The Art and History of Books by
Norma Laverie traces the history of book design and formats against a background of the changing patrons and producers of books, the movements of social and political history, the state of the arts, the growth and conflicts of religion, the fresh contacts of trade and the development of technology.
The Book by
A concise edition of the highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to the Book, this book features the 51 articles from the Companion plus 3 brand new chapters in one affordable volume. The 54 chapters introduce readers to the fascinating world of book history. Including 21 thematic studies on topicssuch as writing systems, the ancient and the medieval book, and the economics of print, as well as 33 regional and national histories of "the book", offering a truly global survey of the book around the world, the Oxford History of the Book is the most comprehensive work of its kind. The three newarticles, specially commissioned for this spin-off, cover censorship, copyright and intellectual property, and book history in the Caribbean and Bermuda.All essays are illustrated throughout with reproductions, diagrams, and examples of various typographical features.Beautifully produced and hugely informative, this is a must-have for anyone with an interest in book history and the written word.
Medieval Texts and Images by 
A New Introduction to Bibliography by 
Studying Early Printed Books, 1450-1800 by
A comprehensive resource to understanding the hand-press printing of early books Studying Early Printed Books, 1450 - 1800 offers a guide to the fascinating process of how books were printed in the first centuries of the press and shows how the mechanics of making books shapes how we read and understand them. The author offers an insightful overview of how books were made in the hand-press period and then includes an in-depth review of the specific aspects of the printing process. She addresses questions such as: How was paper made? What were different book formats? How did the press work? In addition, the text is filled with illustrative examples that demonstrate how understanding the early processes can be helpful to today's researchers. Studying Early Printed Books shows the connections between the material form of a book (what it looks like and how it was made), how a book conveys its meaning and how it is used by readers. The author helps readers navigate books by explaining how to tell which parts of a book are the result of early printing practices and which are a result of later changes. The text also offers guidance on: how to approach a book; how to read a catalog record; the difference between using digital facsimiles and books in-hand. This important guide: Reveals how books were made with the advent of the printing press and how they are understood today Offers information on how to use digital reproductions of early printed books as well as how to work in a rare books library Contains a useful glossary and a detailed list of recommended readings Includes a companion website for further research Written for students of book history, materiality of text and history of information, Studying Early Printed Books explores the many aspects of the early printing process of books and explains how their form is understood today.
Divine Art, Infernal Machine by
There is a longstanding confusion of Johann Fust, Gutenberg's one-time business partner, with the notorious Doctor Faustus. The association is not surprising to Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, for from its very early days the printing press was viewed by some as black magic. For the most part, however, it was welcomed as a "divine art" by Western churchmen and statesmen. Sixteenth-century Lutherans hailed it for emancipating Germans from papal rule, and seventeenth-century English radicals viewed it as a weapon against bishops and kings. While an early colonial governor of Virginia thanked God for the absence of printing in his colony, a century later, revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic paid tribute to Gutenberg for setting in motion an irreversible movement that undermined the rule of priests and kings. Yet scholars continued to praise printing as a peaceful art. They celebrated the advancement of learning while expressing concern about information overload. In Divine Art, Infernal Machine, Eisenstein, author of the hugely influential The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, has written a magisterial and highly readable account of five centuries of ambivalent attitudes toward printing and printers. Once again, she makes a compelling case for the ways in which technological developments and cultural shifts are intimately related. Always keeping an eye on the present, she recalls how, in the nineteenth century, the steam press was seen both as a giant engine of progress and as signaling the end of a golden age. Predictions that the newspaper would supersede the book proved to be false, and Eisenstein is equally skeptical of pronouncements of the supersession of print by the digital. The use of print has always entailed ambivalence about serving the muses as opposed to profiting from the marketing of commodities. Somewhat newer is the tension between the perceived need to preserve an ever-increasing mass of texts against the very real space and resource constraints of bricks-and-mortar libraries. Whatever the multimedia future may hold, Eisenstein notes, our attitudes toward print will never be monolithic. For now, however, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.
