L. D. Reynolds, N. G. Wilson: Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (1968/1991)

“One of the remarkable facts about the history of Western culture is that we are still in a position to read large amounts of the literature produced in classical Greece and Rome despite the fact that for at least a millennium and a half all copies had to be produced by hand and were subject to the hazards of fire, flood, and war. This book explains how the texts survived and gives an account of the reasons why it was thought worthwhile to spend the necessary effort to preserve them for future generations.

In the second edition a section of notes was included, and a new chapter was added to deal with some aspects of scholarship since the Renaissance. In the third edition, the authors responded to the urgent need to take account of the very large number of discoveries in this rapidly advancing field of knowledge by substantially revising or enlarging certain sections.”

Publisher Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968
Third edition, 1991
ISBN 0198721463, 9780198721468
352 pages

Review (of 2nd ed., E. Christian Kopff, The Classical Journal, 1976)
Review (M. Possanza, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 1991)

Publisher (4th ed.)
WorldCat

PDF (12 MB)

Frederick G. Kilgour: The Evolution of the Book (1998)

A concise book by the professor in library and information science who, in the late 1960s, helped to establish the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), a worldwide consortium of library databases.

Writing from the perspective of history of technology, Kilgour investigates the book’s three discrete forms–the clay tablet, papyrus roll, and codex–before turning to the electronic book.

Publisher Oxford University Press, New York, 1998
ISBN 0195118596, 9780195118599
180 pages

Review (Robert J. Brugger, Technology and Culture, 2001)
Review (Bruce Whiteman, Huntington Library Quarterly, 1998)

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (12 MB)

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)