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Work with your partner. Take turns to ask each other about parts a book

Consists of. Use Ex 35.

Getting professional

94 Act out a short talk about books and their composition to schoolchildren.

As an example, use:

· a book of fiction

· a reference book

· a textbook

· a dictionary

 

 

95 Group & individual work

The text below is a summary of the history of books and printing. With a partner, read it and then skim through the subsequent texts, which are jumbled. Try to arrnge them in the chronological order, according to the summary. Then, together with your group mates, decide on the text you would like to present in class. The form of presentation is your choice as an individual. For llustrations, look in The World Book Encyclopedia.

 

SUMMARY

A book is a published work of literature or scholarship; the term has been defined by UNESCO for statistical purposes as a “non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers,” but no strict definition satisfactorily covers the variety of publications so identified. Although the form, content, and provisions for making books have varied widely during their long history, some constant characteristics may be identified. The most obvious is that a book is designed to serve as an instrument of communication—the purpose of such diverse forms as the Babylonian clay tablet, the Egyptian papyrus roll, the medieval vellum or parchment codex, the printed paper codex (most familiar in modern times), microfilm, and various other media and combinations. The second characteristic of the book is its use of writing or some other system of visual symbols (such as pictures or musical notation) to convey meaning. A third distinguishing feature is publication for tangible circulation. A temple column with a message carved on it is not a book nor is a sign or placard, which, though it may be easy enough to transport, is made to attract the eye of the passerby from a fixed location. Nor are private documents considered books. A book may be defined, therefore, as a written (or printed) message of considerable length, meant for public circulation and recorded on materials that are light yet durable enough to afford comparatively easy portability. Its primary purpose is to announce, expound, preserve, and transmit knowledge and information between people, depending on the twin faculties of portability and permanence. Books have attended the preservation and dissemination of knowledge in every literate society.The papyrus roll of ancient Egypt is more nearly the direct ancestor of the modern book than is the clay tablet of the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites; examples of both date from about 3000 BC.The Chinese independently created an extensive scholarship based on books, though not so early as the Sumerians and the Egyptians. Primitive Chinese books were made of wood or bamboo strips bound together with cords. The emperor Shih Huang Ti attempted to blot out publishing by burning books in 213 BC, but the tradition of book scholarship was nurtured under the Han dynasty (206 BC to AD 220). The survival of Chinese texts was assured by continuous copying. In AD 175, Confucian texts began to be carved into stone tablets and preserved by rubbings. Lampblack ink was introduced in China in AD 400 and printing from wooden blocks in the 6th century.The Greeks adopted the papyrus roll and passed it on to the Romans. The vellum or parchment codex, which had superseded the roll by AD 400, was a revolutionary change in the form of the book. The codex introduced several advantages: a series of pages could be opened to any point in the text, both sides of the leaf could carry the message, and longer texts could be bound in a single volume. The medieval vellum or parchment leaves were prepared from the skins of animals. By the 15th century paper manuscripts were common. During the Middle Ages, monasteries characteristically had libraries and scriptoria, places in which scribes copied books. The manuscript books of the Middle Ages, the models for the first printed books, were affected by the rise of Humanism and the growing interest in vernacular languages in the 14th and 15th centuries.The spread of printing was rapid in the second half of the 15th century; the printed books of that period are known as incunabula. The book made possible a revolution in thought and scholarship that became evident by the 16th century: the sources lay in the capacity of the press to multiply copies, to complete editions, and to reproduce a uniform graphic design along new conventional patterns that made the printed volume differ in appearance from the handwritten book. Other aspects of the printing revolution—cultural change associated with concentration on visual communication as contrasted to the oral modes of earlier times—have been emphasized by Marshall McLuhan. In the 17th century books were generally inferior in appearance to the best examples of the art of the book in the 16th. There was a great expansion in the reading public in the 17th and 18th centuries in the West, in part because of the increasing literacy of women. Type designs were advanced. The lithographic process of printing illustrations, discovered at the end of the 18th century, was significant because it became the basis for offset printing. In the 19th century the mechanization of printing provided the means for meeting the increased demand for books in industrialized societies. William Morris, in an effort to renew a spirit of craftsmanship, started the private press movement late in the 19th century. In the 20th century the book maintained a role of cultural ascendancy, although challenged by new media for dissemination of knowledge and its storage and retrieval. The paperbound format proved successful not only for the mass marketing of books but also from the 1950s for books of less general appeal. After World War II, an increase in use of colour illustration, particularly in children's books and textbooks, was an obvious trend, facilitated by the development of improved high-speed, offset printing.



 

Text 1

 

Books on clay tablets. The ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites wrote on tablets made from water-cleaned clay. Although these writing bricks varied in shape and dimension, a common form was a thin quadrilateral tile about five inches long. While the clay was still wet, the writer used a stylus to inscribe it with cuneiform characters. By writing on every surface in small characters, he could copy a substantial text on a single tablet. For longer texts he used several tablets, linking them together by numbers and catchwords as is done in modern books.Book production on clay tablets probably continued for 2,000 years. The nature and volume of the surviving records from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor indicate a heavy emphasis on the preservative function of writing and the book. Either dried in the sun or baked in a kiln, clay tablets were almost indestructible. The latter process was used for texts of special value, legal codes, royal annals, and epics to ensure greater preservation. Buried for thousands of years in the mounds of forgotten cities, they have been removed intact in modern archaeological excavations. The number of clay tablets recovered approaches 500,000, but new finds continually add to the total. The largest surviving category consists of private commercial documents and government archives. Of the remainder, many are duplications of texts. Clay tablets are usually associated with cuneiform writing, a script that takes its modern name from the wedge-shaped (from Latin cuneus, “wedge”) marks made by the stylus in clay. When the Aramaic language and alphabet arose in the 6th century BC, the clay tablet book declined because clay was less suited than papyrus to the Aramaic characters.

