Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 3

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Summaries

Jos A.A.M. Biemans, Verborgenheden of blinde vlekken? Over onderzoek van Middelnederlandse handschriften
[Secrets or blind spots? About the Study of Middle Dutch Manuscripts]

The author discusses some ‘hidden phenomena’ in Middle Dutch manuscripts, such as (erased) owner's marks and certain codicological features that provide a glimpse of the making of manuscripts. He underlines a number of aspects which manuscripts and printed books have in common and makes a plea for more cooperation between codicologists and incunabulists, especially now that a general history of the book in the Netherlands is planned.

Henk Borst en Marrije Schaake, Van Amsterdam naar Londen. Populair proza in vertaling rond 1683
[From Amsterdam to London. Popular Prose Translations about 1683]

This article discusses three texts that have so far been recognised as the English translations of Dutch originals they are. In two of them, The Ten Pleasures of Marriage (1682) (with its sequel, The Confession of the New-Married Couple (1683)) and The London Jilt (1683), the text, carefully translated, has come out looking very English. Situations and the names of streets and cities have been painstakingly adapted. The illustrations of The Ten Pleasures have been changed to match the changes in the text. The third text, The Dutch Rogue, was also translated from the Dutch, but in these picaresque episodes the choice of title made it unnecessary to invent such an English setting.

Although it has been remarked several times since c. 1870 that The Ten Pleasures were printed in Holland, the English nature of the text has never been under suspicion. The reputation of the Dutch republic as ‘Magasin de L'Univers’ in the field of printing and publishing may have been the cause for this.

The use made of these texts so far by historians in several fields needs to be seriously reconsidered as they no longer have any status as reliable sources on English culture. The way in which the unknown translator(s) has (have) adapted the Dutch texts may, however, throw some light on the question which differences between Dutch and English culture were thought to be important at that time. That the identity of the translator(s) is unknown leaves us with uncertainties about the authority for such differences.

Samuel Smith and Henry Rhodes are the London booksellers who sold these editions. Their relations with Amsterdam are examined, as are the (virtually non-existant) relations with London of the Amsterdam booksellers who published the original Dutch texts: Hieronymus Sweerts and Timotheus ten Hoorn. No direct connections with London emerge from a survey of their relations with other Amsterdam booksellers either.

The material details of the books in question need to be examined, however, to establish any certainty about their place of production.

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Hannie van Goinga, ‘Alom te bekomen’. Veranderingen in de boekdistributie in de Republiek 1725-1770
[‘Alom te bekomen’. Changes in the Distribution of Books in the Dutch Republic 1725-1770]

Very little is known about the operation of the domestic booktrade in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. Yet it is an important period because reading habits changed. People began to read more and displayed a growing interest in recently published books. To enable large numbers of bookshops to stock up speedily with the most recent titles the booktrade extended the method of providing books on sale or return in a big way. In Germany booktrade historians have seen this practice as an unmistakable sign of modernization.

By examining booksellers' advertisements in newspapers from 1725 to 1770, it can be established that trading on sale or return was already practised in Holland in the thirties and was widespread in the forties. So much so that by the end of the forties publishers began to devise ways to avoid the trade on sale or return, a sure sign of its significance. Important booksellers/wholesalers, especially in Amsterdam but also in other towns, began to serve as stockists. From the fifties on some publishers left the distribution of their publications partly or even entirely in the hands of these stockists.

The increasing number of advertisements shows the expansion of the book trade in the thirties and forties. This growth stopped short in the fifties. By the next decade the advertisements had changed in style and content, clearly to bring in customers with puffed texts. The trade on sale or return dominated the domestic booktrade in the sixties.

However different the German and Dutch booktrade may have been, their modernization developed along the same lines.