The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe by
Although the importance of the advent of printing for Western civilisation has long been recognised, it was Professor Eisenstein, in her monumental, two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, who provided the first full-scale treatment of the subject. This illustrated and abridged edition of Professor Eisenstein's study gives a stimulating survey of the communications revolution of the fifteenth century. It begins with a discussion of the general implications of the introduction of printing, and then explores how the shift from script to print entered into the three major movements of early modern times: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.
William Caxton and Early Printing in England by
William Caxton (1415~22-92) laid the foundations of publishing in England--he not only introduced the printing press to England, but was also the first English book retailer. In 1473 he printed Britain's first book--Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye--and thus established the printing and book industry in the country. His best known publications are Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Golden Legend, and Malory's Morte D'Arthur. He also translated historical works and romances and wrote prefaces to his books. As publisher of more than one hundred publications, Caxton established a new readership for major works in English. William Caxton and Early Printing in England takes a fresh approach to the first sixty years of printing in England by placing Caxton, his contemporaries, and other early publishers in the broad context of the history of book production between the middle of the fifteenth century and the Reformation. Although many of the early printers in England, Caxton included, had experience of the nascent printing industry in Europe--notably the French, German, and Dutch printers--printing and publishing in England quickly developed a unique character of its own. This readable and highly illustrated account is a fascinating history of the birth and growth of an industry with a very significant place in British history.
What Is a Book? by
Joseph A. Dane's What Is a Book? is an introduction to the study of books produced during the period of the hand press, dating from around 1450 through 1800. Using his own bibliographic interests as a guide, Dane selects illustrative examples primarily from fifteenth-century books, books of particular interest to students of English literature, and books central to the development of Anglo-American bibliography. Part I of What Is a Book? covers the basic procedures of printing and the parts of the physical book--size, paper, type, illustration; Part II treats the history of book-copies--from cataloging conventions and provenance to electronic media and their implications for the study of books. Dane begins with the central distinction between a "book-copy"--the particular, individual, physical book--and a "book"--the abstract category that organizes these copies into editions, whereby each copy is interchangeable with any other. Among other issues, Dane addresses such basic questions as: How do students, bibliographers, and collectors discuss these things? And when is it legitimate to generalize on the basis of particular examples? Dane considers each issue in terms of a practical example or question a reader might confront: How do you identify books on the basis of typography? What is the status of paper evidence? How are the various elements on the page defined? What are the implications of the images available in an online database? And, significantly, how does a scholar's personal experience with books challenge or conform to the standard language of book history and bibliography? Dane's accessible and lively tour of the field is a useful guide for all students of book history, from the beginner to the specialist. "Written with wit and acuity, Joseph A. Dane's What Is a Book? extends his project of teaching aspects of book history to the specialist and nonspecialist reader alike. Both will be stimulated and provoked by what Dane writes, and will also enjoy his arguments and admire the breadth and depth of his knowledge." --Henry Woudhuysen, University College London
A Short History of the Printed Word by
This work makes plain the evolution, impact and development of the printed word as we know it. Covering the earliest forms of the letters of the alphabet, to graphic technology today, this revised edition should appeal to designers, students and typophiles.
Five Hundred Years of Printing by
This classic is now available again in a finely illustrated, larger format, drawing on the collections and curatorial expertise of the British Library. The most famous introduction to the history of printing ever published.
The Book by
The book as object, as content, as idea, as interface. What is the book in a digital age? Is it a physical object containing pages encased in covers? Is it a portable device that gives us access to entire libraries? The codex, the book as bound paper sheets, emerged around 150 CE. It was preceded by clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. Are those books? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. Contrary to the many reports of its death (which has been blamed at various times on newspapers, television, and e-readers), the book is alive. Despite nostalgic paeans to the codex and its printed pages, Borsuk reminds us, the term "book" commonly refers to both medium and content. And the medium has proved to be malleable. Rather than pinning our notion of the book to a single form, Borsuk argues, we should remember its long history of transformation. Considering the book as object, content, idea, and interface, she shows that the physical form of the book has always been the site of experimentation and play. Rather than creating a false dichotomy between print and digital media, we should appreciate their continuities.