 

Text 2

The history of publishing is characterized by a close interplay of technical innovation and social change, each promoting the other. Publishing as it is known today depends on a series of three major inventions—writing, paper, and printing—and one crucial social development—the spread of literacy. Before the invention of writing, perhaps by the Sumerians in the 4th millennium BC, information could be spread only by word of mouth, with all the accompanying limitations of place and time. Writing was originally regarded not as a means of disseminating information but as a way to fix religious formulations or to secure codes of law, genealogies, and other socially important matters, which had previously been committed to memory. Publishing could begin only after the monopoly of letters, often held by a priestly caste, had been broken, probably in connection with the development of the value of writing in commerce. Scripts of various kinds came to be used throughout most of the ancient world for proclamations, correspondence, transactions, and records; but book production was confined largely to religious centres of learning, as it would be again later in medieval Europe. Only in Hellenistic Greece, in Rome, and in China, where there were essentially nontheocratic societies, does there seem to have been any publishing in the modern sense—i.e., a copying industry supplying a lay readership.The invention of printing transformed the possibilities of the written word. Printing seems to have been first invented in China in the 6th century AD in the form of block printing. An earlier version may have been developed at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, but, if so, it soon fell into disuse. The Chinese invented movable type in the 11th century AD but did not fully exploit it. Other Chinese inventions, including paper (AD 105), were passed on to Europe by the Arabs but not, it seems, printing. The reason may well lie in Arab insistence on hand copying of the Qur'an (Arabic printing of the Qur'an does not appear to have been officially sanctioned until 1825). The invention of printing in Europe is usually attributed to Johannes Gutenberg in Germany about 1440–50, although block printing had been carried out from about 1400. Gutenberg's achievement was not a single invention but a whole new craft involving movable metal type, ink, paper, and press. In less than 50 years it had been carried through most of Europe, largely by German printers.Printing in Europe is inseparable from the Renaissance and Reformation. It grew from the climate and needs of the first, and it fought in the battles of the second. It has been at the heart of the expanding intellectual movement of the past 500 years. Although printing was thought of at first merely as a means of avoiding copying errors, its possibilities for mass-producing written matter soon became evident. In 1498, for instance, 18,000 letters of indulgence were printed at Barcelona. The market for books was still small, but literacy had spread beyond the clergy and had reached the emerging middle classes. The church, the state, universities, reformers, and radicals were all quick to use the press. Not surprisingly, every kind of attempt was made to control and regulate such a “dangerous” new mode of communication. Freedom of the press was pursued and attacked for the next three centuries; but by the end of the 18th century a large measure of freedom had been won in western Europe and North America, and a wide range of printed matter was in circulation. The mechanization of printing in the 19th century and its further development in the 20th, which went hand in hand with increasing literacy and rising standards of education, finally brought the printed word to its powerful position as a means of influencing minds and, hence, societies.The functions peculiar to the publisher—i.e., selecting, editing, and designing the material; arranging its production and distribution; and bearing the financial risk or the responsibility for the whole operation—often merged in the past with those of the author, the printer, or the bookseller. With increasing specialization, however, publishing became, certainly by the 19th century, an increasingly distinct occupation. Most modern Western publishers purchase printing services in the open market, solicit manuscripts from authors, and distribute their wares to purchasers through shops, mail order, or direct sales.Published matter falls into two main categories, periodical and nonperiodical; i.e., publications that appear at more or less regular intervals and are members of a series and those that appear on single occasions (except for reissues of essentially the same material).Of the nonperiodical publications, books constitute by far the largest class; they are also, in one form or another, the oldest of all types of publication and go back to the earliest civilizations. In giving permanence to man's thoughts and records of his achievements, they answer a deep human need. Not every published book is of lasting value; but a nation's books, taken as a whole and winnowed out by the passing years, can be said to be its main cultural storehouse. Conquerors or usurpers wishing to destroy a people's heritage have often burned its books, as did Shih Huang-ti in China in 213 BC, the Spaniards in Mexico in 1520, and the Nazis in the 1930s.

 

Text 3

 

The Egyptian papyrus roll. The papyrus roll of ancient Egypt is more nearly the direct ancestor of the modern book than is the clay tablet. Papyrus as a writing material resembles paper. It was made from a reedy plant of the same name that flourishes in the Nile Valley. Strips of papyrus pith laid at right angles on top of each other and pasted together made cream-coloured papery sheets. Although the sheets varied in size, ordinary ones measured about five to six inches wide. The sheets were pasted together to make a long roll. To make a book, the scribe copied a text on the side of the sheets where the strips of pith ran horizontally, and the finished product was rolled up with the text inside.The use of papyrus affected the style of writing just as clay tablets had done. Scribes wrote on it with a reed pen or brush and inks of different colours. The result could be very decorative, especially when done in the monumental hieroglyphic style of writing, a style best adapted to stone inscriptions. The Egyptians created two cursive hands, the hieratic (priestly) and the demotic (a simplified form of hieratic suited to popular use), which were better adapted to papyrus.Compared with tablets, papyrus is fragile, yet an example is extant from 2500 BC; and stone inscriptions that are even older portray scribes with rolls. This amazing survival is partly the result of the dry climate of Egypt, in which some papyrus rolls survived unprotected for centuries while buried in the desert sands. The practice of certain Egyptian funerary customs also contributed to the preservation of many Egyptian books. Obsessed by a concern with life after death, they wrote magical formulas on coffins and on the walls of tombs to guide the dead safely to the gates of the Egyptian underworld. When the space thus provided became insufficient, they entombed papyrus rolls containing the texts. These mortuary texts are now described collectively as the Book of the Dead, although the Egyptians never standardized a uniform collection. Such books, when overlooked by grave robbers, survived in good condition in the tomb. Besides mortuary texts, Egyptian texts included scientific writings and a large number of myths, stories, and tales.Quotations from ancient writings show that scribes were highly regarded in ancient Egypt. They were the priests and government officials employed in the temples, pyramid complexes, and the courts of the pharaohs. The Greek historian Herodotus reported that Egyptian embalmers did a thriving business in copies of the Book of the Dead.

