Rawles, Stephen

PERSONAL:

Male. Education: University of Warwick, Ph.D., 1976.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Glasgow University Library, Room 722, Hillhead St., Glasgow G12 8QE, Scotland. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Glasgow University Library, Glasgow, Scotland, principal assistant librarian for arts and humanities.

MEMBER:

Society for French Studies, Society for Emblem Studies, Bibliographical Society, Glasgow University Library Studies (member of board of management).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Honorary research fellow, Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute, University of Glasgow.

WRITINGS:

(With M.A. Screech) A New Rabelais Bibliography: Editions of Rabelais to 1626, Droz (Geneva, Switzerland), 1987.

(With Alison Adams and Alison Saunders) A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Droz (Geneva, Switzerland), Volume 1, 1999, Volume 2, 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stephen Rawles is an expert in the subject of sixteenth-century French printing, and he brought his knowledge to A New Rabelais Bibliography: Editions of Rabelais to 1626, which he wrote with M.A. Screech. Documenting the publishing history of the French satirist Rabelais is difficult because his controversial work was frequently censored or printed surreptitiously. Screech and Rawles "present interesting examples" of cases of censorship and counterfeit publishing in their book, which is a "significant contribution by British scholars to the publishing history of sixteenth-century French authors," stated David J. Shaw in the Modern Language Review. The work prompted I.D. McFarlane to write in the Times Literary Supplement, "We shall have to wait a long time before a venture of this distinction is equalled, let alone surpassed."

Emblem books are those which combine text and images to express a particular message. The two-volume work A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, which Rawles wrote with Alison Adams and Alison Saunders, is "an exemplary example of bibliographic scholarship and will be invaluable to anyone working on emblem books or related genres," claimed Mary V. Silcox in the Sixteenth Century Journal. Reviewing the reference work in Modern Language Studies, Jennifer Britnell called it "a hugely valuable tool of research, indispensable to all scholars concerned with emblems, and indeed of immense use to anyone interested in early-modern printing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

French Studies, July, 2000, review of A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Volume 1, p. 344.

London Review of Books, March 2, 1989, review of A New Rabelais Bibliography: Editions of Rabelais to 1626, p. 14.

Modern Language Review, April, 2002, Jennifer Britnell, review of A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, p. 423; January, 1990, review of A New Rabelais Bibliography, p. 178.

Renaissance Quarterly, winter, 2001, Sandra Sider, review of A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, winter, 2001, p. 1574.

Sixteenth Century Journal, fall, 2000, Mary V. Silcox, review of A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Volume 1, p. 843.

Times Literary Supplement, June 16, 1989, review of A New Rabelais Bibliography, p. 676; January 17, 2003, review of A Bibliography of French Emblem Books, Volume 2, p. 28.