Five Hundred Years of Printing is essential reading for the book collector, the cultural historian, the professional publisher and book designer, and teachers and students of typography, graphic design and communications studies. It immediately became established as a standard work on its publication as a Pelican in 1955 and saw two new editions within twenty years.

Containing 26 selected and thoroughly rewritten essays and articles (all written by Janssen and published previously between 1976 and 2002 in yearbooks and periodicals) all dedicated to the history of printing and book production, this work draws systematically attention to the typogtaphical design of the book. The articles are mainly divided into two fields of attention: the analytical bibliography of the printed book (book production, studies of the technical aspects of type-setting and printing, type founding, printing presses, paper etc.) and the typographical design of books (its functions and its influence on how texts are read).

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

Despite its title, the book gives a rather thorough chronological account of the printing history in England, from Caxton, where it all began to Morris, where most of the major industrial centers of the technology was located at the time. It is written by one of the previous presidents of Tufts University, Frederick W. Hamilton.