The UCMS Seminar on Premodern Reading Cultures will take place on 11 October 2019, Special Collections, Utrecht University Library. It will be devoted to the specific object of 16th century Sammelbände and particularly the Huybert van Buchell collection which contains hundreds of such Sammelbände.
Sammelbände, that is to say volumes of printed texts created at the request of their buyers, were a ubiquitous phenomenon in in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. Such volumes brought together several books in order to save on costs during the binding process, and to create collections of texts that had a coherence for their owners, whether because of their content, their language or other specific features. In 2019, Sammelband 15-16, a project devoted to the study of this phenomenon, is launching a special collaboration with Utrecht University’s Library, as it hosts a unique collection, the Huybert van Buchell collection, containing hundreds of such Sammelbände. Studying this collection not only offers a window into the world of a premodern mind, through the books this scholar read and annotated, but also adds to our knowledge of the cultural life and book circulation in Utrecht and Cologne.
Seminar
More information and the programme for the seminar can be found here. Registrations are welcome until October 7, 2019.