 

Text 4

Books in classical antiquity. Greek books. The Greeks adopted the papyrus roll and passed it on to the Romans. Although both Greeks and Romans used other writing materials (waxed wooden tablets, for example), the Greek and Roman words for book show identification with the Egyptian model. Greek biblos (“book”) can be compared with byblos (“papyrus”), while the Latin volumen (“book”) signified a roll. It has been suggested that papyrus was continuously in use in Greece from the 6th century BC, and evidence has been cited to indicate its use as early as 900 BC. Objects called books are mentioned by ancient Greek writers as having been in use in the 5th century BC. The oldest extant Greek rolls, however, date from the 4th century BC.The 30,000 extant Greek papyri permit a generalized description of the Greek book. Rolled up, it stood about nine or 10 inches high and was an inch or an inch and a half in diameter. When the book was unrolled it displayed a text written in the Greek alphabet in columns about three inches wide separated by inch-wide margins. In spite of the Greek proficiency in decorative arts, few surviving books are illustrated. Such illustrations as have survived were of the practical sort found in later scientific books.Practicality was a mark of the Greek book. The alphabet, although not invented by the Greeks, was adapted and

stabilized by them as an instrument of verbal communication rather than of decorative purpose. Unlike the monumental Egyptian survivals in a decorative hand that sometimes exceeded 100 feet in length, Greek rolls seldom exceeded 35 feet in length and featured little embellishment. Such a roll was about as large as could be conveniently held in the hands to read, and it was big enough to contain a book of Thucydides or one of the longer New Testament Gospels. The average Greek book was shorter. Two books (here denoting a subdivision of a text) of Homer written in a later small hand fitted a 35-foot roll.During the golden age of Athens in the 5th century BC, books were known and used but were lightly regarded as avenues of learning. Great tragedies and comedies, speeches, poems, histories, and lectures were produced, but all evidence indicates that the preferred method of publication at that time was oral. The actor, the orator, the rhapsodist, and the lecturer were supreme.Given the interests and the scope of inquiry of Periclean Greeks, it is noteworthy that they had books and read them at all. Greek readers were general readers. Though it should not be assumed that all who lived in Athens could read, those who could included more than the narrow circle of scribes and scholars who were trained from youth to reverence books and to make a career of the difficult arts of reading and writing. The Greek alphabet reduced this difficulty, and the nonspecialized content of Greek books made them practical instruments of communication to a general public.With the coming of Alexander the Great, the outlook of the Greeks was broadened into a universal attitude that was reflected in their use of books. As the Alexandrian kingdoms spread throughout the East, the Greeks were forced to extend their interest to alien peoples and the records of the past. Consequently, the range of matters worth discussing became too extensive for oral transmission and for the solitary speaker. In the important Hellenistic cities, most notably at Pergamum and Alexandria, centres of learning grew up; these aimed at a world synthesis of knowledge. (A noteworthy example of this synthesizing work was the Septuagint, which was a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.) Libraries were a distinguishing feature of these centres. The Museum and the Sarapeum at Alexandria were reputed at various times to have from 200,000 to 700,000 rolls. The Ptolemies at Alexandria pursued a vigorous collecting policy in an attempt to acquire good copies of all important texts; and scholars were constantly at work on textual scholarship and the writing of new books. The book superseded the oral presentation as a primary means of publication. Greek writers even refer to the market in books and to prices paid for them. The discovery of surviving papyri in the rubbish heaps of provincial towns indicates that the trade was widely diffused. The large libraries maintained scriptoria in which extensive copying was done. However, survivals are scanty and there is no group of extant examples that bears such close resemblance to each other as to indicate that they were the product of the same scribe or scriptorium. Some surviving rolls bear the mark of professional work; others are amateurish.The volume of surviving Greek texts is so slender that it arouses speculation about the nature of the large book collections of Alexandria. There are various explanations. First, the Alexandrians were doing textual criticism and required many copies of the same text to carry on the work. Second, the record indicates that the volume of Greek literature was much larger than what has survived, a majority of the texts having been lost. Literary and bibliographical references made by ancient writers and bibliographers indicate, for example, that the dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes wrote among them about 330 plays; those surviving number 46. Nearly all of Greek lyric poetry has been lost. Only one-fourth of the texts by Stobaeus, an anthologist of the 5th century AD, survived to modern times.The survival of Greek texts depended on copying by succeeding generations. No manuscript in the hand of either a Greek or Roman author is extant, and the earliest extant copies of most works date from centuries after the composition. In such circumstances, the greatest factor in survival was the widespread and continuing popularity of a work. The centres of textual criticism fostered the preservation of some texts by establishing a canon of writings to be taught in the schools. This practice proved to be more important for a work's survival than the establishment of the great libraries, because the library collections were destroyed, while the widespread copying of books for use by students ensured that they were physically dispersed over a large area, thus rendering an author's work less vulnerable to local disasters. Finally, the universal interest and application of the content was an important factor that led to the survival of some nonliterary texts through translation into Arabic, Latin, and other foreign languages.

 

Text 5

The Chinese, though not so early as the Sumerians and the Egyptians, were the third people to produce books on an extensive scale. Although few surviving examples antedate the Christian Era, literary and archaeological evidence indicates that the Chinese had writing and probably books at least as early as 1300 BC. Those primitive books were made of wood or bamboo strips bound together with cords. Many such books were burned in 213 BC by the Ch'in emperor Shih Huang-ti, who feared the strength of the tradition they embodied. The fragility of materials and the damp climate resulted in the loss of other ancient copies. Some books escaped, however, and these, together with whatever books may have been produced in the intervening period, constituted a large enough body for a Chinese national bibliography to appear in the 1st century BC. This was prepared by a corps of specialists in medicine, military science, philosophy, poetry, divination, and astronomy. A classified list of works on tablets and on silk, it mentioned 677 books. With such a tradition, the survival of Chinese texts was assured by continuous copying and was not dependent on the capacity of a lone example to withstand the wear of the centuries.