Hans Moors, Oud Frans bloed. De saint-simonistische uitgaven van firma R.C. Meijer
[Old French Blood. The saint-simonian Publications by the Firm of R.C. Meijer]

The Amsterdam bookseller, publisher and writer Rudolf Carel d'Ablaing van Giessenburg (1826-1904), better known as R.C. Meijer, was always interested in social thought, religion and philosophy. Meijer felt very strongly about his commitment to society. Since 1855 he rapidly built up a strikingly principled publisher's list. Meijer was a notorious freemason and freethinker, deeply involved in the particular sociability of these philosophical persuasions. He firmly believed in the necessity of freeing people from the bonds of dogmatic, static clericalism. This engagement formed the basis of Meijer's life, views and his work.

The first decennium of his publishing career, the period on which the present article focuses, clearly shows the tension Meijer felt between his idealistic and his entrepreneurial goals. Little by little then, the story unfolds: the adventures of a small publishing firm with a low profile and high ideals, against the background of the modernization of the Dutch booktrade in the mid-nineteenth century.

This story is told from two different but closely related angles. The first aim of the present article is to analyse Meijers growing doubts about the apparently inopportune nature of his publications. It underlines his philosophical development, as well as his personal frustrations.

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These biographical data provide a clue as to why Meijer came to build such a politically and socially committed list of publications. Secondly the article aims to stress the important part sociability played in the production and distribution of books during the 1850's and 1860's. For Meijers method of working was inextricably bound up with his participation in freemasons' and freethinkers' networks stretching all over Europe. Not only did these influence Meijer's views and beliefs, the vicissitudes of his firm depended on them as well.

The case of the present article is made up of a detailed publishing history of four saint-simonian publications Meijer placed on the market between 1855 and 1860. These publications, a small but as far as the Netherlands are concerned unique corpus, constituted a turning-point in Meijer's publishing-career. They triggered off his scepsis about the viability of principles and ideals in a country that seemed not yet ready for them. Financially he hardly suffered, but Meijer grew weary of waiting for better times. Moreover he got disappointed in the progressive public he had considered the sounding-board of his ideals. Although until the very end of his life he stood by his principles, in the 1860's Meijer started to develop a keener eye for the commercial aspects of his trade.

Marga Altena, Verslaggeving of verbeelding? Fotografie als bron bij de houtgravures in de Katholieke Illustratie (1867-1900)
[Reportage or Fantasy. Photographic Sources for the Wood Engravings in the Katholieke Illustratie (186-7-1900)]

During the nineteenth century technical innovations in the printing industry made it possible to supply the increasing demand for a greater variety in books as well as newspapers and periodicals. The illustrated periodical required an illustration technique that was cheap and enabled large editions: the wood engraving technique.

The weekly paper Katholieke Illustratie was very succesful from the start in 1867. Henri Bogaerts, editor of the Katholieke Illustratie, was one of a number of Dutch editors who set up an engraving school, which enabled him to illustrate the Katholieke Illustratie with original engravings.

The evidence of the Katholieke Illustratie shows that notions of objectivity and news value were very different from today's journalistic practice. Events were still presented as news a long time after they took place, and the items were often greatly dramatized.

The presentation of the news in pictures depended much on the quality of the wood-engraving technique. The making of an engraving took several days and strongly affected the news value. Though photography supplied the engraver with images of a high level of realism, early photography could not satisfactorily deal with poor lighting conditions and moving subjects. The photographs available to the engraver were pictures of people and architecture. It appears that the difference between the photo and the engraving was not a choice of the engraver or the editor but a consequence of the limitations of the technique. Nevertheless the early use of photography in the engraving industry represents the desire to report events in an objective manner.

The invention of photography coincided with the rise of the illustrated periodical. The early use of photography in the production of engravings enabled photography to influence the illustrated

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press at an early stage. This contradicts the generally accepted opinion that photography did not influence the printing industry before the introduction of the autotype in 1882.

