Quaerendo
Journal Data
| Type | JOURNAL |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Brill (NL) |
| ISSN | 0014-9527 / 1570-0690 |
| Scopus | 23739 |
| OpenAlex | S40714092 |
| MAG | 40714092 |
| Website | http://www.brill.nl/qua |
| Total publications | 106 |
| Coverage period | 1972 - 2026 |
| Country | NL |
| Language | EN |
| Indexing | Scopus indexed |
| Cited by | 6 |
| Impact factor | 0.03 |
| SJR | 0.109 (Q3) |
| SNIP | 0.405 |
| CiteScore | 0.2 |
| h-index | 1 |
| Female authorship share | 64.7% |
Quaerendo is a journal dedicated to book history, bibliography, and manuscript studies. While historical research can inform anthropology, this venue's specific focus on the material and historical aspects of books is too specialized and distant from social anthropological inquiry
History · Library and Information Sciences · Art History and Market Analysis · Classical Studies and Legal History · Cultural History and Identity Formation · Digital Humanities and Scholarship · Diverse Scientific and Economic Studies · Financial Crisis of the 21st Century · Historical and Archaeological Studies · Historical and Linguistic Studies
Andreas Vesalius and the ‘sharp-eyed and careful reader’
A key element in Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (1543) is the identifying lettering applied to its anatomical figures, allowing Vesalius to integrate image and text in an unprecedented way. Andreas Vesalius’s discussion of the lettering in the Fabrica and in its compendium, the Epitome (1543), is a rich source of information for his concerns and aims for these remarkable illustrations. A study of the amendments to woodblocks in the first L…
The Luttrell File
Affixio Added
This article presents a newly identified manuscript witness to a Jesuit affixio – an emblematic exhibition – organized at the Brussels college in 1646, now preserved in Besançon (Chiflet 162). Unlike the well-documented summer exhibitions in honour of the Holy Sacrament recorded in the college’s lavish memorial volumes, this affixio devoted to St. Catherine of Alexandria and centred on the theme of ingenium was organised toward the end of the yea…
Written Treasures. 50 Manuscripts from Medieval Europe, by André Bouwman and Irene O’Daly
Source Library
Writing as Self-Construction
The anarchist militant Leda Rafanelli (1880–1971) spent her life working at the printing press, publishing her own writings and those of others. She co-founded several publishing houses, organised and promoted many other initiatives in the field. An analysis of her published and unpublished works offers insight into the ways she constructed and presented her identity, not only as an anarchist, but also as an intellectual, a typographer and a publ…
Kidnapped Books in Paris
The examination of a manuscript preserved in the archives of the Vatican Library ( BAV Arch. Bibl. 53, pt. A, ff. 2–4), which contains a list of unreturned books, together with the printed catalogue of manuscripts and books confiscated by the French during the Napoleonic occupation ( Recensio manuscriptorum codicum [Leipzig: impensis Paul Gotthelf Kummeri, 1803]), makes it possible to identify the Vatican printed volumes still held in the Bibliot…
Printing Anglo-Saxon from Parker to Hickes and Wanley. With a Catalogue of Early Printed Books Containing Anglo-Saxon 1566–1705, by Peter J. Lucas
Text and Paratext in the Early Medieval Book
The presentation of a text to a reading public may provide evidence, either of an accommodation to the expectations of anticipated readers, or of new ways to read a text. How a text was received by a scribe, as well as how, why, and in what circumstances the text was then presented, remain among the underlying considerations in any study of manuscripts. The role of ‘paratexts’, that is, all those elements in text presentation other than the main …
Archives and Autobiographical Writings of Italian Women in Publishing (XXth C.)