 

Text 6

Rome was the channel through which the Greek book was introduced to the people of western Europe. When the Romans conquered Greece they carried home Greek libraries to serve as a foundation for similar libraries in Rome. Roman libraries had separate collections of Greek and Latin books; but except for the substitution of the Latin language for Greek, a Roman papyrus roll closely resembled a Greek one in content, and there was much imitation.The Romans developed a book trade on a fairly large scale. From the time of the 1st-century-BC orator Cicero there is evidence of large scriptoria turning out copies of books for sale. On several occasions Cicero referred to bookshops; the 1st-century-AD poet Martial complained about professional copyists who became careless in their speed; and the 1st-century-AD naturalist Pliny the Elder described the extensive trade in papyrus. The trade decrees of the emperor Diocletian set regulations for determining a price for the copying of books.Book ownership was widespread among Romans of the upper class. Private libraries were common and were considered the necessary badge of distinction for anyone who aspired to high position or social importance. On the other hand, books were also within reach of less prosperous people because the use of slave labour to multiply copies kept prices relatively low. From a comparative study of prices, it has been concluded that books were cheap enough for people with only moderate incomes to buy them. As many as 30 copies of a work might be made simultaneously by a reader dictating to slave copyists. In many ways these enterprises were prototypes for modern publishing houses. Roman publishers selected the manuscripts to be reproduced; advanced money to authors for rights to the manuscripts, thus assuming the risks of publication; chose the format, size, and price of each edition; and developed profitable markets for their merchandise.

 

Text 7

The substitution of the codex for the roll was a revolutionary change in the form of the book. Instead of having leaves fastened together to extend in a long strip, the codex was constructed from folded leaves bound together on one side—either the right or the left, depending on the direction of writing. (Some variant forms were bound at the top of the leaves.) The codex enjoyed several advantages over the roll. A compact pile of pages could be opened instantly to any point in the text, eliminating the cumbersome unrolling and rerolling, and facilitating the binding of many more leaves in a single book. In addition, the codex made feasible writing on both sides of the leaf; this was not practical for the roll. Because of its compactness, its ease of opening, and its use of both sides of the leaf, the codex could conveniently contain longer texts. The difference can be illustrated with copies of the Bible. While the Gospel of Matthew reached the capacity of the roll, a common codex included the four Gospels and Acts bound together; and complete Bibles were not unknown.The folded note tablets used by the Greeks and the Romans may have suggested the codex form, but its development to the point of eventual supremacy was related to changes in the world of learning and in the materials for making books. The change in the scholarly outlook came from the rise of Christianity; the new material was vellum or parchment.Vellum and parchment Vellum and parchment are materials prepared from the skins of animals. Strictly speaking, vellum is a finer quality of parchment prepared from calf skins, but the terms have been used interchangeably since the Middle Ages. The forerunner of parchment as a writing material was leather. Egyptian sources refer to documents written on leather as early as 2450 BC, and a fragmentary Egyptian leather roll of the 24th century BC survives; but leather was rarely used because papyrus was plentiful. The Hebrews also used leather for books. The spectacular discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s turned up collections of both leather and papyrus rolls that had been stored in earthen jars in caves along the Dead Sea for centuries. These liturgical and biblical books, produced by a Jewish ascetic sect, were written between the mid-2nd century BC and AD 68.Parchment is a greatly refined form of leather. The skins of various animals—cattle, sheep, and goats being most common—are washed and divested of hair or wool. Then the skin is stretched tight on a frame, scraped thin to remove further traces of hair and flesh, whitened with chalk, and smoothed with pumice. Tradition has it that parchment was invented as the result of book-collecting rivalry between Ptolemy V of Egypt and Eumenes II of Pergamum about 190 BC. Fearing the library at Pergamum might outstrip the collections at Alexandria, Ptolemy placed an embargo on papyrus to prevent his rival from making any more books, whereupon Eumenes made parchment. The fact that both the Greek and Latin words for parchment mean “stuff from Pergamum” offers some support for the tradition.Although parchment was used to produce book rolls, and although many early codices were made from papyrus, the new writing material facilitated the success of the codex. A sheet of parchment could be cut in a size larger than a sheet of papyrus; it was flexible and durable, and it could better receive writing on both sides. These qualities were important. In making a parchment or vellum codex, a large sheet was folded to form a folio of two leaves, a quaternion (quarto) of four, or even an octavo of eight. Gatherings were made from a number of these folded sheets, which were then stitched together to form a book. Because papyrus was more brittle and could not be made in large enough sheets, the folio collected in quires (i.e., loose sheets) was the limit of its usefulness. At the same time, because of the vertical alignment of the fibres on one side, papyrus was not well adapted for writing on both sides in a horizontal script.For 400 years the roll and the codex existed side by side. There are contemporary references to the codex book dating from the 1st century BC; actual survivals date from the 2nd century AD, however. In the 4th century AD vellum or parchment as a material and the codex as a form became dominant, although there are later examples of rolls, and papyrus was occasionally used for official documents until the 10th century. There were similarities between the two forms; an example of the influence of the roll on the codex can be seen in the use of multiple columns on the pages of early codices, much like the columnar writing on the rolls.

 

Text 8

 

