46th Annual Conference on Book Trade History | Books at War: The Book Trades in Times of Conflict

46th Annual Conference on Book Trade History
Books at War: The Book Trades in Times of Conflict


23 and 24 November 2025
Stationers' Hall, Ave Maria Lane, London, EC4M 7DD

The book trade has often had to adapt to the external pressures of international trade disputes and wars. Conflicts can restrict the movement of people and books, prompt books to be moved for their own protection, provide opportunities for looting, and change the spending habits of book-buyers. At the same time, reading and buying books can offer an escape from the horrors of war, both at the front lines and on the home front. This conference explores how booksellers, publishers, librarians have responded to conflicts, and how wars have shaped the fates of books ranging from medieval manuscripts to twentieth-century publications.

Speakers:
Pierre Delsaerdt is professor at the University of Antwerp and part-time professor at KU Leuven. Among other things, he teaches on book and library history and on the history of the Low Countries. His research focuses on the design of early printed books and on the history of libraries and bibliophily, especially in the Southern Low Countries in the early modern period and the nineteenth century. Recent publications include a monograph, with Elly Cockx-Indestege, on the book-collecting activities of the Arenberg family (Brepols, 2022).
Christine Ferdinand is Emeritus Fellow Librarian, Magdalen College Oxford. Most of her research is on the eighteenth-century book and newspaper trade—particularly the personnel—and her current big project is a biography of James Rivington.
Valerie Holman is an art historian and freelance writer whose publications include Book Publishing in England, 1939-45 (2008) and Peter Gregory: Publisher and Patron of Modern British Artists (2024.) Her research centres on the constantly changing interface between art history and book history.
Kristian Jensen was Head of Collections and Curation at the British Library until 2021. He has published on book history and the history of the book trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, often with a focus on the interaction between commercial requirements and the needs and expectations of users. He has also published on the social function of historic books and on the trade in them, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Giles Mandelbrote is Librarian and Director of Collections at the Warburg Institute. His research focuses on the early modern book trade, one aspect of which is their use of printed catalogues. He is the editor of volume 2 of the Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland.
Andrew Pettegree, CBE, is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews. He has written extensively on the history of communication, and is Director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue, a global survey of printed material published before 1701.
Jane Potter is Reader in Arts at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. Her research and teaching focus on the literature of the First World War and Book History. Her publications include A Cambridge History of World War I Poetry (2023) and The Selected Letters of Wilfred Owen (2023).  
Peter Sjökvist is Associate Professor of Latin at Uppsala University and Rare Books Librarian at Uppsala University. His publications include a number of monographs and articles on Neo-Latin poetry, early modern dissertations and books as spoils of war in Swedish history. He is also the curator of the eighteenth-century manor house library of Leufstabruk.

Conference fees

• Standard 2-days: £110
• Student 2-days: £70
• Single-day: £70
• Student single-day: £40