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Rare Book School
Preliminary Reading List

Introduction to Medieval and Early Renaissance Bookbinding Structures

Christopher Clarkson

Preliminary Advices

  1. Clarkson, Christopher. "The Conservation of Early Books in Codex Form," in The Paper Conservator 3 (1978), pp 33-50. Photocopy sent with admission packet.
  2. ______. "Rediscovering Parchment: The Nature of the Beast," in The Paper Conservator 16 (1992), pp 5-26. For information about back runs and individual issues of The Paper Conservator, contact Sally Esdaile of the Book and Paper Group of ICON, the Institute of Conservation. We have permission to photocopy no 1 from The Paper Conservator, above; but the many detailed halftone photographs in this one (no. 2) preclude its successful photocopying.
  3. Franck, Peter. A Lost Link in the Technique of Bookbinding and How I Found It. Gaylordsville, CT: [privately printed] Printed at Hawthorne House, 1941. Photocopy sent with admission packet.
  4. Duby, Georges. The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society 980-1420. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
  5. Shailor, Barbara A. The Medieval Book: Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare book & Manuscript Library, Yale University. New Haven: Yale University Library, 1988; reprinted 1991 (Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching, no. 28).
  6. Miner, Dorothy. History of Bookbinding, 525-1950 AD. Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1957. Out of print.
  7. Pye, David, and John Kelsey. The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1968 (hb, pb); revised edn Bethel, CT: Cambium Press, 1995 (pb).

    8. Read either of the following:

  8. Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages. London: E. Arnold & Co., 1924; frequently reprinted, and recently retranslated by Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (in an expanded version more closely approaching the 1919 original) as The Autumn of the Middle Ages.
  9. White, Lynn Townsend. Medieval Technology and Social Change. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Many hb and pb reprints.

    10. Additional reading, to do if possible:

  10. Gimpel, Jean. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977. Available in paperback.
  11. Gies, Frances & Joseph. Cathedral, Forge, & Waterwheel. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
  12. Clanchy, M. T. From Memory to Written Record. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979 (hb); 2nd edn Oxford; B. H. Blackwell, 1993 (pb).