Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) formed in 1991 in the United States on the initiative of scholars Jonathan Rose, Simon Eliot, and others.

A major conference was held was at the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, July 14-16, 1994, where Center Director, John Y. Cole served as chair of the planning committee. Over two hundred book historians attended, and eighty-two papers were presented.

Its members study the history of books and the "composition, mediation, reception, survival, and transformation of written communication." The group maintains an electronic discussion list (SHARP-L), produces the academic journal Book History (est. 1998), and holds annual meetings. Membership consists mostly of British and American scholars.

SHARP Book History Prize
The SHARP Book History Book Prize recognizes the best book published on any aspect of the creation, dissemination, or uses of script or print.
 * 2024. Sebouh David Aslanian, Early Modernity and Mobility: Port Cities and Printers across the Armenian Diaspora, 1512-1800 (Yale University Press, 2023).
 * 2023. Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas (Harvard University Press, 2022), and Michelle R. Warren, Holy Digital Grail: A Medieval Book on the Internet (Stanford University Press, 2022).
 * 2022. Elizabeth McHenry, To Make Negro Literature: Writing, Literary Practice, and African American Authorship (Duke University Press, 2021).
 * 2021. Kathy Peiss, Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe (Oxford University Press, 2020)
 * 2020. Jeffrey T. Zalar, Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
 * 2019. Brent Nongbri, God’s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts (Yale University Press, 2018).
 * 2018. Eric Marshall White, Editio Princeps: A History of the Gutenberg Bible (Brepols, 2017).

SHARP Annual Bibliography

 * SHARP Annual Bibliography 2023


 * 2022 Annual Bibliography