Name: The D. F. McKenzie Memorial Lecture 2025: Judging a book by its cover — with David Pearson
Start: 2025-01-29T18:00:00+13:00
End: 2025-01-29T20:00:00+13:00
Location: Corner Molesworth and Aitken Streets, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand 6011

$The D. F. McKenzie Memorial Lecture 2025: Judging a book by its cover \u2014 with David Pearson$

Join us for the 2025 D. F. McKenzie Memorial Lecture featuring David Pearson, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. This illustrated lecture will delve into the hidden stories within book bindings, revealing how these often-overlooked elements provide unique insights into the lives of books and their owners.
Join us at the Library or online. Register for a Zoom link: https://dia-nz.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wNEYnwhVQKC7nhzNSZdobQ#/registration
Bookbindings and their stories
Why might we be interested in bookbindings on old books? Collectors and librarians have traditionally valued them if they are luxury objects or works of art, but that approach leaves behind the majority of more ordinary-looking books that the past has bequeathed to us.
In fact, every binding can tell a story. At a time when we are increasingly interested in the ways that books were owned, used, read and regarded, we need to look at bindings as part of the whole tale that any book can individually and uniquely tell.
This talk will explore the interest of bindings from various angles, and consider examples that can be found in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
D. F. McKenzie Memorial Lecture
This annual lecture honours the life and work of the distinguished bibliographer, teacher, and outstanding international scholar, Don McKenzie. He was Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington, served on the Trustees of the National Library, and was a long-time member of the Friends of the Turnbull Library. This lecture series was established by Don’s friends and colleagues after his untimely death in 1999, and is co-hosted by Wai-te-ata Press, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington, which Don founded in 1962.
About the speaker
David Pearson retired in 2017 after a professional career of 35 years or so working in various major research libraries in London and elsewhere. He has published extensively on aspects of book history, with a particular interest in the book as an owned and designed object. Pearson’s books include Oxford Bookbinding 1500–1640 (2000), English Bookbinding Styles 1450–1800 (2005), Books as History (2008), Provenance Research in Book History (2019), and Book Ownership in Stuart England (2021).