This thesis primarily presents a descriptive bibliography of the works printed by or for Denis Janot, a Parisian printer who operated between 1529 and 1544. Much in the bibliography is owed to the work of Renouard now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, but I have tried to re-examine every known copy of every book, and have found some fifty or more editions apparently not known to Renouard, or not ascribed by him to Janot. Appendices of works possibly connected with Janot follow the bibliography. The bibliography is the source of most of the conclusions drawn in the chapters preceding it. After an introduction outlining the aims and methods of the bibliography, Chapter One discusses Janot's career, drawing on the evidence of his books, suggesting that it may be divided into four periods, and tracing Janot's development from a bookseller to a fairly orthodox printer of vernacular books to an artist who applied the aesthetic standards of the best humanist printers to the printing of French. Chapter Two examines Janot's printing materials, dealing aainly with those dating from and after 1534, when Janot began his independent career. Chapter Three considers the Amadis de Gaule romance and Janot's editions of its first five books. Treatment of critical reactions to the work is followed by a bibliographical analysis of Janot's editions. Using also the evidence of the contracts between translator and printer, the chronology of Janot's edition is established. Conclusions are then drawn about the nature of the work's reception by the reading public. The first appendix to the text contains two documents drawn from Janot's books, while the second contains a short account of the life of Nicolas de Herberay, translator of the Aniadis, and the documents discussed in Chapter Three.

This dissertation is an investigation into the social history of British Library Manuscript Additional 35157 (hereafter Add.35157), which is a late fourteenth-century copy of William Langland's alliterative poem Piers Plowman. Part one contains the text of the dissertation. In chapter 1 a general outline of the dissertation is provided and some bibliographical issues relating to the identification of Add.35157 are discussed. Chapter 2 proposes that the knowledge of a manuscript's provenance is itself a legitimate goal of research. Chapter 2 also provides a sample exercise in manuscript research using a copy of John Lydgate's poem Life of Our Lady from the University of Glasgow's Hunterian Collection. Chapter 3 forwards a classification system for manuscript marginalia and explains how some of the classification arose. Chapter 4 discusses issues related to the codicology of Add.35157, suggests a new date for the manuscript's construction, discusses the work of its scribes and provides several new catalogue descriptions of the manuscript. Chapters 5 through 8 analyse the contributions and detail the biographies of four of Add.35157's owners or commentators. Chapter 9 concludes that there is much to be learned from the continued study of the social history of medieval manuscripts. Part two comprises fourteen appendices, includes an edition of Add.35157's marginal supply, surveys of its dialect, transcriptions of its text and reproductions of selected folios.

This Ph.D. by Publication comprises my short story collection, Any Other Mouth, along with a reflective and critical exegesis, which examines what I have termed the hybrid memoir. The term describes memoiristic texts that contain significant transgressions from the conventional memoir genre. As well as discussing the definition and its implications, this exegesis demonstrates that Any Other Mouth represents an original contribution to knowledge in the way that it engages and experiments with the hybrid memoir form. In Part One, I define the term hybrid memoir, and explain why my definition differs to that of author/academic Natalia Rachel Singer, who in 2004 was the first person to suggest a definition for the term. With reference to Chris N. van der Merwe and Hein Viljoen (2007) and Vanessa Guignery (Eds. Guignery, Pesso-Miquel, & Specq, 2011), I discuss hybridity as a literary concept, and state that texts that occupy ‘liminal’ spaces can be transformative. By way of contrast, I clarify what is meant by a conventional (non-hybrid) memoir, using a definition by Thomas G. Couser (2011). I mention the problems encountered in producing the hybrid memoir definition, but argue that in spite of such complexities, I believe the term to be a useful tool for thinking about certain texts. In Part Two, I discuss the rising popularity of hybrid memoirs, using David Shield’s (2011) Reality Hunger: A Manifesto as a starting point. I note the limitations of Shield’s work, but propose that it nonetheless provides a key resource in my discussion. I describe some of the significant transgressions from the conventional memoir genre that take place in Any Other Mouth, and also Dave Eggers’s (2007) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and David Vann’s (2009) Legend of a Suicide. I explain that these works provide helpful comparisons to my own book, due to their hybrid forms and their explorations of filial bereavement. In relation to all three texts, I examine how the hybrid memoir provides authors with new opportunities for self-expression. Building on research carried out by Leigh Gilmore (2001), Elise Miller (2011), and Katarzyna Małecka (2015), I look at how trauma caused by filial bereavement can manifest in the hybrid memoir at a structural and linguistic level. I explore how hybrid memoirs can enable bereaved authors to effectively portray their emotions, and posit that the writing process can help transform grief. The exegesis concludes by using Patricia Leavy’s (2014) text Method Meets Art to establish why I view my creative work as a practice-based methodology, and I discuss how my creative practice continues to engage with my research. After emphasising how important writing Any Other Mouth has been for me, I explain the limitations of my research, and identify areas where further research could be undertaken by others in the field.

