The coming of the book : the impact of printing, 1450-1800 / [print]
Impact of printing, 1450-1800
Lucien Febvre, Henri-Jean Martin ; translated [from the French] by David Gerard ; edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and David Wootton.
- London : Verso, (c)2010.
- 378 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
- Verso world history series .
- Verso world history series. .
This translation originally published: 1976.
Chapter one. Preliminaries: the introduction of paper into Europe. The progress of paper -- Preconditions of the growth of paper-making: natural and industrial -- Commercial factors -- The coming of printing and the development of the paper industry. Chapter two. The technical problems and their solution. The wood-cut, ancestor of the book? -- The 'discovery' of printing -- The making of the type -- Composition and impression -- Imposition -- The Chinese precedent. Chapter three. The book: its visual appearance. Type founts -- Inside the book: title page, colophon and printer's mark -- The text and format of the book -- Illustration -- Clothing the book: the binding. Chapter four. The book as a commodity. Costs -- The problem of finance. Chapter five. The little world of the book. The journeymen -- The masters -- From the humanist printer to the bookseller of the Enlightenment -- Authors and their rights. Chapter six. The geography of the book. The journeys of printers -- Places to set up business -- Geography and publishing -- Printing conquers the world -- (The Slav countries: Bohemia and Moravia ; Poland ; The Southern Slavs ; Russia -- The New World -- The Far East). Chapter seven. The book trade. Some basic data: sizes of editions -- Some problems for the trade -- Business methods at the time of the book-fairs -- Towards new business methods -- Privilege and piracy -- Censorship and banned books. Chapter eight. The book as a force for change. From manuscript to printed book -- Humanism and the book -- The book and the Reformation -- Printing and language.
Examines the impact of the emergence of the book, the world's most influential information technology. Febvre and Martin mesh together economic and technological history, sociology and anthropology, with the study of consciousness itself to root the development of printing in the changing social relations and ideological struggles of Western Europe. --Adapted from publisher description.