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Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 20 (2013)

Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 20

(2013)– [tijdschrift] Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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Rikard Wingård
Swedish book historical research 2006-2012
A survey

In an article published seven years ago, Per S. Ridderstad sketched a map of Swedish research in book history between the years 1990 and 2005.1 Although Ridderstad lamented the fact that book history had difficulties in gaining ground as an institutionalised academic discipline, it was obvious from his outline that book history as a research field was thriving and was supported by scholars in most Swedish universities. The purpose of the present article is to continue where Ridderstad left off, and provide an updated survey of the developments in Swedish book history in the past years.2 I will use the latter term to designate book historical studies written in Swedish or about Swedish culture and society, whether produced within Sweden or abroad.

Book history has continued to gain interest, and it would be impossible to cover all areas and publications that fall within the scope of such a multidisciplinary and far reaching subject. They can be found in anything from university dissertations to design magazines and the yearbook of the local folk museum. I have generally tried to focus on the activities of the larger academic institutions, and to mention publications with scholarly ambitions. Rather than to give an extensive list of works or to restrict myself to the most groundbreaking research within the field, I have aimed to give a general blueprint of the different kinds of scholarship currently practiced. I am not a specialist in every subject covered, and I have usually refrained from making any critical comments, although I have, according to the space permitted, tried to say something substantial of most of the contributions presented. For practical reasons, articles and anthologies have, with a few exceptions, been left out - although many important results have been published in these forms as well. The selection is personal, but - I sincerely hope - not exclusive. To anyone who finds themselves wrongly treated I offer my apologies.

The outline begins with a view of the institutional and infrastructural support book history has in Sweden. It then proceeds to consider publications within the field, and does so in a chronological manner as to the subject of the studies, i.e. it starts with research concerning the manuscript period, followed by the hand press period, and the machine press period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A section on a couple of methodological studies follows. I close with a concluding discussion and a gaze forward.

Organisation of book historical research in Sweden

For most of the twentieth century book historical research was mainly conducted by dedicated librarians at the university libraries, by some scholars in traditional departments, such as literary studies, history of ideas and art history, as well as by independent researchers such as private book collectors, publishers, printers etcetera. In 1965 book history was in some sense established as a university discipline through the foundation of Avdelningen för litteratursociologi (the section for sociology of literature) at the Department of literature of the University of Uppsala, but it was not until Einar Hansen donated a chair in book and library history to the University of Lund in 1987 that a specialised institution was formed: Avdelningen för abm och bokhistoria (the section of alm3 and book history).4 It is still the only one of its kind, although the departments of library and information science across the country5 as well as occasional endeavours by the larger university libraries are in part dedicated to the same goals. In addition, however, a professional initiative was taken as early as 1974 by Rolf E. DuRietz, who privately founded the Center for Bibliographical Studies in Uppsala. The center's staff consists of DuRietz and his wife, Gun-Britt DuRietz, and has since its inception published works in bibliography and textual scholarship, and edited the bilingual journal Text. Svensk tidskrift för bibliografi (Text. Swedish journal of bibliography).6 Their largest undertaking is the openended Swedish imprints 1731-1833. A retrospective national bibliography (swim). Publication started in 1977 and is still continuing - the latest volumes were issued in 2011.

Regarding textual scholarship and critical editions the driving force is Svenska vitterhetssamfundet (Swedish association of belles-lettres). Since 1907, the association has promoted the publication of scholarly editions of the works of Swedish authors and arranged conferences on current textual and bibliographical concerns.7 As to pre-Reformation works, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet (Swedish society of old texts), founded in 1843, serves the same function as Svenska vitterhetsamfundet, and other larger editorial projects are going on as well. The publication of the 72nd volume of the ‘national edi-

tion’ of August Strindberg's collected works, for instance, is scheduled for 2013. It is estimated that the edition will be completed within three and a half years.8

To improve national and international cooperation a number of forums and networks have been formed during the years. Nordiskt näerk för editionsfilologer (Nordic network for textual critics) was founded in 1995 and acts to strengthen the position of textual scholarship within the academy through newsletters, conferences, publications, and graduate education.9 Another interscandinavian network is Nordiskt forum för bokhistoria (Nordic forum for book history), which is a joint collaboration between the book history department in Lund and the research group for textual scholarship at University of Copenhagen. The forum comprises approximately 200 members and frequently hosts seminars and mini-conferences on various topics.10 The Nordic-Baltic-Russian Network on the History of Books, Libraries and Reading (hibolire) is a similar network that encourages research and education in its field and across national borders. They play an active role in realising projects, conferences, and publications.11

Naturally, on an infrastructural level digitisation and database projects of different kinds are also flourishing. Especially worth mentioning is ProBok, a database of bookbindings and provenances from the hand press period.12 It records information on bookbinding techniques in individual copies, the materials used and the decorations, and the history of ownership.

