New Series of Sandars Lectures Will Focus on 'Resistance to Bibliography'

This year's prestigious Sandars Readership in Bibliography lectures will be given by Timothy Young, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts for the Yale Center for British Art, on the theme of 'Resistance to Bibliography'.

The Sandars Lectures will be hybrid, offered in person at Robinson College, University of Cambridge, and also live-streamed and recorded.

According to the organisers: "Looking closely at examples of books that resist inquiry from readers, scholars, cataloguers, and historians, the lectures will use “resistance” as a method to question the status of bibliography in current practice. From undated children’s books to Tarnschriften (clandestine anti-Nazi literature), the lectures will discuss books that deflect, deceive, and deny, arguing that there is much to learn from categories of books that do not readily reveal their identities."

Lecture 1, Isness and Aboutness, will be held on November 19 looks at the functions of bibliography and the practice today. Lecture 2, Speak, Lytell Boke: An Inquiry into Publication Dates of Books for Juveniles in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 19th Century, follows on November 20 concentrates on problems with the bibliography of children's books.

The Sandars Readership in Bibliography was established in 1895 with a bequest left to the University by Mr Samuel Sandars of Trinity College. Recent previous Readers have inculded Dr David Pearson (Cambridge Bookbinding, 1450-1770), Professor Cristina Dondi (Incunabula in Cambridge: European heritage and global dissemination), Dr Orietta Da Rold (Paper past and paper future) and Isabelle de Conihout (French bookbindings and bibliophily, 16th-18th centuries).