Drafts of history: the world in newspapers on a single day

Edited by Vaibhav Singh
With an introduction by Amelia Bonea

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Drafts of history: the world in newspapers on a single day

Edited by Vaibhav Singh
With an introduction by Amelia Bonea

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ABOUT THE BOOK

This book offers a visual catalogue of over 200 newspapers from around the world, largely of and around a single day, 10 March 1888. The collection presents a unique snapshot of the world in newspapers by documenting a nineteenth-century endeavour to create an international archive of the press on the occasion of the death of Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany.

The ‘Drafts of history’ project [see here] was formulated as a collective, archival response to create a corresponding record, a counter-archive, to the collection of newspapers from March 1888 presented in this volume. By documenting and illustrating this fascinating archive of newspapers from around the world, Drafts of history offers a rare glimpse of the visual design and the everyday readerly contexts of a bygone era. Bringing to life a specific moment in history, at the cusp of critical transformations in the world of newspapers, this volume also offers a timely invitation to reflect on collecting and exhibiting a centuries-old print medium in the age of digital media.

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FROM THE INTRODUCTION

Celebrating the digital should not distract our attention from the fact that [digital] archives, just like the physical ones before them, are products of certain historical and political circumstances.

  
Past newspapers can provide a sense of perspective not only because of their illustrative value, but also because they make us more aware of why the digital world we currently inhabit looks the way it looks. In this respect, old newspapers are important tools of media literacy and should feature high on the curricula of students of both the humanities and the sciences. 
  

AMELIA BONEA

is a researcher and historian working at the intersections of science, technology, medicine, and media. She has translated Japanese scholarship into English, written stories about history for younger audiences, and worked with artists to find new and exciting ways to bring historical research to a wider public.

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CONTENTS

Introduction
  
Amelia Bonea
  
The March 1888 collection of newspapers 

• Part 1 – America und Australien 
	(America and Australia)
• Part 2 – Europa: Staaten Germanischer Sprachen I 
	
Deutschland (Breußen)
	
(Europe: states with Germanic languages I )
• Part 3 – Europa: Staaten Germanischer Sprachen II 
	
Deutschland (ohne Breußen)
	
(Europe: states with Germanic languages II )
• Part 4 – Europa: Staaten Germanischer Sprachen III 
	
Schweden und Norwegen, Dänemark, Niederlande, England
	
(Europe: states with Germanic languages III )
• Part 5 – Europa: Staaten Romanischer Sprachen
	
Italien, Rumänien, Frankreich, Spanien, Portugal 
	
(Europe: states with Romance languages)
• Part 6 – Europa: Staaten mit mehreren gleichberechtigen Sprachen I 
	
Oesterreich-Ungarn
	
(Europe: states with several equal-status languages I )
• Part 7 – Europa: Staaten mit mehreren gleichberechtigen Sprachen II 
	
Belgien, Schweiz, Türkei
	
(Europe: states with several equal-status languages II )
• Part 8 – Europa: Staaten Slavischer Sprachen & Griechenland 
	
Rußland, Serbien, Griechenland
	
(Europe: states with Slavic languages & Greece)
• Part 9 – Asien und Africa
	(Asia and Africa)
    
Postscript
  
Vaibhav Singh
  
Index of newspapers

About the authors

List of contributors to the project

Acknowledgements

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FROM THE POSTSCRIPT

What if … [as] the ‘first rough draft of history’ [newspapers] were brought together once again, 132 years after the March 1888 collection? And then 150, or even 200 years later?

  
Only this time in a manner that could confront not only their dissipating materiality, their obscure and circuitous routes to survival, their selective recording of a specific moment in time, but also the whims, vagaries, or indeed matters of ordinary convenience (or extraordinary 
complications), questions of agency, individual/institutional/collective will, and the often-overlooked and inexplicable enthusiasms, or unresolved motivations, that accompany processes of collecting and archiving.

VAIBHAV SINGH

is an independent typographer, typeface designer, and researcher. He is the editor and publisher of Contextual Alternate: Journal of Communication, Technology, Design, and History.

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Highlights: Guangbao/Kwang Pao, one of China’s earliest native-owned newspapers, published from Guangzhou between 1886 and 1891, finds an issue preserved in this collection; Hamagid, the first Hebrew-language weekly newspaper, published from Lyck between 1856–1890 (two years before it moved to Berlin, then to Kraków, before closing down in 1903) is another title that survives 
in the collection. There are several other newspapers with distinguished histories, such as Bramborski Zaßnik from Cottbus, Brandenburg, the first newspaper to publish contributions in Lower Sorbian; or Denmark’s oldest continually operating newspaper Berlingske Politiske og Avertissements Tidende, which is one of the oldest newspapers in the world.
  

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£30.00

Paperback with flaps
288 pages · 170×240 mm
Full-colour illustrations

Quantity:

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