UCL Rare-Books Club 2020: can you tell a book by its title page? False imprints.

UCL MA students Holly Dowse and Will Rene, chaired by Dr Tabitha Tuckett, discuss their work on false imprints in Early Modern books. Event: 21 July 2020 (one of our very first online events).

Will Rene:
'Boldfaced liars, religious censorship, and a book forged in hell: a comparative bibliographic study of early publications of Spinoza's work'

Holly Dowse:
'False imprints and hidden identities in the seventeenth century Netherlands: a case study of the Elzevirs'

At the time of this event, Holly Dowse and Will Rene were studying for an MA in Library And Information Studies at UCL. In this session they present their bibliography assignments on false imprints in Early Modern books.

The date, place and publisher printed on the title page of a book can't always be trusted to tell the whole truth. Will Rene looks at how a false imprint could enable Spinoza's potentially controversial writing to reach its audience in the 1670s, while Holly Dowse discusses how the famous publishing house of the Elzevirs in the Netherlands took advantage of different European markets by adopting false, and sometimes fictitious, printing details on their title-pages.

UCL Rare-Books Club was founded in 2017 by Tabitha Tuckett with the aim of promoting UCL’s Special Collections and facilitating conversations between library staff and student and professional researchers working on the collections.

Speakers:
Holly Dowse, MA student in Library And Information Studies, UCL
Will Rene, MA student in Library And Information Studies, UCL
Chair:
Dr. Tabitha Tuckett, Rare-Books And Academic Liaison Librarian, UCL