The Work of Print traces a shift in the very definition of literature, from one that encompasses the material conditions of the production and distribution of books to the more familiar emphasis on the solitary author's ownership of an abstract text. Drawing on contemporary accounts of those involved in the trade - printers, booksellers, publishers, and distributors - Lisa Maruca examines attitudes about the creative process and approaches to the commodification of writing. The "work of print" describes the labors through which literature was produced: both the physical labor of making books and the underlying cultural work performed by a set of ideologies about who counted as a maker of texts. Printers' manuals, tracts on typography, legal documents, and booksellers' autobiographies reveal that print workers conceived of their roles as central to the production of literature. Maruca's insightful readings of these documents alongside traditional works of fiction and authors' correspondence show that the claims of print workers and booksellers were part of a struggle for ownership and control as the concept of author as proprietor of his or her intellectual property began to take hold in the mid-1700s, gradually eclipsing print workers' contributions to the process of textual creation. The print trade asserted its authority using a rhetoric of hierarchical and binary sexuality and gender, which affected women working in the industry and limited the type of work they were allowed to perform. In response, women developed strategies to redeploy conventional ideas of gender to gain concessions for themselves as publishers and distributors of printed material, strategies that formed a foundation for the rise of female authorship later in the eighteenth century. Encompassing the histories of literature, labor, technology, publishing, and gender, The Work of Print ultimately offers significant insights into the ideology of authorship and intellectual property and our understanding of textuality and print in the digital age.

During his long career Stanley Morison held appointments as typographical adviser to Cambridge University Press, to the Monotype Corporation, and to The Times, where he was responsible both for its radical new design in 1932 and for the standard history of the paper. These two volumes bring together the majority of his most lasting essays. Many of them, pioneering in their day, are now classics in their field. The collection, first published in 1980, spans a period of forty years. It includes essays on letter-forms in manuscript and in print, beginning with those published in The Flueron in the 1920s, on typefaces in sixteenth-century Italy, on the development of Latin script, on the history of learned presses and on the typography of newspapers.

A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts provides an introduction to the language and concepts employed in bibliographical studies and textual scholarship as they pertain to early modern manuscripts and printed texts Winner, Honourable Mention for Literature, Language and Linguistics, American Publishers Prose Awards, 2010 Based almost exclusively on new primary research Explains the complex process of viewing documents as artefacts, showing readers how to describe documents properly and how to read their physical properties Demonstrates how to use the information gleaned as a tool for studying the transmission of literary documents Makes clear why such matters are important and the purposes to which such information is put Features illustrations that are carefully chosen for their unfamiliarity in order to keep the discussion fresh

This volume explores and calls into question certain commonly held assumptions about writing and technological advancement in the Islamic tradition. In particular, it challenges the idea that mechanical print naturally and inevitably displaces handwritten texts as well as the notion that the so-called transition from manuscript to print is unidirectional. Indeed, rather than distinct technologies that emerge in a progressive series (one naturally following the other), they frequently co-exist in complex and complementary relationships – relationships we are only now starting to recognize and explore. The book brings together essays by internationally recognized scholars from an array of disciplines (including philology, linguistics, religious studies, history, anthropology, and typography) whose work focuses on the written word – channeled through various media – as a social and cultural phenomenon within the Islamic tradition. These essays promote systematic approaches to the study of Islamic writing cultures writ large, in an effort to further our understanding of the social, cultural and intellectual relationships between manuscripts, printed texts and the people who use and create them.

In this engaging history, the author demonstrates handwriting in America from colonial times to the present. Exploring such subjects as penmanship, pedagogy, handwriting analysis, autograph collecting, and calligraphy revivals, Thornton investigates the shifting functions and meanings of handwriting. 57 illustrations.

"To the layman, all printing types look the same. But for typographers, graphic artists and others of that lunatic fringe who believe that the letters we look at daily (and take entirely for granted) are of profound importance, the question of how letters are formed, what shape they assume, and how they have evolved remains one of passionate and continuing concern. Lawson explores the vast territory of types, their development and uses, their antecedents and offspring, with precision, insight, and clarity. Written for the layman but containing exhaustive research, drawings and synopses of typefaces, this book is an essential addition to the library of anyone s typographic library. It is, as Lawson states, not written for the printer convinced that there are already too many typefaces, but rather for that curious part of the population that believes the opposite; that the subtleties of refinement as applies to roman and cursive letters have yet to be fully investigated and that the production of the perfect typeface remains a goal to be as much desired by present as by future type designers. Anyone aspiring to typographic wisdom should own and treasure this classic."--Amazon description.

From a quantitative point of view the achievement of the Kelmscott Press may not seem impressive: between 1891 and 1898 it produced fifty-two books and a set of specimen pages for another book. Yet each was remarkably beautiful. Designed by William Morris, printed on hand-presses, ornamented with initials and borders by Morris, and illustrated often by Edward Burne-Jones, these few Kelmscott Press books are famous everywhere today. Why they have so profoundly affected twentieth-century theories of book design and what cultural significance the founding of the Kelmscott Press played are some of the questions the author considers.