Five Centuries of Printers, Buyers and Readers - (Library of the Written Word) by David McKitterick (Hardcover)

About the Book

In an authoritative selection of essays on books, their manufacture and use in the pre-digital age, based on examination of thousands of volumes in libraries across the world, a leading book historian provides essential details of how to understand a world of print that is fast disappearing.

Book Synopsis

For anyone interested in the production and dissemination of printed books since the fifteenth century, these essays offer ways of understanding how tastes and practices have changed and can be understood. Using evidence from tiny fragments to entire libraries, from the manufacture of type to the creation of bindings, to the sale of books, Professor McKitterick explores how people have come to decisions about what and how to read. As the world now depends increasingly on digital resources, they provide the means of understanding how print was dominant for five centuries.

About the Author

David McKitterick FBA, was for many years Librarian of Trinity College and Honorary Professor of Historical Bibliography at Cambridge. He is one of the general editors of the Cambridge History of the book in Britain. His monographs include The Invention of Rare Books; Private Interest and Public Memory, 1600-1840 (2018), based on his Panizzi lectures at the British Library, and Readers in a Revolution; Bibliographical Change in the Nineteenth Century (2022).