A Companion to the History of the Book
Language: English
Pages: 616
ISBN: 140519278X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From the early Sumerian clay tablet through to the emergence of the electronic text, this Companion provides a continuous and coherent account of the history of the book.
- Makes use of illustrative examples and case studies of well-known texts
- Written by a group of expert contributors
- Covers topical debates, such as the nature of censorship and the future of the book
standard means of printing books; soon, and for the fi rst time, letter- press would not be the dominant technology in printing. However, the reign of photo- typesetting was to be short-lived: by 1970, the fi rst steps had already been taken toward a new world of desktop publishing and digital printing. References and Further Reading Baines, P. and Haslam, A. (2002) Type and Typog- Darley, L. (1959) Bookbinding Then and Now: A raphy. London: Laurence King. Survey of the First Hundred and
and they shared authors’ fears of cheapened reputations. Those fears diminished as the paperback houses issued more quality reprints. New American Library, through its Signet and Mentor imprints, counted William Shakespeare, William Faulkner, and Edith Wharton among its authors, lending new respectability to paper- backs. Soon they were publishing Truman Capote and J. D. Salinger along with Mickey Spillane. Large advances and royalty payments also helped to win over authors and publishers.
type in Mainz in the middle of the fi fteenth century, he set in motion forces that had a profound and irreversible impact on libraries. Within half a century, printing presses spread throughout Europe and expanded book production from hundreds to hundreds of thousands per year. This increase accelerated at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Reformation leaders used mass-produced pamphlets and books to promote religious education and Bible reading not only as a public good, but
203; domestic 488–91; Fatimids of Cairo 169; poetics of 477; powers of 475; print gender 534; Germany 424; Google 461–2; culture 61, 273; race 473; social class 203, India 132–3, 134; information 454, 531, 293; Spanish American colonies 145; 535, 539; institutional 101; Islam 169, 533; urbanization 354; US 472–3; vernacular 474; Japan 115; knowledge, useful 535, 536, 539; writing 60–1 law 539; legal deposit 17, 293–4; lending literary agents 294, 336, 342, 370 statistics 4, 57, 114,
“extensive” with a more nuanced account of the various practices available to readers in the eighteenth century. This is, in part, a question of deciding which kind of history we want. The broad, epochal sweep favored by those historians who contrast manuscript with print, or intensive with extensive, is important, but such models may, of necessity, neglect or ignore those individuals or groups who appear to be “atypical.” These individual or local practices are important because they help us