The Book-Makers - by Adam Smyth (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A celebration of 550 years of the printed book told through the lives of eighteen extraordinary men and women who took the book in radical new directions: printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders. This is a story of skill, craft, mess, cunning, triumph, improvisation, and error"--

Book Synopsis

A scholar and bookmaker "breathes both books-as-objects and their creators back into life" (Financial Times) in this five-hundred-year history of printed books, told through the people who created them

Books tell all kinds of stories--romances, tragedies, comedies--but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture's most important object, the book, through dynamic portraits of eighteen individuals who helped to define it.

Books have transformed humankind by enabling authors to create, document, and entertain. Yet we know little about the individuals who brought these fascinating objects into existence and of those who first experimented in the art of printing, design, and binding. Who were the renegade book-makers who changed the course of history?

From Wynkyn de Worde's printing of fifteenth-century bestsellers to Nancy Cunard's avant-garde pamphlets produced on her small press in Normandy, this is a celebration of the book with the people put back in.

Review Quotes

"If there is an overlooked role worth noting in The Book-Makers, it is that of the polymath scholar-artist who can bring expert and nonexpert readers together around a shared enthusiasm for the making of books through his own keen reading of details, clear and witty style, and staggering erudition about books of all kinds and eras. The nineteenth life, the one that brings all the others together, is surely Smyth's own."--Modern Philology

"Smyth has fun with his material, and as a result, so do readers."

--Christianity Today

"A fabulous and insightful guide for all bibliophiles."--Library Journal

"The stories behind books are page - turning in their own right."--Economist

"This is a book that bibliography needs. It unostentatiously deploys an impressive range of scholarship to serve the interests of both a general and scholarly audience."--Book Collector

An Economist and Engelsberg Ideas Best Book of 2024
A Library Journal Best Nonfiction Book of 2024

"Smyth paints a vivid narrative that celebrates the book not just as a cultural artifact but as a crucial part of human creativity and communication."--Indulge Magazine

"Almost every page--almost every paragraph--fizzes with facts, allusions, speculations, tidbits of etymology and gems of historical interest."--Wall Street Journal

"Brilliant."--South China Morning Post

"The Book-Makers stands as a monument to presses past: a delightful survey of bookish achievements from the fifteenth century to the present, attentive to the printerly peculiarities of each age."--New Criterion

"[A] lively account."--Washington Examiner

"Smyth's voice manages to reconcile the vividness of self-contained biographies with the flow of a single story."--Critical Inquiry

"Fun and informative... The Book-Makers gives you a lively sense of the way in which books have been made and unmade, crafted, handled and spliced down the centuries."--Prospect Magazine

"Lively and enlightening... a must for book lovers."--Library Journal (Starred)

"Emphasising the human aspect in all its chaotic truth, The Book-Makers is far from your standard Gutenberg-to-Google history of the book... [Smyth] is almost uniquely well-qualified to convey what his 18 makers felt under their fingertips, and why it mattered to them so much. It is, in the truest sense, an enthusiast's book; one that deserves to find enthusiasts of its own"--Daily Telegraph (UK)

"Fierce scholarship and fascinating print nerdery come together here as he illuminates brilliantly a cast of printers, binders, artists, papermakers and library founders. There is a wonderful immediacy to Adam Smyth's narrative."--Country Life (UK)

"I cannot recommend it highly enough."--Spectator (UK)

"In a world where digital text shouts louder than ever it is refreshing to be reminded of the imagination and ingenuity of generations of men and women, many of them ignored by regular histories, who helped expand the potential of the printed book as form and object. Their stories reside in the physical volumes they made. Through meticulous study of the material qualities of those volumes Smyth breathes both books-as-objects and their creators back into life."--Financial Times

"Vivid and often-surprising ... The charm of The Book-Makers comes from its interest in wear and tear, blunders and errata, the spontaneous and the scrappy, the residual and the recycled - and in edges, of pages and bindings, society and taste"--Times Literary Supplement

"The Book-Makers is a passionate paean to the book, in all its different forms, as an object."--Literary Review

"Agile storytelling and chatty erudition evoke not just the physicality of the book but also its innate humanity."--Observer (UK)

"Agile storytelling and chatty erudition together evoke not just the physicality of the book - its beauty, its complexity - but also its innate humanity."--Guardian (UK)

"The skill of a bibliographer like Smyth is to be able to read those ghostly prints and add a whole second story to the words on the page... It is, in the truest sense, an enthusiast's book; one that deserves to find enthusiasts of its own."--Telegraph (UK)

"This really is the loveliest of books and you will never take for granted reading a physical copy again."--iNews (UK)

"By focusing on personalities over objects, Smyth infuses his history of books and printing with engaging human portraits. His use of present tense propels his prose, making books old and new gloriously, vibrantly alive for all readers, not just booksellers and librarians."--Booklist

"Erudite, insightful and hugely enjoyable, The Book-Makers features an eclectic cast of oddballs, eccentrics and visionaries who have shaped the printed book. A fabulous, first-class read."--Giles Milton, author of Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

"Bibliophiles will savor this sprightly walk down the book's memory lane."--Kirkus

"Amazing. From typeface to papermaking to a whole new-to-me democratic world of book interaction like commonplacing and zines, this book is a soul-expanding celebration of the human spirit."--Martin Latham, author of The Bookseller's Tale

"Evocative and fascinating... We tend to think about books from the point of view of readers: Smyth has written a new, personal history recovering and respecting those who got their hands dirty."--Emma Smith, author of This Is Shakespeare

"Explores in compelling fashion the lives of these fascinating individuals and their roles in making the most powerful objects in human history - books."--Richard Ovenden, author of Burning The Books

"Fascinating... Should teach even serious book-nerds a heap of forgotten and precious information about the making of books ... As full of surprises as any novel."--David Bellos, author of The Novel of the Century

About the Author

Adam Smyth is professor of English literature and the history of the book at Balliol College, University of Oxford. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement and runs the 39 Steps Press, a small printing press that he keeps in a barn. Smyth lives in Oxford, England.