ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Written Lives in Printed Time: Rethinking the Use and Function of Almanacs in Early Modern Poland–Lithuania

• In Event: Recasting the History of Almanacs 1

English Abstract

Who used almanacs in early modern Poland-Lithuania and for what purposes? One way to answer this question is to consider the thousands of extant almanacs with annotations. When readers annotated their almanacs, many of which were interleaved with blank sheets for this purpose, they transformed printed commodities into hybrid repositories that combined practical information, personal observation, and household administration. Previous scholarship has primarily treated calendars as printed objects for distribution and consumption, focusing, for instance, on their astronomical, religious, and prognostic content rather than their user annotations and their implications for understanding the genre. Building on work that considers annotated almanacs as forms of life-writing in early modern Europe, I identify and examine almanacs for evidence of active writers rather than passive readers. I consider how these inscribed objects functioned within the wider context of household techniques of producing and recording knowledge. Through examining distinct inscribed ‘lives’, this paper reveals how almanacs transcended their function as printed commodities to become dynamic household knowledge repositories that served diverse communities across the social and confessional spectrum of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Author

• Jakub Ochocinski, EUI