The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in 18 Remarkable Lives

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Description

The Book-Makers is a celebration of 550 years of the printed book, told through the lives of eighteen extraordinary men and women who took the book in radical new directions- printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders. This is a story of skill, craft, mess, cunning, triumph, improvisation, and error. Some of these names we know. We meet jobbing printer (and American Founding Father) Benjamin Franklin. We watch Thomas Cobden-Sanderson conjure books that flicker between the early twentieth century and the fifteenth. Others have been forgotten. We don't remember Sarah Eaves, wife of John Baskerville, and her crucial contribution to the history of type. Nor Charles Edward Mudie, populariser of the circulating library - and the most influential figure in book publishing before Jeff Bezos. Nor William Wildgoose, who meticulously bound Shakespeare's First Folio, and then disappeared from history. The Book-Makers puts people back into the story of the book. It takes you inside the print-shop as the deadline looms and the adrenaline flows - from 1492 Fleet Street to 2023 New York. It's a story of contingencies and quirks, of successes and failures, of routes forward and paths not taken. The Book-Makers is a history of book-making that leaves ink on your fingers, and it shows why the printed book will continual to flourish.

Reviews

A fascinating book that speaks volumes * Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2024* *
This really is the loveliest of books and you will never take for granted reading a physical copy again * i *
Agile storytelling and chatty erudition evoke not just the physicality of the book but also its innate humanity * Observer *
A passionate paean to the book, in all its forms, as an object ... So interesting, so thought-provoking * Literary Review *
The Book-Makers breathes bibliophilia. It recalls Walter Benjamins essay Unpacking My Library. Like Benjamin, Smyth unpacks his contents lovingly I cannot recommend it highly enough * Spectator *
Emphasising the human aspect in all its chaotic truth, The Book-Makers is far from your standard Gutenberg-to-Google history of the book [Smyth] is almost uniquely well-qualified to convey what his 18 makers felt under their fingertips, and why it mattered to them so much. It is, in the truest sense, an enthusiasts book; one that deserves to find enthusiasts of its own * Telegraph *
Vivid and often-surprising The charm of The Book-Makers comes from its interest in wear and tear, blunders and errata, the spontaneous and the scrappy, the residual and the recycled and in edges, of pages and bindings, society and taste * Times Literary Supplement *
Refreshing ... Smyth breathes both books-as-objects and their creators back into life * Financial Times *
Bound to be brilliant ... There's no doubting the breadth of [Smyth's] knowledge and love of the business * Guardian *
Fun and informative ... The Book-Makers gives you a lively sense of the way in which books have been made and unmade, crafted, handled and spliced down the centuries * Prospect *

Author Bio

Adam Smyth runs the 39 Step Press, an experiment in printing, from a cold barn in Oxfordshire. He is also Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, University of Oxford.