overview

This profile on print culture and the book complements the more detailed Electronic Publishing guide.

It reflects our interest in the book as a precursor of electronic publishing: the technology, business, the 'print revolution' and the impact on readers. 

     contents of this profile

The following pages cover -

• engines of change? - writing about successive print revolutions, from Gutenberg onwards
• book publishing - some of the more entertaining or insightful writing about the publishing business
• newspapers and journals - the 'other print'
• writing - authorship as an occupation, profession and vocation
• reading - orality, literacy and books as a commodity or compulsion
• retailing - bookselling
• libraries and archives
• typography
• the press
• paper and binding
• illustration - resources about the illustrated book: natural history, childrens literature and other genres
• going digital - the fate of print and "dried tree-flakes encased in dead cow" in the electronic environment
• bodies & journals - academic and industry bodies concerned with the history of the book, publishing and reading, along with pointers to some online journals concerned with writing, reading and publishing
• impacts - the history and impact of particular works, such as the Christian Bible and Mao's Red Book
• loss - language death, war and acid paper
• sales - statistics regarding best-sellers and other perspectives

There is a complementary profile on other communications revolutions. The Ketupa site provides detailed bibliographies, histories and analysis of corporate holdings for over 200 major media groups.

     orientations

For an overview of the 'print revolution' see the discussion elsewhere on this site.

Useful introductions are major overviews such as Elizabeth Eisenstein's synoptic The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1983), George Atiyeh's The Book In The Islamic World (Albany: State Universities of New York Press 1995), Lucien Febvre & Henri-Jean Martin's The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800 (London: NLB 1976), Roger Chartier's The Order of Books: Readers, Authors & Libraries in Europe between the 14th & 18th Centuries (Cambridge: Polity Press 1993), The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1957) by Richard Altick, A Companion to the History of the Book (Oxford: Blackwell 2008) edited by Simon Eliot & Jonathan Rose and Pascal Casanova's The World Republic of Letters (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2005).

A range of national multi-volume series about book history are underway. These include the seven volume Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999-) edited by David McKitterick, The History of the Book in Canada (Toronto: Uni of Toronto Press 2004- ) and A History of the Book in Australia (St Lucia: Uni of Queensland Press 2001- ).

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