While Swedish and Scandinavian book historical research has expanded its presence on the Internet it has unfortunately diminished in printed communication channels. A significant drawback was the discontinuation of Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria (originally published as Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och biblioteksväsen). The journal had been the major voice of Scandinavian book historical scholarship since its foundation in 1914. In 2006 the last issue was published, when the funding partners, the five Scandinavian national libraries, decided not to support the journal any longer.13 Up to 1997 Sweden had two other printed forums for book history, on the one hand the journal Bokvännen, issued by Sällskapet bokvännerna, and on the other the yearbook Biblis, issued by Föreningen för bokhantverk. In that year, however, the two societies merged, Bokvännen disappeared and Biblis was transformed into a quarterly journal. Next to Text, published by DuRietz, Biblis is at present the only Swedish journal solely dedicated to book history and related fields.

Of course occasional book historical contributions can be found in other journals as well, such as those on history of ideas or literature. In the last years there has actually



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Figure 1. ProBok 608, example of binding and provenance from the ProBok database. Vellum binding with stamped inititals P[etr] W[ok] Z R[ožmberka] W[ok] D[e] R[osis] 1606. Photo: Lund University Library, Bengt Melliander


been an upsurge in thematic issues on book history, a reassuring sign of the status of and growing interest in the field.14

Manuscript period

As Ridderstad noted in his 2005 article, most Swedish manuscript research was concerned with Vadstena abbey and its remaining collections, to a large extent preserved in the so called C-collection in Uppsala university library. This has not changed. The well-funded project The production of texts and manuscripts in the Vadstena monastery. Production, tradition and reception has, for instance, yielded several interesting studies. In her dissertation on the production of prayer books, Ingela Bolton-Hedström showed, amongst other things, that book production was carefully planned in advance, and that reading and writing skills in the sisters' convent were much better than has previously been assumed.15 Jonas Carlquist enhanced this view in a number of studies, and also demonstrated how different books were used, for instance in table reading at meal times.16 Nils Dverstorp took another perspective, evaluating and refining paleographic methodology for identifying scribes, dating manuscripts, and investigating manuscript production. Dverstorp also dismisses the earlier view of the so-called Vadstena script (or Vadstena cursive or style) as a significantly different script from other European scripts used at the time.17

These and other studies within the larger project were summarised, synthesised and further developed in a conference, the papers of which have been published.18

Under the manuscript heading I would also like to mention a work by Mats Malm, that starts off in the manuscript era - or more correctly, the era of runic stone inscription - and then gradually progresses into the nineteenth century. In a series of essays Malm discusses the ‘voices’ that have been and can still be heard in different historical texts depending on the mode of reading, the material carriers, and the typographical forms of the texts.19

Hand press period

During the last years a number of academic publications are to be noted that deal with early modern book historical topics. It is, for instance, satisfying that incunabula studies once more have been brought to life in Sweden. A century after the golden age of the

internationally famous incunabulist Isak Collijn, Wolfgang Undorf defended his thesis, From Gutenberg to Luther. Transnational print cultures in Scandinavia 1450-1525. As the title suggests, Undorf focuses on the Nordic countries in relation to their European neighbors. Whereas the previous purely national research has regarded Scandinavia as a peripheral society, occasionally blessed with intellectual light from the continent, Undorf shows how the early book culture of Sweden and Denmark reveals much of the same patterns as that of other European countries at the same time, particularly England. At the end of the fifteenth century, Scandinavia was part of a larger integrated cultural environment and, although not heavily populated by printers and publishers, showed a high degree of book ownership and a developed book trade.20



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Figure 2. Rune types cut by Johannes Bureus (1568-1652), from his rvna abc Boken, Stockholm 1611. Photo: Kungliga biblioteket, Stockholm


Another scholar that has occupied himself with early Swedish book culture is Otfried Czaika. Czaika has primarily concentrated on the Reformation period and published on book-ownership and reading. One example is his treatise on Elisabet, daughter of King Gustav Vasa, and her library.21 On an individual level Czaika thus supplements Undorf's study, as he demonstrates Elisabet Vasa's reading as incorporated in a larger intellectual European context, although, naturally, with a protestant preponderance.