The aim of this study is to understand the operational practices of copyright exploitation and protection from the perspective of the Scottish publishing industry. The study begins with a historical overview of the development of copyright legislation in the United Kingdom, which helps to build a theoretical framework to understand copyright. The study then explores the contemporary publishing environment and details the progression of rights exploitation within the publishing industry. It analyses how the historical development of copyright informs contemporary practices, particularly the role of globalisation, new technologies, ‘piracy', and the Romantic notion of authorship in shaping copyright legislation. Furthermore, this research charts the professionalisation of authorship, which helps to build a case of contemporary Scottish authors. These issues are elucidated with a multi-method analysis of the Scottish publishing industry, and its approach to copyright exploitation and protection. As the focus of the empirical research is the Scottish publishing industry it has been contextualised within national and international copyright development and discourse. The key issues from the review of literature are explored in the context of the Scottish publishing industry through interviews and questionnaires with key players. Consequently, this thesis argues that copyright exists to promote and protect the interests of the triadic relationship between the author, the publisher and the public and, as such, the interests of each party should be considered equally. The empirical research found that the majority of Scottish publishers, authors and literary agents are not fostering intellectual property rights effectively across international markets and new media: The failure to do this means that the operational practices of the Scottish publishing industry are not in harmony with the burgeoning digital publishing environment. If Scottish publishers and literary agents continue with current practices it will become increasingly difficult for them to compete in the national and international publishing environment. Digital publishing has been considered as a panacea to bridge the gaps between different sized publishing companies: allowing small, independent companies to compete on an equal footing with cross-media conglomerates. However, this study has found that Scottish publishers and literary agents are not capitalising on new technology and new platforms for dissemination: this is detrimental to the authors they represent. This study found that Scottish authors' earnings were insufficient so fostering their rights more effectively could help supplement their income. This study concludes that only by better training, education and knowledge exchange, in matters of rights exploitation and digital publishing, can Scottish publishing compete in the international arena and contribute to, and benefit financially from, the knowledge economy. This study impacts all the key stakeholders in the Scottish publishing industry, and other regional publishing industries, by addressing gaps in the literature and highlighting the shortcomings of inefficient operational practices, and provides recommendations to improve these practices.

There has recently been a lack of judicial confidence in the evidence provided by handwriting analysis which has highlighted the need for objective research to be conducted in this area. In response this study has examined the principles and practices of two of the field’s most complex areas of analysis: disguised and artificially assisted (traced) handwriting. Any claims and observations made in the literature have been reviewed and empirically tested. A body of controlled data was collected from sixty volunteers who produced samples of disguised handwriting and traced signatures. A rigorous examination of these samples has been described and quantitative evidence found to support the conclusion that the act of disguising or tracing handwriting will have a negative influence upon the appearance and structure of that writing. Results have shown that disguised and traced writings are intimately related in that they share common characteristics that are indicative of the artificial manner by which they have been produced. Other features are also identified that can be directly associated with specific types of deviant writing to allow for distinctions to be made between them. The analysis is expressed in the form of a comprehensive taxonomy of the distinctive features of deviant writing.

