Odious! In Wollen! Blank Precedents and the London Stationers, 1690-1830
Thu 11/5 • 4PM - 5:30PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The 21st Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book Trade, given by Dennis Duncan, Associate Professor, University College London. This talk begins with a collection of four dozen Burying in Woollen affidavits from the village of Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, dating from the first decade of the eighteenth century to the last. Each affidavit testifies to a burial in the village, and an oath taken by a relative of the deceased that the body was wrapped in nothing other than wool. These are roughly-printed, single-sheet forms, illustrated with crude woodcuts of skulls and cadavers. They were printed seventy miles away in London.
What can the stationery of a country rector tell us about the practices of the London printers, how they advertised, and how the blank precedent?what we might today call a form?offered rich, ever-changing opportunities to supplement their book work?