Books in the early Christian era. Christianity and the book. In books surviving from the first four centuries AD, codices more often contained Christian writings, whereas pagan works were usually written on rolls. Several points in the Christian use of books contributed to a preference for vellum and the codex. First, Christianity was rooted in Judaism, which for centuries had revered sacred writings. The Christians retained the Jewish Scriptures and added some writings of their own, collected in a New Testament. There was strong motivation for preserving these unchanging words on the most durable materials, and vellum was more durable than papyrus. Second, in referring to their sacred writings the Christians made comparative studies of sources. The writings were related, and students liked to refer from one source to another. This reference entailed having a comparatively large volume of writings available and increased the attractiveness of the easy turning of pages possible with a codex. In this respect it is noteworthy that Roman legal scholarship, which also required a comparison of sources, likewise showed an early preference for the codex. A third point was the expressed intention of early Christians to shun pagan literature by using an entirely different form of book. Conversely the clinging of the pagan authors to an outmoded form may be ascribed in part to a conservative resistance to the Christian ideas.The social potential of books was illustrated by the Christian emphasis on their dissemination. Christianity, which aimed at universality, produced a stream of books, whereas the literary remains of pagan religions are scarce. The process of introducing the universal religion throughout the Roman Empire extended over three centuries, covered thousands of miles, and embraced peoples of the most varied backgrounds and individuals of the greatest differences in rank. The worldwide outlook thus led to a greater dependence on books. Biblical texts and translations, commentaries, polemical tracts, and pamphlets were important in the circumstances, not only to record belief but also to disseminate and explain it.By the 4th century, the same time that the vellum codex had superseded the papyrus roll, the Christian book had replaced the pagan book in every form. Little of importance was written in the classical tradition after AD 100. The greatest writers of the following three centuries were Christian scholars such as Origen, Pamphilus of Caesarea, Tertullian, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome. Of all Christian books, however, the most numerous survivals are New Testament codices and apocryphal New Testament writings.The medieval book The monasteries The dissolution of the western Roman Empire during the 5th century, and the consequent dominance of marauding barbarians, threatened the existence of books. It was the church that withstood the assaults and remained as a stable agency to provide the security and interest in tradition without which books can be neither disseminated nor wholly enjoyed. Books found refuge in monasteries. The 6th-century Rule of St. Benedict enjoined monks to read books at certain times. The surrounding social chaos placed upon monasteries the responsibility for making books and creating libraries in order to implement the injunction. A more specific model was set by the historian and grammarian Cassiodorus, who, after serving the Ostrogothic kings in high positions, retired from public life in about 540 to found a monastery and establish a scriptorium at Vivarium. The scriptorium was the centre of his interest there. He supervised the copying of books and wrote a guide to learning, the Institutions of Divine and Human Readings. He also composed works that presented certain writers as models, discussed rules for editing, and suggested procedures for establishing a scriptorium and a library.Following the early examples, monastic houses throughout the Middle Ages characteristically had libraries and scriptoria where monks copied books to add to their collections. Arrangements for this activity varied from place to place. Occasionally the scriptorium was a single large room. Sometimes the copying was done in carrels, individual cells built in the cloister or library. Fittings for the scriptoria were spare; they lacked heat and artificial light. Work was undertaken only during the daylight hours, because fear of fires that might result from artificial light prevented working after dark. The labour (if contemporary complaints can be believed) was hard, for it was often said, “Two fingers hold the pen, but the whole body toils.” The scribe sat at a desk copying in silence a text that was spread before him. The monks did not follow the practice of the Roman commercial scriptorium where a reader dictated a book while several scribes made simultaneous copies of it. Instead, after the scribe's work was finished it was proofread and titles and notes were inserted. The book might then be given to an illuminator, who supplied any needed illustrations or decorative devices. Finally, the book was bound. This procedure closely resembles that of modern book production, except that in the scriptoria each step in the preparation of a manuscript was repeated for each copy of a work. Book production was slowed to a trickle, and a monastic library with as many as 600 volumes was considered fairly large.The medieval book was a codex written on vellum or parchment, although by the 15th century paper manuscripts were normal. Many medieval manuscripts attained a high perfection of colour and form and are renowned for their beauty. Such examples as the Book of Kells from Ireland, the Lindisfarne Gospels from England, and the many brilliant “books of hours” made in France are world-renowned as examples of art. The customary book was less splendid, however. Written in a neat book hand that developed into the models from which printing types were designed, the manuscript books of the Middle Ages were the models for the first printed books.Because the monastic book trade was largely internal, the contents of books are evident from the monastic library catalogs. Generally the catalogs grouped the books in three divisions. First came the Bible and commentaries. Writings of the Church Fathers and contemporary theologians followed. Finally there was a smaller section of worldly books—including at various places some classics, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, law, and historical and philosophical writings. Scriptoria flourished throughout Europe. Books in the Greek language were found only in Byzantine monasteries; in western Europe books were written in Latin. Only with the onset of humanistic scholarship in the 14th century, and the rise of important vernacular writers at about the same time, did books in Greek and various vernacular languages assume any prominence in the catalogs of western European monasteries.

 

Text 9

Compared with the Continent, England in the early days of printing was somewhat backward. Printing only reached England in 1476, and in 1500 there were still only five printers working in England, all in London and all foreigners. Type seems to have been largely imported from the Continent until about 1567, and paper until about 1589 (except for a brief spell during 1495–98). In an Act of 1484 to restrict aliens engaging in trade in England, Richard III deliberately exempted all aliens connected with the book trade in order to encourage its domestic development. In the following year, Henry VII appointed a foreigner, Peter Actors of Savoy, as royal stationer, with complete freedom to import books. For about 40 years, England was a profitable field for continental printers and their agents. This necessary free trade was brought to an end and native stationers protected under Henry VIII, whose acts of 1523, 1529, and 1534 imposed regulations on foreign craftsmen and finally prohibited the free importation of books. It has been estimated that up to 1535 two-thirds of those employed in the book trade in England were foreigners.It is thus all the more remarkable that the man who introduced printing to England was a native, William Caxton. After learning to print at Cologne (1471–72), Caxton set up a press at Bruges (about 1474), where he had long been established in business. His first book, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, was his own translation from the French, and its production was probably the main reason why this semiretired merchant gentleman took to printing at the age of 50. He then returned to England through the encouragement of Edward IV and continued to receive royal patronage under Richard III and Henry VII. Caxton is important not so much as a printer (he was not a very good one) but because from the first he published in English instead of Latin and so helped to shape the language at a time when it was still in flux. Of the 90-odd books he printed, 74 were in English, of which 22 were his own translations. Some, such as the Ordre of Chyvalry and the Fayttes of Armes, were for the pleasure of his royal patrons; but his range was wide and included Dictes and Sayenges of the Philosophers (1477; his first book in England); two editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (the second undertaken because a better manuscript came to hand); The Fables of Aesop (in his own translation from the French); Sir Thomas Malory's Kyng Arthur; and his largest work, The Golden Legend, a compilation of such ecclesiastical lore as lives of the saints, homilies, and commentaries on church services, a considerable editorial labour apart from the printing.Caxton's press was carried on after his death by his assistant, Wynkyn de Worde of Alsace. In the absence of court connections and also because he was a shrewd businessman, he relied less on the production of expensive books for the rich and more on a wide variety of religious books, grammars and other schoolbooks, and collections of popular tales. He published more than 700 titles, mostly small volumes for the ordinary citizen, and continued Caxton's standardizing of the language, a solid contribution to the native book trade. The best of the early printers was Richard Pynson of Normandy, who began printing in 1492 and became printer to the king in 1508. Pynson, the first to use roman type in England (1509), published the first English book on arithmetic (1522). After his early liturgies and some fine illustrated books, he concentrated mainly on legal works. In 1521 he published Henry VIII's answer to Luther in defense of the papacy, for which the King received the title of fidei defensor (“defender of the faith”) from the Pope.

