Companion to the History of the Book

The celebrated text on the history of the book, completely revised, updated and expanded

The revised and updated edition of The Companion to the History of the Book offers a global survey of the book’s history, through print and electronic text. Already well established as a standard survey of the historiography of the book, this new, expanded edition draws on a decade of advanced scholarship to present current research on paper, printing, binding, scientific publishing, the history of maps, music and print, the profession of authorship and lexicography.

The text explores the many approaches to the book from the early clay tablets of Sumer, Assyria and Babylonia to today’s burgeoning electronic devices. The expert contributions delve into such fascinating topics as archives and paperwork, and present new chapters on Arabic script, the Slavic, Canadian, African and Australasian book, new textual technologies, and much more.

Containing a wealth of illustrative examples and case studies to dramatize the exciting history of the book, the text is designed for academics, students and anyone interested in the subject.

Keywords:

Guide to the book’s history, Textual Scholarship, The Uses of Quantification in books, Palaeography and Codicology, Use of Paper in books, Type, Typography, and the Typographer, Printing books to 1970, book Binding, Books Archives and Paperwork, New Histories of Literacy, Readers Books and Biography, The Clay Tablet Book in Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia, The Papyrus Roll in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, The Manuscript Book before 1100, Manuscript Culture 1100–1500, the book in China, the book in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, the book in South Asia, the book in Latin America, The Hebraic Book, The Gutenberg Revolutions, The Book Trade in The Sixteenth Century