Overview

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.

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9781541605640

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Reviews

"""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 ""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 ""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"

"""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 ""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 ""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"

Author Information

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 TLS. He also runs the 39 Steps Press, a small printing press, which he keeps in a barn in Oxfordshire, England.

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