Books and Bindings: Art serving mass production

Still in its original 1806 building, the Portico Library celebrates both the historic and the contemporary culture of Manchester, welcoming the public, researchers and members to its unique 19th-century book collection and 21st-century events and exhibitions.

The Portico Library

A lecture on the vivid history of 19th century book design.

In the 19th century the huge demand for books stimulated an explosion of creativity and innovation in cover design. Edmund King will talk you through the history of rapid changes behind these wonderfully eye-catching volumes.This talk offers an outline of the major book production and bookbinding processes of this period. The development of a mass market from the 1830s was rapid, from cheap penny publications, to expensive guinea books. The majority of publications were issued with texts bound with paper or in cloth covers but with time book covers became more unusual and experimental. Examples will be shown in this illustrated lecture. See a preview of some stunning bindings at Edmund's <a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/edmundking/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Pinterest board</a>.Edmund King worked at the British Library from 1975 to 2012. He was a cataloguer and indexer of English and French books. From 1982 to 1997, he was Head of Preparation and Selection programmes for Binding and Conservation, Head of Newspaper Collections from 1999 to 2012 and the Project Director for two major newspaper digitisation projects, which saw 3 million pages of 19th century newspapers, and 1 million pages of 18th century newspapers made available online. Edmund also worked as part of the team to create the British Newspaper Archive. His research interest from 1994 has been Victorian publishers and decorated bindings. You can read his miscellaneous essays and indexes (from 2014 onwards) on his blog, <a href="http://victorianbookbindings.blogspot.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">available here</a>.

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Books and Bindings: Art serving mass production

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