How to Identify Prints by
A comprehensive reference work for print and art collectors, dealers in prints and illustrated books and people interested in graphic art with no previous knowledge on the subject. It was the result of Bamber Gascoigne's own early experiences in trying to discover which print was what. Looking for precise guidance on problems of identification, he found that there was no book specifically designed to answer that need - so he wrote it.
The Print Before Photography by
Copper-plate printmaking, developed alongside Gutenberg's invention of moveable type, was a huge business employing thousands of people, and dominating image production for nearly four centuries across the whole of Europe. Its techniques and influence remained very stable until the nineteenth century, when this world was displaced by new technologies, of which photography was by far the most important. Print Before Photography examines the unrivalled importance of printmaking in its golden age, illustrated through the British Museum's outstanding collection of prints. This unique and significant book is destined to be a leading reference in print scholarship, and will be of interest to anyone with an interest in this era of art history.
Prints by
Ever wondered what the difference is between an engraving and an etching? Or needed precise definitions of more recent printing innovations? Illustrated with both colour and black-and-white images, this indispensable guide explains the full range of printmaking techniques. Based on the collections held at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the guide outlines the development and history of printmaking, past and present. Using examples of work by artists ranging from Hogarth to Warhol, Durer to Gormley, it describes the various methods of producing prints - most of which fall into the four key categories of- - relief - intaglio - planographic - stencil. Enlarged details help to illustrate the differing effects that can be achieved and papermaking is also covered, for its effect on the character of an impression. With its glossary of technical terms and of abbreviations most commonly found in print inscriptions, plus a select bibliography, this invaluable introduction will provide an informed appreciation of printmaking to students and collectors alike.
Out of Sorts by
The new history of the book has constituted a vibrant academic field in recent years, and theories of print culture have moved to the center of much scholarly discourse. One might think typography would be a basic element in the construction of these theories, yet if only we would pay careful attention to detail, Joseph A. Dane argues, we would find something else entirely: that a careful consideration of typography serves not as a material support to prevailing theories of print but, rather, as a recalcitrant counter-voice to them. In Out of Sorts Dane continues his examination of the ways in which the grand narratives of book history mask what we might actually learn by looking at books themselves. He considers the differences between internal and external evidence for the nature of the type used by Gutenberg and the curious disconnection between the two, and he explores how descriptions of typesetting devices from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been projected back onto the fifteenth to make the earlier period not more accessible but less. In subsequent chapters, he considers topics that include the modern mythologies of so-called gothic typefaces, the presence of nontypographical elements in typographical form, and the assumptions that underlie the electronic editions of a medieval poem or the visual representation of typographical history in nineteenth-century studies of the subject. Is Dane one of the most original or most traditional of historians of print? In Out of Sorts he demonstrates that it may well be possible to be both things at once.
Printing type designs : a new history from Gutenberg to 2000 by 
Type by
""Good typography should be invisible"", so goes the old maxim--the typeface should carry the message, but not distract with its own personality. But if you've ever wondered how type was developed, exactly what a Goudy Friar is, or if Baskerville has anything to do with Sherlock Holmes, then Type will answer these questions and more. This is the story of the faces behind type, letters and typography: it tells of the passions and obsessions of its creators, of war, persecution and political upheaval, of business and technological breakthrough, of rivalry, death and disinterment. With the skill of a novelist, Simon Loxley weaves the story of letters through the history of our time. From Gutenberg's first moveable type to the internet, type has grown out of ambition, jealousy, desire, treachery and love. Never again will you look at your letters, your bank statements or your books in the same way.
