Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin ; translated by David Gerard ; edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and David Wootton.
London :
Verso,
1997.
378 pages :
maps ;
22 cm
Verso classics ;
10
Originally published: London : N.L.B., 1976.
Translation of L'apparition du livre.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Preliminaries: the introduction of paper into Europe -- Technical problems and their solution -- Book: its visual appearance -- Book as a commodity -- LIttle world of the book -- Geography of the book -- Book trade -- Book as a force for change.
0
Books, and the printed word more generally, are aspects of modern life that are all too often taken for granted. Yet the emergence of the book was a process of immense historical importance and heralded the dawning of the epoch of modernity. In this much praised history of that process, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin mesh together economic and technological history, sociology and anthropology, as well as the study of modes of consciousness, to root the development of the printed word in the changing social relations and ideological struggles of Western Europe. - Publisher.