The earliest period of print culture is also the topic of Thomas Götselius' dissertation in literature. It is international in its scope and inspired by the theories of Foucault, Kittler, and Lacan. Götselius examines ‘how reading first became a practice of individualisation’ through, primarily, the discourse networks of northern humanism, i.e. how Erasmus, Luther and others used (or were used by) the print media to change the notion of literature into a subject transforming device.22

Furthermore, in my own work I have taken an interest in early modern reading practices. In my dissertation I discuss seventeenth-century Swedish and Danish Volksbücher as indicators of pre-modern forms of reading. By studying contextual material as well as intrinsic features of the Volksbücher, e.g. paratextual and typographical peculiarities, I develop two ideal types of readers, the assimilative and the expansive reader, who are at odds with each other during the period, and of whom only the latter prevails into the modern age.23

Scandinavian Volksbücher are the subject of yet another thesis. Anna Katharina Richter studies their ability to transform (in content, stylistics, and bibliographical appearance) and adapt to differing historical circumstances. She offers a fine example of the recent developments in the field of transmission and migration history.24

Two dissertations in library history are to be noted. The first, by Bertil Jansson, traces the development of the librarian's profession, 1475-1780. Jansson studies a number of documents from various parts of Europe that describe and define librarianship. He shows how the librarian changes from being a person who routinely kept order among books to a profession in its own right, with its own set of ethical values.25

The second thesis concerns the manuscript collection Codices Reginenses Latini of Queen Christina of Sweden, kept in the Vatican library. Eva Nilsson Nylander examines the origin, order and subsequent development of the collection in what she calls, paraphrasing D.F. McKenzie, a sociology of collections. The formation of the collection is, for instance, seen as a conscious strategy of ‘branding’ Christina as an intellectual empress, and the different classification systems of the time are put into a larger epistemological perspective.26

Changing to another branch of manuscript studies, Annie Mattsson has presented a dissertation influenced by Harold Love's concept of scribal publishing. It deals with libels against King Gustaf iii, circulated in manuscripts 1772-1792, and analyses them as to their distribution, rhetoric and ideas.27

Little attention has so far been given to individual printing presses in Sweden during the early modern period, but two recent dissertations have been published that ameliorate the situation somewhat. Using Bourdieu's social theories Lea Niskanen investigates the Frenckell press in Åbo and its accumulation of symbolic capital to consolidate the firm. Suitable typography, marriage, and location of the press were some of the ways to achieve this.28

Anna-Maria Rimm, on her part, examines the successful career of the female printer, publisher, and bookseller, Elsa Fougt. Rimm highlights, for instance, the importance of the household as the base of early modern firms. When her husband died, it enabled Fougt to take his place and compete on equal terms on the market, in spite of living in a very patriarchal society.29

The perspective of eighteenth-century women in cultural society has been adopted by Margareta Björkman as well. Her comprehensive biography of Catharina Ahlgren (1734-c. 1800), one of the first female journalists in Sweden, is revealing in many areas of the period's book history. Ahlgren ran her own magazine, translated novels and, among other things, published an account of her own reading of the novel La femme malheureuse ou Histoire d'Elise Windham. The account is very valuable in recovering past reading experiences, and Björkman finds a high degree of identificatory reading in Ahlgren.30

Machine press period

In 2005 Ridderstad could not present much research concerning bookbinding.31 He was, however, awaiting Helena Strömberg's doctoral thesis, which was finally published in 2010. Strömberg places her sociological study in the intermediate stage between hand press and mechanised book production, describing the importance of commercial paper bindings in the development of the modern book market. Cheap and flexible, the paper binding managed to increase sales without devaluating the book as a commodity. In addition Strömberg conducts a bibliographical analysis of paper binding techniques and develops a terminology for describing paper wrappers.32

Apart from Strömberg's, another dissertation in book binding history was published recently: Kristina Lundblad investigated the further development and importance of manufactured bindings during the nineteenth century in relationship to a modernising book market and society. Amongst other things, Lundblad discusses in an interesting way how the pictorial content of the bindings reflects and amplifies larger cultural trends.33



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Figure 3. Paper bindings with publisher's printed spine titles and labels, ca 1800. From H. Strömquist, ‘Med coleurt omslag’. Fargarde, dekoredade och tryckta pappersomslag på svensk bokmarknad, 1787-1846. Lund 2010. Photo: Helena Strömquist