 

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The age of early printing: 1450–1550. Before the invention of printing, the number of manuscript books in Europe could be counted in thousands. By 1500, after only 50 years of printing, there were more than 9,000,000 books. These figures indicate the impact of the press, the rapidity with which it spread, the need for an artificial script, and the vulnerability of written culture up to that time.The printed books of this initial period, up to 1500, are known as incunabula; i.e., “swaddling clothes” or “cradle,” from a Latin phrase used in 1639 to describe the beginnings of typography. The dividing line, however, is artificial. The initial period of printing, a restless, highly competitive free-for-all, runs well into the 16th century. Printing began to settle down, to become regulated from within and controlled from without, only after about 1550. In this first 100 years, the printer dominated the book trade. The printer was often his own typefounder, editor, publisher, and bookseller; only papermaking and, usually, bookbinding were outside his province.Early printer-publishers in Germany The Gutenberg 42-line Bible, printed in Mainz, Ger., in 1455. Printing has been called the great German contribution to civilization; in its early days it was known as the German art. After its invention (about 1440–50) by a goldsmith of Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg, it was disseminated with missionary zeal—and a keen commercial sense—largely by Germans and largely along the trade routes of German merchants. Gutenberg himself is usually credited with what is known as the 42-line Bible (1455; see photograph); the 36-line Bible; and a popular encyclopaedia called the Catholicon (1460); however, he lost control of his assets in collection proceedings brought against him by his business partner in 1455. Gutenberg's partner, Johann Fust, and his employee, Peter Schoffer (later Fust's son-in-law), continued the business together after 1455; but Mainz itself never became a major centre of the book trade. It was soon challenged by Strassburg (Strasbourg) where, in 1460–61, Johann Mentelin, with an eye for the lay market, brought out a Bible compressed into fewer pages and followed this with the first printed Bible in German or any other vernacular. A few years later, Cologne had its first press (1464) and became an important centre of printing in the northwest. Cologne's early production was almost entirely in Latin because of the heavy bias of its university toward orthodox Thomist theology. In the south, printing quickly spread to the other great trading centres, Basel (1466), Nurnberg (1470), and Augsburg (1472). Basel became famous for the scholarly editions of Johann Amerbach and Johann Froben, who had the benefit of distinguished advisers, including the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus. In Augsburg, the first press was set up alongside the renowned scriptorium of the Abbey of SS. Ulrich and Afra; and the tradition of the illuminated manuscript was carried over into equally sumptuous editions of illustrated printed books. At Nurnberg, which soon took the lead in the book trade, Anton Koberger operated on a large, international scale. At his peak, he ran 24 presses and had links with Basel, Strassburg, Lyon, Paris, and many other cities. He could be called the first great businessman publisher and the first publisher to rise socially—to membership in the town council. By 1500 there were presses in some 60 German towns, including Lubeck (1475), the head of the Hanseatic League. From there, printing spread to Denmark, Sweden, Rostock, Danzig, and Russia, though the first printer who went to Russia was apparently murdered before he could achieve anything. Printing first began in Russia in 1552, with the help of a printer from Copenhagen.

 

 

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Controls over printing. The church at first had every reason to welcome printing. Bibles (preferably in Latin), missals, breviaries, and general ecclesiastical literature poured from the early presses of Europe; and the first best-seller in print was a devotional work by Thomas a Kempis, De imitatione Christi (Imitation of Christ), which went through 99 editions between 1471 and 1500. Such sales were matched, however, between 1500 and 1520 by the works of the humanist Erasmus, and, after 1517, by those of the “heretic” Martin Luther. The church had always exercised censorship over written matter, especially through the universities in the late Middle Ages. As the works of the reformers swelled in volume and tone, this censorship became increasingly harsh. The Inquisition was restored, and it was decreed in 1543 that no book might be printed or sold without permission from the church. Lists of banned books were drawn up, and the first general Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) was issued in 1559. Dutch printers in particular suffered under the Inquisition and a number went to the stake for publishing Protestant books. To avoid such a fate, some resorted to the fake imprint, putting a fictitious printer or place of publication on the title page, or omitting that information.Censorship also began to be exercised in varying degrees by individual rulers, especially in England, where church and state had been united under Henry VIII after his defection from Rome. The Tudors, with little right under common law, arrogated to themselves authority to control the press. After about 1525, endless proclamations were issued against heretical or seditious books. The most important was that of 1538 against “naughty printed books,” which made it necessary to secure a license from the Privy Council or other royal nominees for the printing or distribution of any book in English.In this attempt at control, an increasingly prominent part came to be played by the Stationers' Company. Since its formation in 1403 from the old fraternities of scriveners, limners, bookbinders, and stationers, it had sought to protect its members and regulate competition. Its first application for a royal charter in 1542 seems to have gone unheeded; but in 1557, an important date in the English book trade, the interests of the crown (then the Roman Catholic Mary Tudor), which wanted a ready instrument of control, coincided with those of the company (under a Roman Catholic first Master), and it was granted a charter that gave it a virtual monopoly. Thereafter, only those who were members of the company or who otherwise had special privileges or patents might print matter for sale in the kingdom. Under the system of royal privileges begun by Henry VIII, a printer was sometimes given the sole right to print and sell a particular book or class of books for a specified number of years, to enable him to recoup his outlay. This type of regulation now came into the hands of the Stationers' Company. After licensing by the authorities, all books had to be entered in the company's register, on payment of a small fee. The first stationer to enter a book acquired a right to the title or “copy” of it, which could then be transferred as might any other property. As the beginning of a system of copyright, this procedure was an admirable development; but the grip that the company obtained and its self-interested subservience to authority were to stunt the free growth of the English book trade for the next 100 years.The flourishing book trade: 1550–1800 From the mid-16th through the 18th century, there were virtually no technical changes in the methods of book production, but the organization of the trade moved gradually toward its modern form. The key functions of publishing, selecting the material to be printed and bearing the financial risk of its production, shifted from the printer to the bookseller and from him to the publisher in his own right; the author, too, at last came into his own. The battle with the censor became increasingly fierce before any measure of freedom of the press was allowed. Literacy grew steadily and the book trade expanded, both within and beyond national boundaries.

