Keynote Speakers: Professor Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews) and Professor Paul J. Smith (University of Leiden)

As print culture developed through the Renaissance, authors, printers and editors quickly came to exploit the commerical and literary potential of compendia and anthologies. These works took many different forms: ‘recueils’, ‘œuvres’, ‘poésies choisies’, song books, joke collections. In both printed or manuscript form, anthologies circulated in sixteenth-century Europe in Latin and the vernacular.

Supported by Trinity College Dublin Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies & School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies, University of Liverpool, this conference will explore the factors that governed the production, circulation and reception of anthologies in the Europe of the Long Renaissance. What editorial and commercial imperatives drove their appearance? What cultural practices arose from their publication? How are the cultural practices of the anthology related to or different from those of collected and multi-part works? How did readers react to the concept of multi-authored works?

Proposals of up to 300 words for a 20-minute paper (proportionately longer for panels) should be sent to conference organisers Sara Barker (s.k.barker@warwick.ac.uk) and Pollie Bromilow (pollie.bromilow@liverpool.ac.uk) by March 31st 2010.