Nanske Wilholt, ‘La littérature ne nourrit pas son homme en Hollande’
A.A.M. Stols en de dichter Maurits Mok
[A.A.M. Stols and the poet Maurits Mok]

In the interwar period, A.A.M. Stols (1900-1973) was one of very few publishers in the Dutch-speaking regions who limited themselves to publishing literature, especially contemporary Dutch poetry. This article deals with the correspondence between Stols and the author Maurits Mok in 1939. On the basis of this correspondence a reconstruction has been made of the conditions under which Stols' publishing decisions were arrived at. In 1939 Stols launched two volumes of poetry and one small novel by Mok. A number of further texts were all refused. In the first place, the correspondence shows that Stols was constantly restrained by lack of money. He was not able to offer his authors attractive fees. The effect was that successful authors only offered Stols texts in which other publishing houses were not interested, because they were less profitable, including genres such as poetry and essays. In order to break out of this vicious circle Stols tried to hold on to non-demanding new talents, such as Mok, hoping that they would ultimately deliver a bestselling novel. Unfortunately, Mok proved not to be that sort of writer. In the second place, the letters show that the publishing house was not an isolated institution, but part of the animated literary circles of the period. Quite often Stols consulted prominent literary critics. Their task consisted of signalling new talents and judging manuscripts. Their opinions of Mok's production determined Stols' decisions to a considerable extent.

Sandra van Voorst, Deense literatuur bij uitgeverij Contact 1960-1970
[Danish Literature from Uitgeverij Contact 1960-1970]

The institutional approach is a fairly recent phenomenon in literary studies in the Netherlands. Central to this approach is the literary field, in which various agencies and people are jointly involved in the material and immaterial production and dissemination of literary products. The publisher is referred to metaphorically as ‘the gate-keeper of ideas’. Occupying a key position between author and market, he is one of a number of parties involved in the booktrade.

In this context this article discusses one of the parties which can play a role in building up a publisher's list: the reader or advisor. As a special example the discussion focuses on the creation of the list of one particular publishing company: Uitgeverij Contact, in the period 1945-1970, and on the special place it created for translated literature. During this period, there was little interest in Danish literature, yet, between 1960 and 1970 Contact published ten books by modern Danish authors. This selection of titles could be directly related to the activities of Contact's reader for Danish literature, Jan F. de Zanger. This article examines the relationship between Contact's editors and the reader- translator for Danish, and it describes how this relationship changed along with the initiatives and interests of both parties.

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Joris van de Leur, Het mediumgebruik van letterkundigen en historici. Een empirische analyse
[Media Use by Literary and Historical Scholarship. An Empirical Analysis]

This contribution concerns media use by literary readers and historians. A survey was held among magazine subscribers. To be able to generalize the results, circulations of four magazines were studied. These magazines differ qua discipline (literary and historical magazines) and scholarly orientation (popular and scholarly). The following titles were studied: Literatuur: tweemaandelijks tijdschrift over Nederlandse letterkunde; De nieuwe taalgids: tijdschrift voor Neerlandici; Spiegel Historiael: maandblad voor geschiedenis en archeologie; Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis.

The findings indicate that subscriber-sets show significant differences in the frequency with which they use media; for example, historians appear to use radio/television significantly more frequently than literary readers. Thus, within each discipline people acquire information in a specific way. Moreover, results show that the perspective of different audiences influences the media perception. Subscribers in the same discipline show more resemblance in media perception than subscribers from different disciplines.

Ludo Verhoeven, Geschreven taal en geletterdheid in ontwikkelingsperspectief
[A Developmental Perspective on Written Language and Literacy]

In this chapter both written language and literacy are discussed from a developmental perspective. It is claimed that in the process of acquiring literacy in an alphabetic script children are rediscovering the historical phases of development of written language. There is evidence that the invention of the alphabet has passed through successive stages. In order to represent and preserve ideas, people started to use pictographs. Later on, the match of speech and writing was invented by means of syllabaries and alphabetic systems. By following a child's ‘natural’ development it is shown that similar stages are followed in literacy acquisition. Children start out using pictographs in their drawings. Gradually they become aware of the fact that the writings in their environment represent aspects of the oral language. Thanks to this metalinguistic awareness they learn to represent their own speech, resulting in an autonomous characterisation of the writing system.