Thomas Browne, Socinianism, and the Dissemination of Heterodox Thought
This paper investigates the dissemination of Socinian heterodox thought in 17th-century Europe through the lens of the Leiden manuscript of Johann Crell’s Tractatus de Spiritu Sancto , an important anti-Trinitarian text. The manuscript, which is a non-autograph copy of Crell’s treatise, serves as a crucial link in tracing the spread of Socinianism, particularly among English Royalist exiles in the Dutch Republic. The central figure in this case s…
Grotesque and Performance in the Art of Aubrey Beardsley, by Evanghelia Stead
Entrusted Memory and Self-Representation
This article explores how twentieth-century Italian women writers have organized, selected and preserved their personal archives as a crucial ‘place’ of selfrepresentation. Focusing on figures such as Sibilla Aleramo, Alba de Céspedes, Elsa Morante, and others, it highlights how diaries, letters, manuscripts, and editorial correspondence became spaces for negotiating identity, authorship, and cultural visibility. These archives, often meticulousl…
Fragments of an Early Vocabulare Edition
The State Library of Victoria and the Huntington Library hold the only known fragments of what is popularly believed to be a c. 1530 edition of Noël van Barlaimont’s Vocabulare , printed in Antwerp by Willem Vorsterman. However, typographical and textual evidence suggests that the book from which the fragments come was printed slightly later by another Antwerp printer, Jan van Loe. In addition, the textual evidence indicates that this edition inf…
Academic Circles
This article examines an extraordinary set of eighteenth-century pamphlets published to celebrate magisterial promotions at the Royal Academy of Turku, a university established in 1640 on the Finnish peninsula. The works are unusual in their deployment of an eye-catching typographical motif. Over a 60-year period encompassing 16 promotion ceremonies, we find 26 booklets upon which graduands’ names appear as part of visually striking radial design…
The Autobiographical Source
Laura Lepetit, founder of Italy’s most renowned and longest-running feminist publishing house, La Tartaruga (1975–1998), left behind in her Autobiografia di una femminista distratta ( Autobiography of a distracted feminist , 2016) not only a testimony of her professional activity but also traces of her conception of women’s autobiographical writing. This article analyses the author’s strategies for defining the trajectory and meaning of her life …
Johannes Janssonius
This note proposes Johannes Janssonius as the hitherto unidentified printer of a 1636 edition of John Selden’s Mare clausum . Previous research postulated that this edition of Selden’s treatise had been printed in Amsterdam, but no additional information about the printer has surfaced. An assessment of books printed in Amsterdam between 1628 and 1636 reveals that the pirated copy of Mare clausum shares several ornaments that also appear in works …
Thumb Bibles. The History of a Literary Genre, by Gottfried Adam
Antwerp Books for Prague
It is well known that Plantin and the Moretuses exported their editions from Antwerp to several European regions. However, their trade to cities in central or eastern Europe has rarely been considered thus far. In this article I investigate if there were specific demands and challenges with this “distant” trade by using the book trade between Antwerp and Prague in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a case study. For a long time, the Frank…
Emilia Santamaria
This article retraces the biography of Emilia Santamaria (1877–1971), a pedagogist, historian, teacher, and collaborator in the publishing house run by her husband, Angelo Fortunato Formiggini. It discusses Santamaria’s choice to self-represent as an established scholar, through her scholarship and her three autobiographical writings. It also retraces the essential role played by Santamaria in preserving the memory of her husband and his publishi…
Theosophy and Lettering
Internationally, Art Nouveau saw artists experimenting with letters, often exuberant in form. Model books aimed at sign painters, lithographers and other craftsmen came on the market, particularly in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, making these letterforms available for copying. The more expensive ones were printed lithographically in many colours. In the Netherlands, Amsterdam had its own Art Nouveau variant. This rational ‘Nieuwe Kunst’…
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) in Print
This article reinterprets Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) not merely as a microscopist but as a strategic and active participant in early modern scientific publishing. It highlights his deliberate control over the production, language, and distribution of his Dutch and Latin editions from 1684 onward. By managing copperplates, illustrations, and printer collaborations in Leiden and Delft, Van Leeuwenhoek safeguarded his intellectual property a…
The Migration of Incunabula in 18th-Century Europe
In this paper, I discuss the fate of six 15th-century books from the collection of Polish bishop and bibliophile Józef Andrzej Załuski (1702–1774). I aim to trace the migrations of incunabula in the 18th century before the mass movements of books in response to the suppressions of religious convents. An analysis of unexploited provenance materials, such as ownership and reading marks, will make it possible to determine the methods of the bishop-b…
Balancing Cultural, Literary and Financial Capital in Trade Publishing
