A Companion To The History Of The Book

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

Simon Eliot is Professor of the History of the Book in the Institute of English Studies, part of the School of Advanced Study in the University of London, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies. He is General Editor of the new multivolume History of Oxford University Press and editor of the journal Publishing History. His publications include Literary Cultures and the Material Book (2007) and Some Patterns and Trends in British Publishing, 1800–1919 (1994).
Jonathan Rose is Professor of History at Drew University. He was the founding president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing and is co-editor of the journal Book History. His publications include The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2001), The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation (2001), and British Literary Publishing Houses, 1820–1965 (1991).

List of Illustrations.
Notes on Contributors.
Introduction (Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose).
Part I Methods and Approaches.
1 Why Bibliography Matters (T. H. Howard-Hill).
2 What is Textual Scholarship? (David Greetham).
3 The Uses of Quantifi cation (Alexis Weedon).
4 Readers: Books and Biography (Stephen Colclough).
Part II The History of the Material Text.
The World before the Codex.
5 The Clay Tablet Book in Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia (Eleanor Robson).
6 The Papyrus Roll in Egypt, Greece, and Rome (Cornelia Roemer).
The Book beyond the West.
7 China (J. S. Edgren).
8 Japan, Korea, and Vietnam (Peter Kornicki).
9 South Asia (Graham Shaw).
10 Latin America (Hortensia Calvo).
11 The Hebraic Book (Emile G. L. Schrijver).
12 The Islamic Book (Michael Albin).
The Codex in the West 400–2000.
13 The Triumph of the Codex: The Manuscript Book before 1100 (Michelle P. Brown).
14 Parchment and Paper: Manuscript Culture 1100–1500 (M. T. Clanchy).
15 The Gutenberg Revolutions (Lotte Hellinga).
16 The Book Trade Comes of Age: The Sixteenth Century (David J. Shaw).
17 The British Book Market 1600–1800 (John Feather).
18 Print and Public in Europe 1600–1800 (Rietje van Vliet).
19 North America and Transatlantic Book Culture to 1800 (Russell L. Martin III).
20 The Industrialization of the Book 1800–1970 (Rob Banham).
21 From Few and Expensive to Many and Cheap: The British Book Market 1800–1890 (Simon Eliot).
22 A Continent of Texts: Europe 1800–1890 (Jean-Yves Mollier and Marie-Françoise Cachin).
23 Building a National Literature: The United States 1800–1890 (Robert A. Gross).
24 The Globalization of the Book 1800–1970 (David Finkelstein).
25 Modernity and Print I: Britain 1890–1970 (Jonathan Rose).
26 Modernity and Print II: Europe 1890–1970 (Adriaan van der Weel).
27 Modernity and Print III: The United States 1890–1970 (Beth Luey).
28 Books and Bits: Texts and Technology 1970–2000 (Paul Luna).
29 The Global Market 1970–2000: Producers (Eva Hemmungs Wirtén).
30 The Global Market 1970–2000: Consumers (Claire Squires).
Part III Beyond the Book.
31 Periodicals and Periodicity (James Wald).
32 The Importance of Ephemera (Martin Andrews).
33 The New Textual Technologies (Charles Chadwyck-Healey).
Part IV Issues.
34 New Histories of Literacy (Patricia Crain).
35 Some Non-textual Uses of Books (Rowan Watson).
36 The Book as Art (Megan L. Benton).
37 Obscenity, Censorship, and Modernity (Deana Heath).
38 Copyright and the Creation of Literary Property (John Feather).
39 Libraries and the Invention of Information (Wayne A. Wiegand).
Coda.
40 Does the Book Have a Future? (Angus Phillips).
Index.