Bound to waste paper: An exploration of printed and manuscript waste in early American Books

• In Event: Online Lightning Talks

Abstract

Bear, fox, skunk, raccoon, and muskrat bones. Earthenware vessels and ceramics in shards. Tobacco pipes. Clam and mussel shells. These are the typical contents of an 18th–century trash pit from New England. But there never any books. Instead printed waste was part of the larger ecosystem of 18th century printing, binding, and bookselling. It made up the bindings of many
17th and 18th century books, just as it makes the very stuff of life around us. By engaging with waste studies and the study of early American archives, this talk looks at printed waste in early American bookbinding and catalogs the many uses of printed waste in early American bookbinding, including printed waste from Bibles in Indigenous languages and booksellers’ accounts that reveal examples of wastepaper being sold members of the book community. Mary Douglas has said that dirt is “matter out of place” while Slavoj Zizek has said that erasing trash from our lives is part of the ideological work of capitalism. These early bindings are one example from one period in time (before recycling in the 20th or e-readers, whose extracted and toxic minerals fill waste heaps in the 21st) that help us to see the full cycle of production and consumption in one object.

Author

• Ashley Cataldo, American Antiquarian Society