Thomas Morley’s family background in Norwich and his later life in London placed him amongst the educated, urban, middle classes. Rising literacy and improving standards of living in English cities helped to develop a society in which amateur music-making became a significant leisure activity, providing a market of consumers for printed recreational music. His visit to the Low Countries in 1591 allowed him to see at first hand a thriving music printing business. Two years later he set out to achieve an income from his own music, initially by publishing collections of light, English-texted, madrigalian vocal works. He broadened his activities by obtaining a monopoly for printed music in 1598 and then by entering into a partnership with William Barley to print music. Unfortunately Morley died too soon to reap the full financial benefit of what appears to have been a profitable business. Whilst Morley’s personal ambitions were curtailed by his early death, his publishing activities and the model he provided for contemporary composers led to the creation of a substantial body of nearly one hundred and seventy editions and reprints of music suitable for domestic performance, many of which continued to be used for many years.

This thesis is about networks in seventeenth-century England: the making and re-shaping of networks of people and texts, and the ways in which they evolved and transformed. It focuses on the manuscripts collected by Dr Thomas Plume (1630-1704), vicar of Greenwich and archdeacon of Rochester, who left them with a substantial body of books and pamphlets to the Library he endowed in Maldon. They take the form of notebooks and papers complied by a number of different clergymen, in particular Dr Robert Boreman (d.1675) and Dr Edward Hyde (1607-1659), in addition to Plume. The significance of the research lies in its reconstruction of the intellectual lives of the middle-status loyalist clergy through their handwritten texts. The research intervenes into debates about the nature and status of the manuscript form in an age of print and asks why these texts were left with the Library. The content and material form of these notebooks and papers evidence the reading and writing practices of the middle-status clergy, and the ways they were able to use their positions to influence and persuade on local and national levels. The main sections of the thesis encompass: a critical analysis of the manuscript collection; an examination of why the manuscripts were created and re-used; an appraisal of themes of identity, memorial, and legacy reflected within them; and the relationship between the handwritten items and printed books. This thesis argues that these seemingly-ephemeral texts were in fact the ‘heart’ of Plume’s library collection, representing a network of clergymen whose commitment to each other’s work extended as far as if they had been related by blood. Their working papers symbolised a memorial to their scholarship, saved for posterity under the shadow of destruction and loss during the Civil Wars.

The basis of this study is a close examination of the manuscripts which, in their decoration and illustration, form a stylistic group around the Book of Hours/Missal, Paris, B.N. Latin 757. Those painted in the same style are fr.343, Smith-Lesouef 22, n.a.lat.1673, Latin 8045, all in the Biblioth'que Nationale, and.s.2.3l (Latin 862) in the Biblioteca Estense, Modena. Two other manuscripts which are less closely related to this central group, Paris, B.N. n.a.fr .5243 and Munich Staatsbibliothek Latin 23215, are also discussed. Details of the decoration have made possible the identification of the original owner of two of the Books of Hours, Latin 757 and Smith-Lesouf 22, as Bertrando de' Rossi, conte di San Secondo (c.1346-1396), and of the romance Guiron le Courtois, n.a.fr .5243, as Bernab Visconti. Some aspects both of the finished painting and of the distribution of work in the unfinished manuscripts indicate that these books were the product of collaboration between more than one painter. The division of work however, is usually by process and not by unit and the essential characteristics of the style seem to be dependent upon one artist. Previously the manuscripts in the style of Latin 757 have all been dated to c.1380. Here the sequence in which they were decorated between c.1383 to c.1395 is established. These books are the earliest group of Lombard manuscrits-de-luxe to have survived. This style seems to have evolved in response to the demand for luxury books from the Milanese court. It is suggested here that the interest in illuminated books of Bernab? Visconti and his court may have been more influential than the later and, as far as it is known, restricted patronage of his nephew Giangaleazzo and that, correspondingly, Milan had ascendancy over Pavia as a centre for book-production at the end of the fourteenth century.

