Book and Media Studies

This text 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.

For over five hundred years in the West, a particular form of the book-the printed codex-has been woven into the fabric of our lives. It has been the default medium for publicly circulating information and entertainment, and has structured the work, leisure and religious devotion of countless people. Now, as the cultural centrality of the printed book is challenged, we are prompted to reassess its value and its place in the history of media change.

Keith Houston reveals that the paper, ink, thread, glue and board from which a book is made tell as rich a story as the words on its pages--of civilisations, empires, human ingenuity and madness. In an invitingly tactile history of this 2,000 year-old medium, Houston follows the development of writing, printing, the art of illustrations, and binding to show how we have moved from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the hardcovers and paperbacks of today. Sure to delight book lovers of all stripes with its lush, full-colour illustrations, The Book gives us the momentous and surprising history behind humanity's most important--and universal--information technology.

This Companion provides a wide-ranging account of the history of the book and its ways of thinking about works from ancient inscription to contemporary e-books, discussing thematic, chronological and methodological aspects of this interdisciplinary field.

This collection of essays illustrates various pressures and concerns--both practical and theoretical--related to the study of print culture. Procedural difficulties range from doubts about the reliability of digitized resources to concerns with the limiting parameters of 'national' book history.

The 54 chapters within this book will introduce readers to the fascinating world of book history. Including 21 thematic studies on topics such as writing systems, the ancient and the medieval book, and the economics of print, 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.

In The History of the Book in 100 Books, the author explores 100 books that have played a critical role in the creation and expansion of books and all that they bring -- literacy, numeracy, expansion of knowledge, religion, political theory, oppression, liberation, and much more. The book is ordered chronologically and divided thematically. Each of the 100 sections focuses on one book that represents a particular development in the evolution of books and in turn, world history and society.

This resource is a thorough introduction to book history and a handy reference tool for the fact-checking researcher. This is a reference work by an international team of scholars covering the book from ancient times to the present day. Introductory essays explore the history and technology of the book and the range of genres. It provides surveys of the book around the world which are followed by over 5,000 A-Z entries.

Study of book history focused on the relationship between printed music and other forms of print. Part of Publishing Pathways series. Collection of 8 essays that look at the production, publication, and distribution of printed music from the 16th to the 20th century in the western world.

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.

Rather than introduce the events and turning points in the history of book culture, or debates among its theorists, Leslie Howsam uses an array of books and articles to offer an orientation to the field in terms of disciplinary boundaries and interdisciplinary tensions. Howsam's analysis maps studies of book and print culture onto the disciplinary structure of the North American and European academic world.

This comprehensive history covering the British book trade from 1476 to the twentieth century explores the role of literacy, the development of the book trade, the role of publishers, and the impact of the industrial revolution and trade laws.

This illustrated work guides readers in recognizing and dating English book bindings of the hand press period. Besides helping locate bindings within their time and place, this handbook concentrates on what a binding can tell us about previous owners and their approach to books.

Introducing book history, from early oral texts to electronic titles, Finkelstein and McCleery cover such topics as authorship, the publishing world, readership, and the future of the book.

This 3-volume set focuses on the role of print in the political, religious, intellectual, and cultural life of Canada up to 1918.

This classic text contains in-depth descriptions of every aspect of antique and modern book collecting from A to Z. All terms are alphabetized for quick reference, including how to take care of pigskin, morocco, or Russian Leather, how to tell Japan vellum from India proof paper and how to determine 'very good copy' in a collectible volume.

The Myth of Print Culture is a critique of bibliographical and editorial method, focusing on the disparity between levels of material evidence (unique and singular) and levels of text (abstract and reproducible). It demonstrates how the particulars of evidence are manipulated in standard scholarly arguments by the higher levels of textuality they are intended to support.

This comprehensive illustrated source contains more than 3,000 entries on terms used in bookmaking, printing, papermaking, and the book trade. Pick up this book for biographical details on printers, authors, bookbinders, and bibliophiles, as well as information on machinery, famous books, printing societies, organizations, customs of the trade, and book lore.

This text presents rarely examined treasures from the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Featuring a huge range of material spanning six centuries -- including illuminated manuscripts, fine bindings, the classics of children's literature, comic novels, and artists' books, it explores the ways in which books not only transmit information but become works of art in their own right. Thematic sections illustrate the key aspects of book design and production over the ages.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the textual problems of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. "The only really acceptable modern textbook on physical bibliography".

Book creators are at least as idiosyncratic as readers could be the unofficial motto of this 16th annual seminar held in July 1998 in Edinburgh. A baker's dozen of essays give accounts of a brilliant but unpredictable 18th-century printer, a power struggle between a devious author and the London C

Distinguished scholar and library systems innovator Frederick Kilgour tells a five-thousand-year story in this exciting work, a tale beginning with the invention of writing and concluding with the emerging electronic book. Calling on a lifetime of interest in the growth of information technology, Kilgour brings a fresh approach to the history of the book, emphasizing in rich, authoritative detail the successive technological advances that allowed the book to keep pace with ever-increasing needs for information. Kilgour investigates the book's three discrete historical forms--the clay tablet, papyrus roll, and codex--before turning to a fourth, still evolving form, the cyber book, a version promising swift electronic delivery of information in text, sound, and motion to anyone at any time.

Considered a standard guide, this is a comprehensive manual for the description of printed books as physical objects. Covers hand-printed books up to the 20th century. The appendix includes sample descriptions.

The history of the book in the eighteenth century witnessed not only the final decades of the hand-press era but also developments and practices that pointed to its future: a rapid growth in the publication, circulation, and reading of periodicals; the promotion of niche marketing; alterations to distribution networks; and the emergence of the publisher as a central figure in the book trade, to name a few.' The pace and extent of these changes varied greatly within the different sociopolitical contexts across the western world.