H-165. Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching - Advance Reading List

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  • Required Reading

    There are 11 required reading assignments of varying length and difficulty. Please be sure to give yourself adequate time to learn from these excellent texts.

    Adams, Thomas R. and Nicolas Barker. “A New Model for the Study of the Book,” in A Potencie of Life: Books in Society; The Clark Lectures, 1986–1987, edited by Nicolas Barker. London: British Library, 2001. Frequently reprinted.

    Darnton, Robert. “What is the History of the Book?” Daedalus 111, no. 3 (Summer, 1982). Frequently reprinted.

    Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972; corrected edition, 1974. Several subsequent British and American reprintings with minor corrections; paperback edition published in 1995 by Oak Knoll Press. This is a dense book that will take considerable time to read. Be sure to allocate adequate time. Best read after reading Williams and Abbot (below).

    Houtson, Keith. The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Explanation of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time. New York: W. W. Norton, 2016.

    Levy, Michelle, and Tom Mole. The Broadview Introduction to Book History. Guelph: Broadview Press, 2017

    Mole, Tom. The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More than Words. London: Elliott & Thompson, 2019.

    McKenzie, D. F. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. London: British Library, 1986; reprinted by Cambridge UP, 1999. Pay particular attention to titular essay.

    Raven, James. What is the History of the Book? (What is History?). Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2018.

    Tanselle, G. Thomas. Bibliographical Analysis: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

    Werner, Sarah. Studying Early Printed Books, 1450–1800: A Practical Guide. Hoboken: Wiley, 2019.

    Williams, William Proctor, and Craig S. Abbot, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2009.

  • Recommended Reading

    In no way should you get stressed out about not doing any of this reading, but you must come to class having read all the required reading.

    Cowley, Des, and Clare Williamson. The World of the Book. Victoria, Australia: The Miengunyah Press, 2010.

    Finkelstein, David, and Alistair McCleery. An Introduction to Book History. New York & London: Routledge, 2005. This text is best as a review, rather than an introduction, since it presupposes a knowledge of the conversation.

    Finkelstein, David, and Alistair McCleery. The Book History Reader. 2nd ed. New York & London: Routledge, 2006.

    Hawkins, Ann R., ed. Teaching Bibliography, Textual Criticism and Book History. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2006. Additional pedagogical web-essays at Pickering & Chatto.

    Howsam, Leslie, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

    Hume, Robert. “Aims and Uses of Textual Scholarship.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 99, no. 2 (June 2005): 197–230.

    Kelemen, Erick. Textual Editing and Criticism. New York & London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2009.

    Levy, Michelle, and Tom Mole. The Broadview Reader in Book History. Guelph: Broadview Press, 2014.

    McKenzie, D. F. Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays, edited by Peter D. McDonald and Michael F. Suarez, S.J. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.

    McGann, Jerome J. The Textual Condition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Read “The Socialization of the Text” pp. 69–83.

    McGann, Jerome J. Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

    Shillingsburg, Peter. From Gutenberg to Google. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

    Suarez, S.J., Michael F., and H. R. Woudhuysen. The Book: A Global History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

  • Recommended Browsing

    Greetham, D. C. Textual Scholarship. New York & London: Garland, 1994.

    De Hamel, Christopher. The Book: A History of the Bible. London & New York: Phaidon, 2001.

    Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

    Ezell, Margaret. Social Authorship and the Advent of Print. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Read pp. 1–40.

    Jackson, H. J. Marginalia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

    Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. New York: Penguin, 1997.

    Olmert, Michael. The Smithsonian Book of Books. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1992.

    Sher, Richard B. The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006.

    Woudhuysen, Henry. Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Read the Introduction, pp. 1–21.

    See also:

    Journals to browse, according to interest: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America; Book History (an annual published by SHARP); Publishing History; The Library.

    Any of the various national histories of the book, such as the History of the Book in Britain, History of the Book in America, or L’Histoire de l’edition francaise.