Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis - Volume 28, Issue 1, 2021

Abstract This article examines the earliest example of a Dutch printed songbook without musical notation in oblong format: Een Schoon Liedekensboeck (Antwerp, 1544), commonly known as the Antwerp Songbook. Its oblong format was probably inspired by music books, even if the advantages attached to this format only partially applied to songbooks without scores and notes. Even so, the Antwerp Songbook’s typo Read More

Abstract The De Geer family established themselves in Sweden as iron industrialists during the early seventeenth century, but they maintained close contact with the Netherlands. The family built up a prestigious library at Leufstabruk, in northern Uppland. The objects in the Leufsta Music Collection contained a significant amount of music in the form of printed sheet music and manuscripts, which were most likely gathered Read More

Abstract The memoirs that the Dutch nobleman Alexander Michiels van Kessenich (1800–1869) published in 1858–1859 offer a unique perspective on nineteenthcentury social music history. They were public in the sense of being printed, but private in the sense that the publication was not for sale. Because of a lack of editorial rigor the text comes across as a highly informal collection of personal musical memories. The unusua Read More

Abstract The rise of the radio in the 1920s resulted in a new type of songbook that included the texts of popular broadcasted songs. They stand in the tradition of cheap popular songbooks from earlier centuries and song broadsides (‘liederencouranten’). Between 1930 and 1970, many hundreds of these radio songbooks were published, sometimes in long series and often with the same or similar titles. The production st Read More

Abstract When record players became more widely available, authors and publishers began to investigate the potential uses of the new medium. Poets would record readings of their work, a younger generation experimented with sound effects and music, and live recordings of festivals became available. The relation between music and literature is multidimensional; this article focuses mainly on the use of music as a me Read More

Abstract This article revisits the discussion whether The dialoges of creatures moralysed, the English translation of the Dialogus creaturarum, was printed and published by the early sixteenth-century Antwerp publishers-printers Marten de Keyser or Jan van Doesborch. This investigation presents a more complete picture of the publishing repertoire of Van Doesborch for the English market and increases our knowledge ab Read More

Abstract Jan David’s Duodecim specula (Antwerp: Officina Plantiniana, 1610) is a meditative emblem book, centred around myriad mirror metaphors. However, it also contains various depictions of ‘real’ optical instruments, such as lenses and concave mirrors, which have not yet been studied as such. This article explores how catoptrics and dioptrics (optical reflection and refraction) inform the meditative programme la Read More

Abstract This article examines one of the earliest periodicals published in the Dutch Republic, the hitherto unknown Nederlantse Mercurius (1665). Only a single issue of this monthly journal has survived, but its publication history can be enriched considerably thanks to extant newspaper advertisements. This article investigates the Nederlantse Mercurius in the context of the growth of the periodical market in the seventee Read More

Abstract Since 1940, the Rotterdamsch Leeskabinet’s collection includes the library of the Rotterdam Van Rijckevorsel family. The library, with a size of 3,000 titles, was formed in the nineteenth century by three generations: the entrepreneurs Abram and Huibert and the scientist Elie van Rijckevorsel. The library is a unique example of a preserved library of a Rotterdam patrician family from the nineteenth century. This arti Read More

Abstract The library of the Dutch House of Representatives is a collection of thirty thousand books in the fields of constitutional law and Dutch politics. The collection is rooted in the nineteenth century and has seen the various stages of expansion and decline typical to a library of use. In recent years, the historical book collection has been brought together in a single location for the first time in its history. The books are pl Read More

Abstract In 2014 a digitization plan of the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice was leaked. One of the plans mentioned was the closing of physical prison libraries. The media attention and criticism that this plan received raised questions about a normally invisible institution: the Dutch prison library. In this article we will see that prerequisites for the official foundation of the prison library in 1841 were the upswing of the prison Read More