Ladislav Futtera
‘Books Marked with an Asterisk Are Enthusiastically Recommended to Readers’: The Bibliographic Journal as a Tool for Cultivating the Czech Book Market
This article examines the bibliographic monthly journal Věstník bibliografický (1869–1876) and its direct successor, Urbánkův věstník bibliografický (1880–1883). While Věstník bibliographický was published by the larger publishing house of Ignác Leopold Kober, its editor František Augustin Urbánek took the role of an independent arbiter whose job was to evaluate the strategies of individual agents on the book market. Looking at issues of the journal from the beginning of the 1880s onward, we find an intensification of efforts to legitimize this independence, in particular by clarifying the distinction between art criticism and print advertising. These wide-ranging efforts to cultivate higher standards then turned to the condemnation of 'bloody novels'. It is in this way that––at least in this case––Věstník bibliographický, a magazine which coordinated and relayed similar expressions from other periodicals, become a universally recognized arbiter of the Czech book market.
Keywords: book market - František Augustin Urbánek - Věstník bibliographický
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