This thesis aims to establish an impression of the readership and reception of Benedict Burgh’s Middle English Distichs of Cato. The intended outcome of this research is to demonstrate the layer(s) of society in which the text was read and the ways in which it was presented by scribes and marked by its readers. Presentation and annotation are viewed as the best way of identifying the esteem and attention paid to the Distichs and thus of evaluating its cultural importance. These research goals are therefore achieved through examination of the Distichs’ manuscript contexts. The first chapter delineates the text’s background as a translation of a late Classical Latin original, heavily used in primary education throughout Europe both for its practical advice and its suitability for teaching basic Latin grammar. The chapter discusses the authorship of the Latin Disticha Catonis, the translator of the Middle English version under investigation, and the medieval theories of translation and authorial ‘authority’ which impact on the nature of Burgh’s translation efforts. The second and third chapters focus on specific manuscripts, collating and discussing information on their contents, the circumstances of their production, and the likely audience for which they were produced. In chapter two, British Library MSS. Harley 7333 and Harley 2251 are examined in light of their relationship to the miscellanies of fifteenth-century secretarial clerk, John Shirley. Through examination of the likely audience of Shirley’s manuscripts and the nature of other volumes copied from them, it is argued that manuscripts such as the two Harley volumes are likely to have been owned by members of the gentry and/or the literate ‘middle class’ of clerks and merchants. Chapter three focusses on Glasgow, University Library MS. Hunter 259 and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Eng. poet. e.15, both of which are in the hand of the Carthusian monk Stephen Dodesham. Dodesham was resident at the Charterhouse of Sheen, which had strong connections to neighbouring Bridgettine nunnery, Syon Abbey. This chapter considers the possibility that these manuscripts were made for Syon nuns but, through comparison with other comparable Distichs volumes, also suggests that their audience may have lain more in the network of pious lay patrons surrounding Sheen and Syon. The members of this patronage milieu were predominately from the gentry, and thus overlapped with the audience of the Harley volumes. Chapter four considers patterns of presentation and use of the manuscripts across the group to support the gentry/middle-class audience established in chapters two and three, and to draw a general picture of the Distichs’ reception by this audience. This includes establishing that both male and female readership was common, and that the dissemination of the text may have been aided by close association with the poetry of John Lydgate. Selection/excerption of stanzas for copying, annotation of particular stanzas, and evidence of wear on the manuscripts are presented as evidence that medieval readers did engage with the text, and continued to value it as previous centuries had valued the Latin source text. A concluding chapter summarises the main points of the argument, and offers directions for future research.

This thesis describes interpretative ideographic research using differences from a longitudinal questionnaire poll of the Information Systems (IS) development community of Hong Kong to identify those practitioners' organisations which are quickly adapting to changes in their environments. A maturity model of IS development practice, which is the main contribution of this research, was derived from the IS development literature. A number of case studies of the quickly adapting organisations in Hong Kong have been carried out with the intention of verifying the construct and utility of this model. The model examines an organisation's IS development practice through a number of dimensions. The dimensions are formed into the acronym AMMUS. The first such dimension is the degree of automation in the practice. Next is the sophistication of the methodologies deployed by the practitioners discerned from the rigour of application of the methodology, the form of the sequence in which stages of the development process may be visited and the paradigms on which the methodology is based. Another dimension of the model is the concern of the practitioners for measuring the quality and effectiveness of their work. User involvement is the next dimension and the way in which this is practised is arranged in a sequence. Finally, the scope of the problems normally tackled and the stages of the problem solving process are posited as useful dimensions for assessing the practice. The model has been found to be resilient and useful. It has been discovered that the use of certain of the dimensions of the model must be tempered with knowledge of additional factors. However, the model is found to be a useful tool for indicating to IS development management where their attentions are most likely to yield significant benefits.