This article is an historical analysis of the changing editorial strategy of Tafelberg, a South African publisher. It aims to shed light on the culture-commerce divide in South African publishing, the changing cultural and social impact of a publisher specialising in a minority language, and the nexus of editorial philosophies, language and nationalism. The research considers Bourdieu’s (1993) conceptualisation of the fields of culture with their…
Innovating the Sixteenth-Century French Popular Songbook in Lyon
This article examines a popular French unnotated songbook (1538), that is unique for its material characteristics. Set in roman type and abundantly illustrated with woodcuts, this edition stands out from contemporary unnotated songbooks published in France and neighbouring regions. To investigate this remarkable publication, the songbook is analysed as part of the activities of its printer, who can be identified as Denis de Harsy in Lyon, based o…
The ‘Taboas geraes’ of João Teixeira Albernaz I as a Mediated Textual Object
This article examines the ‘Taboas geraes da toda a navegacão’ (1630), a manuscript atlas by Portuguese cartographer João Teixeira Albernaz I (fl.1602-1649), as a textual artifact permanently altered and resignified by the additions and alterations that Spanish mariner and author Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera (c.1646-c.1705) carried out in the late seventeenth century. I examine the biographical circumstances in which Seyxas possessed the atlas and…
The Van Oldenborch and Vanden Merberghe pseudonyms or Why Frans Fraet had to die
Les Chevaliers de la Jubilation
Between 1970 and 1981 Mrs. Jacob published a variety of books and articles on the subject of the Knights of Jubilation and their clandestine influence on both political and cultural life in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Mrs. Jacob sees the Knights of Jubilation as the first Continental Lodge, founded by John Toland in the United Provinces in about 1710. According to this thesis, Freemasonry on the Continent would be a quarter of a …
Some early editions of Gabriel Meurier's school-books
BERT VAN SELM Some early editions of Gabriel Meurier's school-books* INTRODUCTION For his bibliography' of the Antwerp schoolmaster Gabriel Meurier (c. I s I 3- 97), W. de Vreese received information from the leading libraries of Belgium, France, Holland and Germany, and by the British Museum in London. Despite this fact, De Vreese's work, published in 1897 and still the most complete bibliography of Meurier, deals in many cases only with later r…
Codicology or the Archaeology of the book? A false dilemma
Codicology or the Archaeology of the book? A false dilemma
The bookseller's catalogue of Blaeu anno 1659
Some early editions of Gabriel Meurier's school-books
BERT VAN SELM Some early editions of Gabriel Meurier's school-books* INTRODUCTION For his bibliography' of the Antwerp schoolmaster Gabriel Meurier (c. I s I 3- 97), W. de Vreese received information from the leading libraries of Belgium, France, Holland and Germany, and by the British Museum in London. Despite this fact, De Vreese's work, published in 1897 and still the most complete bibliography of Meurier, deals in many cases only with later r…
Ebert's Codicology a Hundred and Fifty Years Old
Prosper Marchand, auteur et éditeur
In 1736 the collection of books and MSS. of the French bibliophile Prosper Marchand, comprising no fewer than 77 MSS. and 2700 printed books, was bequeathed to the University Library of Leiden. Prosper Marchand was born on 11 iMarch 1678 in the village of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he also spent his early youth. The Marchand family subsequently moved to Guise and Prosper went to school in Versailles. In 1693 he became a bookseller's apprentice …
Varia bibliographica
Dutch National Bibliography 1540-1800
J.A.GRUYS, P.C.A. VRIESEMA & C. DE WOLF Dutch National Bibliography 1540-1800: the STCN PREDECESSORS 'There must be many as saddened as I am that, to the grave damage of our literature and the disgrace of our country, nothing as yet exists even faintly resembling a Dutch bibliography.' This provocative assertion could be made by the famous bibliographer Frederik Muller in his `Voorslagen'' of 1878 without significantly distorting history. Such at…
Les Chevaliers de la Jubilation
Between 1970 and 1981 Mrs. Jacob published a variety of books and articles on the subject of the Knights of Jubilation and their clandestine influence on both political and cultural life in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Mrs. Jacob sees the Knights of Jubilation as the first Continental Lodge, founded by John Toland in the United Provinces in about 1710. According to this thesis, Freemasonry on the Continent would be a quarter of a …
Les Chevaliers de la Jubilation
Between 1970 and 1981 Mrs. Jacob published a variety of books and articles on the subject of the Knights of Jubilation and their clandestine influence on both political and cultural life in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Mrs. Jacob sees the Knights of Jubilation as the first Continental Lodge, founded by John Toland in the United Provinces in about 1710. According to this thesis, Freemasonry on the Continent would be a quarter of a …
Willem Silvius's remarkable start, 1559-62
PAUL VALKEMA BLOUW Willem Silvius's remarkable start, 1559-62* A few years after Plantin had had to give up the trade of bookbinder and thus came to lay the foundations of his later fame he found himself facing a redoubtable competitor: Willem Silvius.1 This newcomer in the Antwerp book trade soon turned his hand to the same literary and scientific domain of publication as his colleague and thereby posed a real threat to the success of Plantin's …
The Van Oldenborch and Vanden Merberghe pseudonyms or Why Frans Fraet had to die