 

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The 19th century .Development of copyright law. Copyright, too, underwent considerable development. By the end of the century, most countries had some provision, and various terms of protection were tried, running from publication or from the date of the author's death. The United States first enacted legislation in 1790, France in 1793, and Germany in 1839. Moves toward an international code began in 1828 in Denmark. They took the form of reciprocal treaty arrangements between individual countries by which foreign authors received the same protection as did native authors. Britain joined the movement in several arrangements between 1844 and 1886. In 1885 a uniform international system of copyright was initiated by the Berne Convention. The customary term of protection is the author's lifetime plus 50 years. Most countries subscribed to the Convention, but not the United States or Russia. The United States continued to protect its domestic printing industry up to 1955, when it joined the Universal Copyright Convention (Unesco 1952). While the Berne Convention prescribed a minimum level of protection, the Universal Convention was based on the concept of “national treatment”—each member country treating works by citizens of other member countries as it would those of its own citizens. Thus the United States was able to enter into an international agreement without the necessity of immediately revising its own copyright law. Since the Universal Convention contained a provision that the Convention would not be applicable between any two countries that belonged to the Berne Union, it served primarily as a treaty between the United States and the countries that recognized international copyright. The Soviet Union became a party to the Berne Convention in 1973.The early 20th century In the 20th century, the effects of state education in the more advanced countries became increasingly apparent. Standards of living rose, and, as in earlier times, these two conditions brought increased use and publication of books. During the late 1890s and early 1900s, many new publishing houses were founded. In the industrialized countries, though wages were rising, a small business could be staffed economically, and printing costs were such that it was economically feasible to print as few as 1,000 copies of a new book. It was thus comparatively easy to make a start, especially because the long-term credit that printers were prepared to grant made a minimum of capital necessary.Book publishing grew to a substantial industry, consisting mostly of small units in the Western world but also embracing a number of large concerns, many of which were public corporations employing staffs of 1,000 or more. Specialization became frequent, particularly in educational books, as the needs of the new school populations were realized. Some companies, such as Macmillan, in both its British and American houses, had begun to issue schoolbooks almost by chance; then, as their sales grew most profitably, they developed separate departments for school and college textbooks. Others, such as The American Book Company and Methuen in London, had begun specifically with educational books in mind. For more than one leading London firm, India, despite its high illiteracy rate, began to grow strongly as a market and to repay the care and expense involved in setting up separate Indian branches.

 

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Modern publishing: from the 19th century to the present. The early 20th century Design standards As noted above, machine production had lowered standards of design. The English designer William Morris and his Kelmscott Press, however, had begun to work for better typography and book design in the 1890s; and his example had led to the establishment of other private presses, such as The Doves Press and the Ashendene Press, which produced editions (usually limited) of exceptional beauty, printed on handmade paper. Though aimed essentially at the collector and issued at high prices, such books began to influence the more discerning publisher; and by the 1920s a few firms, such as Alfred Knopf in New York City, Chatto and Windus and Jonathan Cape in London, and the Insel Verlag in Leipzig, were seen to be far ahead of their competitors in their standards of design. With careful planning, skillful selection of typeface, and provision of layouts to guide the printer, more and more publishers managed to achieve typographically handsome books at a commercial price. These efforts were part of the Design in Industry movement, which sought to demonstrate that mass production need not preclude beauty. It should be noted, however, that responsibility for design was passing from the printer to the publisher; as the former, with the growth of his business, became more the industrialist and less the craftsman, the latter realized that he must himself take charge of this aspect of the book.The Great Depression The great trade slump that began in October 1929 brought a swift decline in the prosperity of American publishing. By 1931 British publishers could no longer depend upon selling a high proportion of their books to the United States, either in the form of physical copies or by way of a contract conceding the U.S. rights. Though the book trade of Europe proved a little more resilient than some other industries, it passed through a difficult period. Sales declined, profits were negligible, and there were many bankruptcies. Attempts were made to find new outlets for books and fresh ways to attract the public to them. In London an annual Book Exhibition was run by The Sunday Times from 1933 to 1938; and The New York Times tried a similar venture in its city. The Germans continued to hold their annual Book Fair in Leipzig, but this was primarily a trade function. Some British newspapers, striving for higher circulation, approached publishers to supply them with huge numbers of their popular books, specially printed, to be given away or sold very cheaply in exchange for coupons from the papers. Booksellers resented the practice, but for hard-pressed publishers it was financially attractive. In the rather desperate climate of the times, some publishers also spent inordinate amounts on newspaper advertising. Reprint book clubs proliferated too, again to the benefit of the few publishers and authors fortunate enough to secure a choice. In 1932 a valuable innovation that stimulated sales was the Book Token, a form of gift certificate. The invention of an English publisher, Harold Raymond, the Book Token could be exchanged for a book of specified value at any participating bookshop. It was at first opposed by many booksellers; but it went on to become a major factor in Christmas sales, and the system was adopted in other countries and by other trades.Even in the depressed conditions, publishers still dreamed of tapping a wider readership. This began to become a reality in 1935, when Allen Lane launched his pioneer Penguin series of paperbacks. It was a risky operation, involving speculatively high initial printings to keep down the unit cost. But, despite the strongly held belief that paperbacks would not appeal outside the Continent, where they had sold freely, and the resistance of booksellers, who feared a sharp reduction in their receipts, the new series quickly caught on. They represented remarkable value at the original price of sixpence, equivalent to the cost of a small item in a variety store. Though printed on cheap paper, the books employed good typography—far superior to that of any earlier attempts at paperbacks—and the original cover design was attractive in the bold simplicity of its orange and white stripes. A U.S. agency was arranged shortly before World War II and was later taken over by Victor Weybright, who subsequently established the highly successful New American Library for the mass promotion of paperbacks in the world market.Nazi persecution of the Jews in the immediate prewar years and the impact of the war itself caused a wave of emigration, from Germany and Austria in particular, which brought fresh publishing talent to both Britain and the United States as well as to other countries, including Australia. Some of the striking developments in the production of art books, with beautiful coloured illustrations, were a direct result of this movement, which bore its fullest fruit after the war.

