Giles Mandelbrote, curator of the British Library, will inaugurate the Syracuse University Library's Seminar in the History of the Book at 4 p.m. April 3 in the Hillyer Room of Bird Library. His topic will be "John Evelyn Annotating His Books."
The SU Library initiated this new interdisciplinary seminar and has been joined by SU's English, fine arts and history departments. Seminar speakers will lecture on a various aspect of authorship, book collecting or book publishing. Three speakers have been scheduled, with more to come.
"It's a program that we hope will have broad appeal," says Peter McDonald, associate University librarian for collection development.
Mandelbrote has written on various aspects of the history of the book trade and of book ownership, mostly in the 17th century. He was joint editor of "The Book Trade and its Customers, 1450-1900" (Oak Knoll Press, 1997) and of an annotated edition of the library catalog of Samuel Jeake of Rye (Boydell & Brewer Inc., 1999). He is also one of the the editors of the "Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland," now in progress, and an organizer of a two-day international conference at the British Library on John Evelyn and his milieu, which will take place later this year.
Evelyn (1626-1706), a quintessential English virtuoso of the Restoration, was best known for the lively observations contained in his extensive diaries. He was a prolific author and correspondent, as well as a bibliophile and book collector. The British Library recently acquired both the Evelyn archive and many printed books with Evelyn's annotations. These make it possible to study Evelyn's reading practices and how he used his library.
The next lecturer in the series will be Claudia Orange, general editor of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, who will speak at 4 p.m. April 17 on "Writing the Other Biography."
