Rare Book School

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Advance Reading Lists

Rare Book School makes the advance reading lists used in its courses generally available. Each of these reading lists is provided with links leading to the relevant Amazon.com page for in-print items on the lists. Amazon's prices are competitive, and the links may be useful even if you don't intend to buy the books, because of the bibliographic information Amazon routinely provides (ISBN, edition or printing, availability of hard-cover vs paperback editions, &c.). Bear in mind that the out-of-print books listed (as well as some of the in-print books) may quite possibly be found through BookFinder.com, AbeBooks.com, or viaLibri.net, some of them at discount prices.

NB: Courses marked with * are not currently offered (as of November 2014).

Binding
B-10  Introduction to the History of Bookbinding
B-40  Medieval & Early Renaissance Bookbinding Structures
B-50  Advanced Seminar in the History of Bookbinding
B-60  European Bookbinding, 1500–1800*
B-70  European Decorative Bookbinding*
B-75  American Publishers' Bookbindings, 1800–1900
B-80  The Description of Bookbindings*
B-90  Publishers’ Bookbindings, 1830–1910*
 
Collecting and Collection Management
C-70  Collecting the History of Anglo-American Law*
C-75  Developing Collections of African-American Materials*
C-80  Artists’ Books: Strategies for Collecting*
C-85  Law Books: History & Connoisseurship
C-90  Provenance: Tracing Owners & Collections
 
General: Descriptive and Textual Bibliography
G-10  Introduction to the Principles of Bibliographical Description
G-20  Printed Books to 1800: Description & Analysis
G-30  Printed Books since 1800: Description & Analysis
G-45  Analytical Bibliography
G-50  Advanced Descriptive Bibliography
G-55  Scholarly Editing: Principles & Practice
G-70  Advanced Seminar in Critical Bibliography
 
History
H-10  The History of the Book, 200–2000
H-15  The History of the Book in America: A Survey from Colonial to Modern
H-20  The Book in the Manuscript Era
H-25  15th-Century Books in Print and Manuscript
H-30  The Printed Book in the West to 1800
H-35  Modern Art of the Book
H-40  The Printed Book in the West since 1800
H-45  Printing, Publishing, & Consuming Texts in Britain, 1770–1919*
H-50  The American Book in the Industrial Era, 1820–1940
H-55  History of American Music Printing and Publishing*
H-60  The History of European & American Papermaking
H-65  Introduction to Printed Maps*
H-70  The History of the Book in America, c.1700–1830
H-75  Printed Ephemera*
H-80  The Stationers' Company to 1775
H-85  The History of the Book in China
H-90  Teaching the History of the Book
H-95  Reading Publishers' Archives for the Study of the American Book
H-105  The Bible and Histories of Reading
H-110  The Art & Science of Cartography, 200–1550
Illustration and Printing Processes
I-10  The History of Printed Book Illustration in the West
I-20  Book Illustration Processes to 1900
I-35  The Identification of Photographic Print Processes
I-40  The Illustrated Scientific Book to 1800
I-70  Lithography: The Popularization of Printing in the C19*
I-80  Japanese Printmaking, 1615–1868*
I-85  Japanese Illustrated Books, 1615–1868
I-90  The Art of the Book in Edo and Meiji Japan, 1615–1912
I-95  Hokusai & Book Illustration
 
Libraries, Archives, and Electronic Resources
L-10  Special Collections Librarianship
L-25  Reference Sources for Researching Rare Books
L-30  Rare Book Cataloging
L-35  Advanced Rare Book Cataloging
L-40  Visual Materials Cataloging
L-45  Reference Sources for Researching Printed Americana
L-50  Advanced Seminar in Special Collections Administration*
L-55  Donors and Libraries*
L-60  Intro to Archives for Special Collections Librarians
L-65  Digitizing the Historical Record
L-70  XML in Action: Creating Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Texts
L-80  Implementing Encoded Archival Description*
L-85  Publishing EAD Finding Aids*
L-90  Designing Archival Description Systems*
L-95  Born Digital Materials: Theory & Practice
L-100  Digital Approaches to Bibliography and Book History
 
Manuscripts
M-10  Introduction to Paleography, 800–1500
M-20  Introduction to Western Codicology
M-40  Latin Paleography, 1100–1500*
M-50  Introduction to Illuminated Manuscripts
M-70  The Handwriting & Culture of Early Modern English Manuscripts
M-80  Western Manuscripts 1500–1900*
M-85  Introduction to Islamic Manuscripts*
M-90  Advanced Seminar: Medieval Manuscript Studies
M-95  The Medieval Manuscript in the Twenty-First Century
 
Typography and Book Design
T-10  Introduction to the History of Typography
T-50  Type, Lettering and Calligraphy, 1450–1830
T-55  Type, Lettering and Calligraphy, 1830–2000
T-60  The History of 19th- and 20th-Century Typography & Printing