The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing was created in 1991 to provide a global network for book historians, who until then had usually worked in isolation. SHARP now has over 1000 members in over 20 countries, including professors of literature, historians, librarians, publishing professionals, sociologists, bibliophiles, classicists, booksellers, art historians, reading instructors, and independent scholars. Each year SHARP holds an annual conference that brings many of these scholars together for stimulating discussion of an enormously wide range of issues.
