Books in their Elements: Print Culture in the Age of Climate Change

Lecture 1 – Plants, politics and print in South Africa: Botany and buried books – Smuts, Gandhi and Mandela

Monday 27 October, 18.30

While on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela and his comrades established a small vegetable garden to supplement their spare diet. The garden doubled as an underground archive where the manuscript of Mandela’s autobiography was buried in cocoa tins. Warders discovered this literary cache but not before a full version of the autobiography had been smuggled out.

This story inaugurates the first lecture in this series as well as its larger themes. What does it mean to immerse the dry, indoor technology of the book in the elements, both actually and analytically? What can we learn by tracking books that are buried, burned or drowned? How can we conceptualize books and reading in relation to other elements whether animal, vegetable and mineral?

Taking a southern African perspective, this lecture revisits three major figures: Smuts (a part-time botanist), Gandhi (a sometime farmer) and Mandela (a keen gardener). In each case, we focus on a plant and an associated book linked to each person. What broader insights might such stories of plant and print provide into literary and book histories?

The lecture is presented by Isabel Hofmeyr.

Lecture 2 – Insects, colonial archives and postcolonial book history

Thursday 30 October, 18.30

Traditionally a ‘dry’ discipline little concerned with ecocritical themes, book history has started to engage with environmental humanities. This lecture joins this trend by tracking books and documents in the damp air of colonial archives – along with the insects which inhabited them, and the fumigants which followed.

This lecture explores how the intersection of insect, paper and chemicals relates to literary form and questions of book history. I explore these themes in three steps: first we track how colonial states undertook fumigation in archives and then read two ‘texts’. The first is a South African short story by Herman Charles Bosman, ‘White Ant’; the second arises from pieces of worm-eaten and fumigated wood from Westminster Hall that were distributed to museums across the dominions in the early twentieth century.

The lecture is presented by Isabel Hofmeyr.

Lecture 3 – Dried plants and print: Herbaria and African herbalists

Monday 3 November, 18.30

The growing field of the plant humanities urges us to shift from plant life (in the abstract) to actual and material plant lives. Taking this advice, this lecture asks how plants could feature as players and protagonists in stories of print.

We focus on one species, Commelina africana, idangabane in isiZulu, a perennial, spreading herb, indigenous to southern Africa, widely recognized for its medicinal properties. We examine the textual and archival lives of this species by focusing on two instances: a popular medicinal pamphlet, and a set of herbarium sheets.

In each case, idangabane/Commelina africana is invoked not only as a symbol but also for its material characteristics. This feature is most obvious in the herbarium sheets where the actual plant is present (while also standing as a ‘symbol’ of its species). In the pamphlet, the plant is invoked not only as a metaphor but also for its particular morphology, characteristics and biochemistry. In conclusion, I turn to my own artistic practice of botanical contact printing and discuss examples from a recent exhibition held in Johannesburg where the biochemistry of the plant plays a key role in the design and outcome of the prints.

The lecture is presented by Isabel Hofmeyr.

The lecture will run until 19.30, with a reception to follow for in-person attendees.

Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand and was Global Distinguished Professor at New York University from 2013 to 2022. She has worked extensively on print culture and book history and has combined these with environmental and oceanic themes. Recent publications include Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House (2022) and a co-edited special issue on “Reading for Water” in Interventions 24 (3) 2022.

This event will take place in the British Library Knowledge Centre and is also available to watch online. Tickets may be booked to attend in person, or to watch online. 

Due to venue capacity, in person tickets are restricted to a maximum of two per booking.

If you are attending in person, please note that the Knowledge Centre will be open from 18.00. 

Please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event. If you have specific access requirements please email customer@bl.uk

This event will take place in the British Library Knowledge Centre and is also available to watch online. Tickets may be booked to attend in person, or to watch online. 

If you book an online ticket, you will receive the viewing link on the morning of the event. You can either watch the event live or during the next 7 days on catch up.

The Panizzi Lectures are a series of annual lectures based on original research by an eminent scholar of the book. The lecture series is named after Anthony Panizzi, former Principal Librarian of the British Museum. They have been delivered annually since 1985.

The Panizzi Foundation was established in 1982, following a donation by Mrs Catherine Devas to establish a Trust Fund whose income could be used to meet the costs of public lectures. The Trust states that the lectures should be 'on a subject pertaining to bibliography whether concerning the subjects of palaeography, codicology, typography, bookbinding, book illustration, music, cartography, historical critical and analytical bibliography, or any subject relating directly or indirectly to any of the above subjects'. It further states that 'the lecturer should be chosen for his or her high level of scholarship and should base the lectures on original research'.