Was Plantin a member of the Family of Love? Notes on his dealings with Hendrik Niclaes
Partly intended as a summary of recent research on Plantin's activities, this article provides a new interpretation of certain aspects of his career: the circumstances in which the Officina came into existence; the collaboration between Plantin and Hendrik Niclaes as partners in a printing shop in Kampen which besides various publications by the prophet, produced two editions of the Bible; and the course of events in the transfer of Plantin's
A sickle unto thy neighbour's corn' Book piracy in the Dutch Republic
Printing Anglo-Saxon in Holland and John Selden's Mare Clausum seu de Dominio Maris
PETER ,J. LUCAS Printing Anglo-Saxon in Holland and John Selden's Mare Clausum seu de Dominio Maris This article focusses on John Selden's Mare Clau.sum seii de Dominio Mari.s ('The Dominion of the Sea'), a book about restricting the freedom of the seas, pub- lished in London in 1635, of which there were three Dutch editions in 1636. Since it contains passages of Anglo-Saxon it posed particular problems for the Dutch printers, who needed special …
'All mercantile spirit is foreign to us'
The catechism (1555 ) of Peter Canisius, the most published book by a Dutch author in history
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 Quærendo 36⁄1-2 Also available online – www.brill.nl 1 This article includes corrections to my recent book: Paul Begheyn, Petrus Canisius en zijn cate- chismus. De geschiedenis van een bestseller. Peter Canisius and his catechism. The history of a bestseller (Nijmegen 2005 ). 2 Many would in stead point at The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, the most read book in world literature after the Bible, but i…
The Archeology of Medieval Bookbinding
Protego-proterreo. Making an Amulet by Mutilating a Manuscript
This contribution describes the way in which amulets functioned in the medieval Latin West at the intersection of magic, medicine and religion and the way in which they were made. A Pantaleon amulet from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century serves as an example. This amulet has been cut out of a Bible leaf and still shows the essential text of the Last Supper, from Luke 22.
Authorship in Early Modern Jurisprudence
Paul Voet (1619-1669), law professor at the University of Utrecht, opened his most famous work, published in 1657, with an unusual discussion of the five different types of auctores of juridical books (juris libri)—a precious source for the history of authorship in the jurisprudence and in the early modern respublica litteraria in general. This essay discusses the key concepts for his understanding of auctor and auctoritas in the field of jurispr…
The ‘Taboas geraes’ of João Teixeira Albernaz I as a Mediated Textual Object
This article examines the ‘Taboas geraes da toda a navegacão’ (1630), a manuscript atlas by Portuguese cartographer João Teixeira Albernaz I (fl.1602-1649), as a textual artifact permanently altered and resignified by the additions and alterations that Spanish mariner and author Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera (c.1646-c.1705) carried out in the late seventeenth century. I examine the biographical circumstances in which Seyxas possessed the atlas and…
The Library of Leufstabruk
The library of Leufstabruk is an eighteenth century private library in Sweden that was built up by industrialist and entomologist Charles De Geer (1720-1778). Approximately 1500 contemporary titles from the library were purchased by mail-order from the booksellers Samuel ( II ) and Johannes Luchtmans in Leiden. Leufstabruk was, however, not only a place where Enlightenment literature was brought in, but also a centre of knowledge production. In t…
Monumental German Faust Editions in International Circulation and Multimedia Modernity
The article (developing a paper presented at 2010 SHARP international conference) investigates the ways grand Faust editions from the 1850s and 1870s make sense as equivocal cultural objects migrating within and beyond Germany. Scholars have focused on these imposing tomes to herald the play as expression of a nation-centred claim, with Faust as heroic myth. This interpretation relied on costly plates and external characteristics for principal ev…
Carlo Goldoni and the Construction of Authorship on the Printed Page
The transformation of a play composed for the stage into a text printed to be read is a complex operation often mentioned by the playwrights themselves in the prefaces to the editions of their works. The printed publication could become the ‘place’ for perfecting what was performed on stage but it could also, for some authors, become a ‘place’ in which they defended their authorship through the control of the editions, even going so far, in the c…
Singing the News in Seventeenth-century Iceland
In 1631 the Protestant town of Magdeburg fell to the Catholic Imperial army and was burned to the ground with casualties of some 20.000 people. This event reverberated far and wide in broadsheets and pamphlets, songs and images, and not only in Germany. The destruction of Magdeburg echoed in faraway Iceland, where pastor Guðmundur Erlendsson wrote a poem about the event. In this article we argue that news of the event (perhaps in the form of broa…
A Number of Books
During the twentieth century, a limited edition is usually numbered, in contrast to limited editions of around 1800. This article examines a number of turning points in the history of limitation statements and copy numbering: the disappearance of copyright related numbering versus unnumbered editions of private presses (around 1800), the advent of numbered prints (1850-1900), and numbering of luxury editions and private press editions (1880-1910)…