Book history has emerged in the last twenty years as one of the most important new fields of interdisciplinary study. It has produced new interpretations of major historical events, has made possible new approaches to history, literature, media, and culture, and presents a distinctive historical perspective on current debates about the future of the book. The Broadview Introduction to Book History provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to this field.
Written in a lively, accessible style, chapters on materiality, textuality, printing and reading, intermediality, and remediation guide readers through numerous key concepts, illustrated with examples from literary texts and historical documents produced across a wide historical range. An ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in book history, it offers a road map to this dynamic inter-disciplinary field.
Chapter 1: Materiality
Reading Books
Bibliography
Making Printed Books
Typography
Chapter 2: Textuality
Whose been tampering with my text?
Copy-text
Variants
Authorial Intentions
Textual Pluralism
Chapter 3: Printing and Reading
Print and the Book
The Impact of Print
Models for Book History
Print Economies
Controlling Print / Controlling Reading
Methods for a History of Reading
Chapter 4: Intermediality
Models of Intermediality
Orality and Writing
Manuscript and Print
Text and Image
Chapter 5: New Media, New Materiality
(Hyper)textuality
Digital Printing and Screen Reading
Reading, Knowledge, and the Digital Turn
Works cited
Chronology
Glossary
Further Reading