrators inspired by the Aestheticism, Arts and Crafts, and Art Nouveau movements. Even though their pioneering work was destined for narrow circles of collectors and connoisseurs, it profoundly influenced the development of both industrial and artists’ book design, heightening the awareness of books’ aesthetic appeal. The fin de siècle was a time of nostalgia for idealized pre-industrial society, symptomatic of Victorian and Edwardian escapism, which found its expression in lavish book ornaments and illustrations executed in the Directoire and Louis XVI styles. Late 19th - early 20th-century Evelinas, illustrated and decorated by Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham, and Hugh Thomson, produced by Dent, Newnes, and Macmillan, reflect a profound influence that innovative private presses had on general publishing practices and the quality of industrially produced books. These Evelinas, beautifully illustrated, bound in decorative covers, and well-printed, exemplify both the newly awakened interest in the book’s physical make-up and aesthetical aspects and the late-Victorian and Edwardian escapist nostalgia characteristic of fin de siècle publishing.
  PubDate: 2023-03-20
  DOI: 10.33137/pbsc.v60i1.36118
  Issue No: Vol. 60 (2023)

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