From another perspective the Swedish book trade in the nineteenth century has been studied by Gunnel Furuland. In her dissertation serialised fiction from four competing publishing houses is discussed as well as 42 Swedish authors who had their works published in the series. While the serialisation of novels was a lucrative form of publishing that reached readers of lesser means, it was abandoned in the middle of the century due to rising postal fees. During their lifetime, however, the series allowed for a new type of author to emerge, the professional with writing as his or her sole occupation.34

In a subsequent study Furuland was able to continue her work on the birth of the modern author, studying the introduction of the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Carl Spindler, Thomasine Gyllembourg, and George Sand in Sweden.35

Continuing with the nineteenth century, Roger Jacobson's dissertation on the spread of print culture in northern Sweden represents a multifaceted and wide ranging study, tracking printers, bookshops, peddlers, readers, and reading societies. Jacobson follows the emergence and increasing interlinking of these individuals and institutions in order to project a picture of how an oral communication culture turns into a one propelled by the printed media.36

Moving into the first half of the next century, Mats Dolatkhah investigated reading practices through interviews made during the 1970s and 1980s with adults remembering their childhood. Dolatkhah stresses the inventiveness required of the children in finding reading material and suitable reading milieus; there were also social impediments to overcome, and reading had to be, as Chartier reminds us, insubordinate. In another perspective, Dolatkhah concludes, their reading was not very unlike present children's, practiced within an interplay of different media and symbolic expressions.37

The book market in the late twentieth century was treated in the dissertations of Ann Steiner and Åsa Warnquist. Steiner focused on the development of Swedish book clubs and the strong position these obtained after the deregulation of the book trade in 1970. The club Månadens bok (Book of the month) was particularly successful and, Steiner states, contributed in a major way to the canonising of several of the authors promoted by the club, as well as to the domination of realistic fiction during the decade.38 By statistical method Warnquist, on her part, evaluated the Swedish publishing of poetry, inter alia confirming the assumption that publishers primarily engage in these activities for the cultural rather than the monetary capital.39

Individual authors have been studied from various points relating to book history. Petra Söderlund, for example, has shed light on the ‘bibliographical codes’ in editions of Selma Lagerlöf's novels and the reciprocal labor between author, publisher, and other advisors to make the books saleable. Söderlund also presents bibliographical investigations into the relationship between different editions of some of the novels, providing an example of the critique against the concept of final intention in scholarly editing.40

Concerning publishing history and textual criticism, Pia Forssell's dissertation on J.L. Runeberg should also be mentioned. Forssell shows how the material conditions of Runeberg's authorship have been systematically neglected in favour of an ideal of the romantic poet, and how critical editions of Runeberg's works have changed shape according to the present textual ideals.41

A work by the late Bo Bennich-Björkman is concerned with both author biography and library history. August Strindberg was for a while employed by the National Library in Stockholm and entrusted, among other things, with the cataloguing of a Japanese book collection bought by A.E. Nordenskiöld during his voyage through the Northeast Passage. Bennich-Björkman records Strindberg's involvement in the work and the contextual circumstances regarding him, the collection, and the final publication of the catalogue by Léon de Rosny.42

Nordenskiöld's son Otto and his voyages to Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic around 1900 are the subject of a short work in analytic bibliography by Rolf E. DuRietz. The printing of Nordenskjöld's Från Eldslandet (1898) and Antarctic (1904), chronicling the expeditions, are studied as well as the related work Bland pingviner och sälar by S.A. Duse.43 DuRietz offers valuable insights into the bibliographical techniques that have to be employed when dealing with emissions in parts and commercially produced books.

Finishing the historical section of the survey there remains a publication on the history of graphic design. Jan Jönsson's dissertation revises the former view of Anders Billow as the leading figure of the ‘new typography’ movement in Sweden. Through discourse analysis, graphic design and typography are studied as dependent on the development in society at large, rather than of the autonomous hands of individuals. Billow is thus found to be more of a traditionalist, who only sparingly used radical typographical expressions.44

Methodological studies

In this category I have only two publications to note. The first is Mats Dahlstöm's dissertation on the relationship between scholarly editing and bibliography. His point of departure is a statement by Ross Atkinson, that editing is just another way of doing bibliography, i.e. constructing a surrogate document representing other documents.45 Dahlström finds that Atkinson is too much of a reductionist - the critical edition has more functions than the purely bibliographical - but that the edition, nevertheless, has evident historical connections to, and shares a number of similarities and problems with, bibliography, particularly regarding the concepts clustering (the practice of ordering documents in relation to a common denominator, e.g. a work) and transposition (the

migration of the contents of the documents into new documents, e.g. bibliographies and critical editions).46

