Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Dover Publications (1982), Paperback, 604 pages
Description
An exploration of rare and priceless manuscripts from museums around the world, this survey features nearly 200 photographic facsimiles that depict ancestors of the modern book. Contributions from numerous people and cultures include ancient sources of Greece and Rome, central and southern Asia, Africa, pre-Columbian America, the Far East, and Europe.
User reviews
LibraryThing member setnahkt
Interesting but mostly beyond my level of scholarship. Author David Diringer produced books on the alphabet, on illumination and binding, and this one (originally titled The Hand-Produced Book but reprinted by Dover Press as The Book Before Printing). Diringer expected the reader to also have read,
So, there’s discussion of Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, Egyptian papyri, Greek and Roman wax tablets, vellum, and eventually paper; and discussion of writing in languages like Khotanese, Uighur, and Mayan. Outside of Europe there were a variety of exotic “book” materials, including thin strips of wood or bamboo, palm leaves, and silk. East and West apparently moved independently from scrolls to codices (i.e., sheets bound to a backing) since codices had the salient advantage that it was quick to get to something in the middle of the work.
Extensively illustrated, although the Dover edition I have has all the plates on uncoated paper, which makes them washed out. Thoroughly referenced and with an extensive bibliography. Goes well with Empires of the Word and Scribes and Illuminators.
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or at least have access to, his other two books; for example, he frequently refers to a book’s writing as “majuscule”, “minuscule”, or “uncial” without ever defining those terms, presumably because he’d already done so in his book on the alphabet. On the other hand, since his treatment of books is encyclopedic, this one would have been much longer if all the terms were defined and even if the modern reader doesn’t have the other books, they’ll have Wikipedia.So, there’s discussion of Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, Egyptian papyri, Greek and Roman wax tablets, vellum, and eventually paper; and discussion of writing in languages like Khotanese, Uighur, and Mayan. Outside of Europe there were a variety of exotic “book” materials, including thin strips of wood or bamboo, palm leaves, and silk. East and West apparently moved independently from scrolls to codices (i.e., sheets bound to a backing) since codices had the salient advantage that it was quick to get to something in the middle of the work.
Extensively illustrated, although the Dover edition I have has all the plates on uncoated paper, which makes them washed out. Thoroughly referenced and with an extensive bibliography. Goes well with Empires of the Word and Scribes and Illuminators.
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LibraryThing member Selanit
Diringer gives a thorough, scholarly, and heavily illustrated history of written communication from the very beginnings up to the spread of the printing press. The illustrations are interesting despite being completely in black and white.
The most common edition on LibraryThing is the Dover Edition,
The most common edition on LibraryThing is the Dover Edition,
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first issued in 1982 and reprinted regularly thereafter, but the work predates that considerably. The Dover Edition, according to its copyright page, is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published in 1953 under the title 'The Hand-Produced Book.'" Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1953
Physical description
604 p.; 8.27 inches
ISBN
0486242439 / 9780486242439