Andrew S. Keener
What can you do with rare books, and do they matter, anyway? Where do books end and the internet begin? How can digital tools allow us to read and study books in new and productive ways? How can the history of Renaissance printing alert us to pitfalls and open us up to possibilities? With questions like these as starting points, this blog explores the practical histories of Renaissance books and handles subjects including but not limited to writing, reading, editing, printing, publishing, as well as the digital equivalents of these practices. Generally, this is a project designed to foster thinking about both rare books in the archive and the possibilities for writing, reading, and publishing in today’s world.
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The founder of this blog and its main contributor is Andrew S. Keener, a Ph.D. student in English Renaissance Literature at Northwestern University and a casual book collector. He lives in Chicago, IL and frequents the Newberry Library for his research.
Categories used most frequently by the blogger:
Renaissance book history books Northwestern rare books Special Collections literature early modern print libraries printing archive Chicago book use marginalia ESTC HWW library drama publishing
ESTC-matching project expands to other Northwestern libraries
29 January 2018
Generous funding from Northwestern University Libraries has guaranteed the expansion of “Renaissance Books, Midwestern Libraries,” an initiative I began in 2014 with a Mellon-based...
Teaching English composition with early modern-style “commonplace books”
20 November 2017
This fall, I have been trying out a number of strategies to integrate writing exercises, literary readings, and Special Collections visits in my undergraduate pedagogy. These experiments...
A “prity one”: Frances Wolfreston’s copy of Thomas Heywood’s The English Traveller (1633)
1 March 2017
The early modern reader Frances Wolfreston (1607-1677) has attracted a considerable amount of attention from scholars in recent decades. “Frances wolfreston her bouk,” she...
More Old Books Uncovered at Northwestern
18 July 2016
The following post recounts some of the most recent work undertaken as part of the Renaissance Books, Midwestern Libraries project, an undergraduate-driven effort to report copies of...