The second and final title is a polemic work by the aforementioned DuRietz. He follows in the footsteps of G. Thomas Tanselle, Nicholson Baker and others, in a critique of libraries, librarianship, and library education. Several solutions to identified problems within these sectors are presented. For instance, the first principle of libraries, DuRietz argues, should be to preserve books, not ‘literature’ or ‘information’, which librarians seem to believe. A compromise could in his view be reached by dividing libraries into two classes: those intended for the dissemination of information, and those for the preservation and cataloguing of books. Furthermore, new, audiovisual and digital media, ought not to be the responsibility of libraries but be entrusted to institutions especially founded to care for these kinds of materials.47

Concluding discussion and future development

The above outline bears witness to a prospering and inventive research in many areas of the field of book history. Nonetheless, there remains much to be studied and studied again with new theoretical and methodical perspectives. Several questions central to the field still await answers. Sten G. Lindberg pointed to some of these as early as 1988, but not many of his proposed projects have been fulfilled.48 Perhaps one of the most important, a general history of Swedish book history still awaits its author(s).

In contrast to Undorf (2009) I am not of the opinion that the absence of general methodological and theoretical discussions is as pervading as he suggests. These discussions have, however, taken place in domains slightly removed from the strictly historical part (the Darnton definition, one might say) of book history, such as bibliography and textual scholarship. In the works of DuRietz they have, for instance, always been present, and Dahlström (2006 and subsequent articles) makes recent significant contributions. Other examples come from the conferences on methods in textual scholarship organised by Svenska vitterhetssamfundet and Nordiskt nätverk för editionsfilologer. In another vein Götselius' (2010) and to some extent my own study (2011) offer quite theorised historical perspectives. In the past, the problem seems to have been an unwillingness by the larger book historical community to readily answer or ‘test’ such initiatives, due to locked institutional and traditional positions. With a younger generation of (hopefully) unprejudiced scholars more fruitful and free-minded discussions and debates regarding the identity and aims of Scandinavian book history may perhaps take place.



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Figure 4. Botanical illustration from C. Lindman, Bilder ur Nordens flora. Stockholm 1917-1926. The lithographic technique facilitated a more reliable reproduction of colors and fine hairs and textures than the preceding method of coloring by hand, as discussed by Törnvall 2013. Image courtesy of Project Runeberg (runeberg.org)


It is not a coincidence that doctoral dissertations are strongly present in this survey. It points to a strong interest in book history among younger researchers, and a healthy promise for the future. Several of them are already at work on new projects within the field. Just to mention a few: Anna-Maria Rimm is studying the import and export of books in Sweden during the eighteenth century; Thomas Götselius investigates how Swedish society and individuals were affected by the increasing literacy rates around 1700; Kristina Lundblad has recently acquired funds for a project on how literature operates through different media in the present world, and what implications this has for our understanding of the relation between books and literature, their value and functions in society.

There are also dissertations in the making. In Lund, for instance, Gunilla Törnvall, Maria Simonsen, and Ragni Svensson are occupied with graduate projects on botanical illustrations, Scandinavian encyclopedias, and the publishing house of Bo Cavefors respectively.49

A fruitful way to enhance Swedish and generally Nordic research, and to better communicate it, would be to re-establish Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och bibliotekshistoria or to found a new, peer-reviewed journal (paper or digital) for the Nordic countries.50 Biblis is valuable, but, at present, does not meet scholarly standards, and is partly addressed to the general public. DuRietz's Text, scholarly enough, is unfortunately too much of a one man project, and will probably not survive its founder. In addition, the journal has never managed to be accepted within the larger scholarly community.

While the research part of Swedish book history seems vigorous enough, the educational section could be better developed, not at least to better facilitate and utilise the apparently large interest in book history among undergraduate and graduate students. Beside courses given at the book history department in Lund and the ones taught sporadically in the curricula of library studies at various universities, there are few if any courses to meet this interest. Lindberg, in 1988, said that to become a book historian in Sweden you had to be an autodidact, and it is unfortunately still very much so.51

The lack of textbooks in Swedish and written from a Swedish viewpoint is another problem. I am myself currently writing one, which will hopefully somewhat amend the situation, but still modern broad-ranging overviews are missing.52 However, with a growing body of book historians there are incentives for courses to be taught in other places than Lund, and for synthesising projects of the desired kind. Research and education are intimately related, each enhancing the other. If the expansion of book history as a field of research is a desirable goal for the future, then we must pay more attention to the ways in which budding scholars may be brought to the subject.


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