H-95v. Reading Publishers’ Archives for the Study of the American Book
Michael Winship
Course Length: 22 hours
Schedule: 1:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. ET on Mondays (class sessions), 3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. ET on Thursdays (optional office hours), and 4:00 p.m.–5:30 p.m. ET on Thursdays (lab sessions) from 26 January to 26 February 2026.
Format: Online
Course fee: $1,100
This online course will introduce students to the use of publishers’ and book trade archives and other records for the study of the creation, production, distribution, and reception of American books produced from the colonial period to the twentieth century. The focus will be on American material, though British practice may also be addressed by way of comparison. Particular attention will be paid to financial records and how to decipher those that reflect the ways that publishers and other book trade members adapted standard business and accounting practices, including double-entry bookkeeping, to their needs.
The course is chiefly aimed at scholars who are engaged in book historical research, but will also be of use to librarians, collectors, and others whose duties or interests require an understanding and knowledge of the archives and records that document the history of American book publishing. To benefit fully from the course, participants should already have a basic understanding of publishing practices and the book trades.
In their personal statements, applicants are requested to briefly state their interest in the field, current research projects, and topics or issues that they would particularly like the course to address. Over the course of the month, students will be expected to work in pairs on two course-related exercises as homework outside regular class time.
Students are also required to submit a resumé or C.V. which includes a list of prior completed RBS courses.
Course History
Faculty
Michael Winship
Michael Winship is Iris Howard Regents Professor of English II (emeritus) at the University of Texas at Austin and edited the final three volumes of the nine-volume Bibliography of American Literature. He is the author of American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields (1995) and has published widely on the nineteenth-century American book and publishing trades. He was an editor of and contributor to The Industrial Book, 1840–1880 and contributor to Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880–1940 (volumes 3 and 4 of A History of the Book in America), and served on that series’ editorial board.
Courses Formerly Offered
- Descriptive Bibliography, 1820–1914 (1989–1993)
- History of the American Book (1987–1988, with Edwin Wolf 2d)
- Bibliography of 19th-Century American Books (1986)
- Publishers’ Bindings, 1780–1910 (1984–1985, with Sue Allen)
- The 19th-Century Book (1983); The 19th-Century English & American Book (1984); Sources for the Study of the 19th-Century English & American Book (1985) | co-taught with Michael Turner