 

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World War II and the postwar period. The war that in 1939 European publishers had feared would utterly destroy their business proved in many respects less terrible in its effects on books than had been imagined. While the destruction of buildings, plants, and vast stocks of books, most notably in London and later in Leipzig, brought publishing to a standstill for individual firms, the activity as a whole continued. As in 1914 but to an even greater extent, the demand for reading matter for both instruction and entertainment grew enormously. The nature of the war, with its long periods of waiting alternating with intense bouts of frenzied activity, both induced the need and provided the opportunity for reading. As a result, book sales in the “free” countries rose to fresh heights. The occupied countries of Europe endured censorship and a tight control of materials; but most publishers survived and were swift to renew contacts with colleagues in London and New York City immediately after the war.In the United States, though they were subject to some shortages and inconvenience, publishers were comparatively untouched by the war, and their business expanded rapidly. In Britain, however, because of the acute pressure on shipping, the importation of esparto grass, an essential ingredient for good book papers, was strictly limited, and a publisher's paper ration was reduced to 37 1/2 percent of his prewar annual consumption. By closer setting of type and the use of much thinner paper, the ration was stretched to produce the maximum number of copies, but the final appearance of British books inevitably suffered, and they began to compare very unfavourably with those produced in the United States.In countries that suffered severe paper shortage there was, of course, a sharp reduction in the number of new books and in the size of editions; consequently, with the increase in demand, the available books were rapidly sold out. The result was an enormous, if illusory, increase of profitability for publishers; and despite heavy wartime taxation they found themselves in far better shape financially than ever before. Instead of holding large and often very slow-selling stocks with insufficient cash resources, publishers had little stock but ample cash. There was, too, the marginal advantage that those new authors who were able to secure publication in the war years could be virtually certain that their books would be quickly sold out. In these artificial conditions, many publishers were more prepared to risk the work of an untried author. Against this, however, was the very serious shortage of standard works of every kind, including classics and educational and reference books; at one time the cry went up that “Shakespeare is out of print!” While a small extra tonnage of paper was released in Britain in 1942 for the reprinting of books that were considered “nationally important” in wartime, no one could possibly pretend that there was not a real book famine in most European countries. After the war it took about five years for paper to become reasonably plentiful again. Despite the disruption brought by the war, however, interest in books had increased enormously, and sales were furthered by the total disappearance or severe rationing in most of the warring countries of so many consumer articles that normally compete with books. Contrary to the fears of many publishers, a new reading public was emerging, and it was not lost in the postwar world.The postwar period After the end of the war, there was an awkward year or so of reorganization and anticlimax, when many wartime publications suddenly became unsalable; but then publishing, in almost every country, once more expanded rapidly. People who had been cut off entirely from the rest of the world displayed an immense hunger for the books that had appeared during the previous six years. Much new business developed in the sale of the actual books and in translation rights. Such conditions continued at a higher level than they had attained in the 1930s, and they were to be further stimulated with the rise of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Social change came to many countries, bringing a broader spread of purchasing power and above all wider educational opportunity for much of the population. The change was to set book publishing upon a bolder and more adventurous course, turning it from a minor industry into one of sufficient growth and profitability to attract professional investors.A feature of the early postwar years was the remarkable phoenixlike rise of the German book trade, literally from the ashes of the Allied air raids, which had destroyed the principal cities with their publishing offices and printing works. Because Leipzig was in the Soviet-controlled zone of Germany, however, the centre of the trade moved to Frankfurt for the first time since about 1650. As part of its drive to become the commercial capital of West Germany, Frankfurt developed its exhibition facilities rapidly. Thus, the book trade fair had ideal conditions in which to thrive. Before 1939 it had been largely a domestic affair at which German publishers displayed their new works to booksellers, with only a small number of foreign publishers participating and those almost entirely continental; but it steadily grew to be the greatest meeting place for publishers from throughout the world.In the nations that formed the Soviet bloc following World War II, publishing was subjected to a state control similar to that initiated in Soviet Russia in 1917. Very few of the famous publishing houses of Poland and Czechoslovakia survived, and the houses that did survive came under the ownership and control of the state. The normal pattern was for all books on a particular group of subjects to be issued from one publishing house. Thus in Hungary, for example, the principal houses dealt with science, political history, agriculture, music, belles lettres, or military or technical subjects. The organization in Romania was similar; but in East Germany it was significant that many of the prewar firms remained, though all were subject to government control.Besides the economic and social changes that favoured publishing after 1945, an outburst of knowledge, particularly in science and technology, produced many new subjects, many of them highly specialized, all of which called for new books. The many new universities and colleges of technology that sprang up throughout the world formed a strong market for the thousands of college books that came to make up such a large part of many a publisher's list. At the same time, there was a major advance in printing, a break away from the traditional letterpress system dependent upon lead type. Photocomposition (composing of printed matter by photographic means rather than by hand), coupled with offset printing technique, obviated much of the handwork of the earlier methods, improved working speeds, and prevented costs from rising as steeply as they would otherwise h


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