Art of the Printed Book, 1455-1955 (1973)

This fully illustrated volume is a fine contribution to the history of books concerned with typography and bookmaking. Neither a printing manual nor a technical treatise, it was written by an accomplished designer and printer. It includes descriptions of the lives of the important printers, Gutenberg, de Tournes, Baskerville, Aldus, etc., and presents the historical backgrounds under which their folios were made.

Art of the Printed Book was written by Joseph Blumenthal, a practitioner whose Spiral Press set a long-acknowledged standard among fine printers. It is, in one sense, a personal selection, dependent on his aesthetic standards and, in another, a testament to the discrimination and collections of the Morgan Library. The 112 books selected and reproduced range from the Gutenberg Bible to the 20th-century works of Rogers, Gill, Updike, Meynell, and Mardersteig.

Art of the Printed Book, 1455-1955: Masterpieces of Typography Through Five Centuries From the Collections of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
With an essay by Joseph Blumenthal
Publisher Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, and David R. Godine, Boston, 1973
Second printing, 1974
125 full-page black-and-white illustrations
192 pages

PDF (45 MB, no OCR)

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein: The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (1979)

“A key text to understand the role of print on social change and the arts. Professor Eisenstein begins by examining the general implications of the shift from script to print, and goes on to examine its part in three of the major movements of early modern times – the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science. Her masterful and well researched text sets a standard for understanding the social impact of printing.”

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1979
11th printing, 2005
ISBN 052129951, 9780521299558
794 pages
HT Didgebaba

Reviews: Carolyn Marvin (Technology and Culture, 1979), Anthony T. Grafton (Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1980), Eric J. Freeman (Medical History, 1981), Eric J. Leed (American Journal of Sociology, 1982), Richard Teichgraeber (History of European Ideas, 1984).

Publisher
Wikipedia

PDF (2 vols., 16 MB, updated on 2022-1-30)
EPUB (2nd ed., 2012, added on 2022-1-30)

See also the collection Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (2007).

Judith A. Hoffberg (ed.): Umbrella (1978–2008)

Umbrella was a newsletter-magazine edited and published by Judith A. Hoffberg from 1978 until 2008. In her work, Hoffberg enthusiastically championed Fluxus, inexpensive artists’ books, mail art, rubber-stamp art, and many other offbeat forms of expression of the second half of the 20th century all of which found their way into Umbrella in the form of interviews, news and reviews.

Géza Perneczky credits Umbrella as “perhaps the most comprehensive and most usable unofficial source of information” on mail art and artists’ publications during the period from 1978 to 1984. (in The Magazine Network, 1993: 12)

Publisher Umbrella Associates, Santa Monica, CA
Open Access, the archive is hosted by the Herron Art Library of IUPUI University Library
ISSN 0160-0699

The Career and Collection of Judith A. Hoffberg (Anthony Marcus Leslie, dissertation, advisor: Johanna Drucker, 2012, 151 pp)
UmbrellaEditions.com

View online (PDF articles of the full run of the magazine)