Myers, Robin and Michael Harris MILLENNIUM OF THE BOOK: PRODUCTION, DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION IN MANUSCRIPT AND PRINT 900-1900.
Winchester & New Castle, Delaware St Paul's Bibliographies and Oak Knoll Books (1994) 8vo. printed paper over boards. 192 pages. No. 8 in the Publishing Pathways Series. In this collection of essays, leading scholars investigate the ways in which the book as a physical artifact developed over ten centuries. In many respects, it is a story of impressive continuity. With the manuscript as with the printed book, the status of the text and the use to which it was to be put determined the design treatment and the format, scale and quality of the product. Scribes in Anglo-Saxon times can be seen to have been making decisions made by their counterparts in commercial publishing houses a thousand years later.
However, it is shown that after an initial period of overlap between manuscript and print there was a radical shift in form and design, as producers competed in a widening market and as production was transformed by mechanization. Illustration was no longer just for luxury books but became an essential element in publications aimed at the middling levels of society, and new ideas about the presentation of pictures integrated with text resulted. There were also commercial challenges to the workers in traditional crafts, particularly bookbinding, who were forced to adapt their practices to reduce cost and increase flexibility, whilst papermakers had to introduce fundamentally different products in order to meet huge increases in demand. By 1900, the interaction of market and industrial production methods had led inevitably to substantial diversification in the form and, arguably, an overall reduction in the quality of the book as a product. Well illustrated. Price: $ 30.00
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