Summer 2 (2014)
University of Maryland – College Park
LBSC611: History of the Book
Stephen Greenberg e-mail: sgreenb5@umd.edu
Course Outline and Supplemental Readings
Required Books:
Richard Benson, The Printed Picture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,
2008).
Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography. 2 nd ed. (New Castle, DE: Oak
Knoll). There are many later printings. In this case, the first (hardcover) edition is NOT suitable, for reasons that will be discussed in class
David Pearson, Books as History. 2 nd ed. (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2011).
The first edition is also suitable.
Erik Spiekermann, Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works. 3 rd ed. (San
Francisco: Pearson, 2014). Also available as an Ebook from Peachpit Press.
Optional but very useful: John Carter & Nicolas Barker, ABC for Book Collectors.
8 th ed. (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2004). This is available as a free PDF download from the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and is good to keep around, but there are no required readings from it. Older editions are suitable as well.
All of the required books SHOULD be available through the University Bookstore as well as other (online) sources.
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Lecture Schedule:
7/14: Introduction: What We Know about Books
Optional Reading: Browse through Carter if available
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7/16: Lecture 1: The Book before Printing
Reading: Pearson, chaps. 1 & 2.
7/21: Lecture 2: Incunabula
Reading: Gaskell, pp. 5-77.
7/23: Lecture 3: The 16 th and 17 th Centuries
Reading: Pearson, chap. 3; Gaskell, 78-153
7/28: Field Trip: Details TBA.
7/30: Lecture 4: The 18 th Century
Reading: Pearson, chap. 4; Gaskell, 160-188.
8/4: Lecture 5: Book Illustration before 1850
Reading: Gaskell, 154-159; Benson, 6-47
8/6: Lecture 6: The Mechanized Book and the Mass Book Trade
Reading: Gaskell, 189-265, 274-310. Pearson, chap. 5.
8/11: Lecture 7: Book Illustration after 1850: Lithography & Photography
Reading: Benson, 48-74, 96-174, 184-272; Gaskell, 266-273.
8/13; Lecture 8: Type Re-considered
Reading: Spiekermann, entire (but quickly).
8/18: Lecture 9: The Fine Press Book & Book Collecting
Reading: Pearson, chap. 6 & 7
8/20: Lecture 10: The Post-modern Book
Reading: Pearson, 185-194; Benson, 272-312
There will be a field trip to the History of Medicine Division at the National
Library of Medicine INSTEAD of class on 7/28. Details will be discussed in class.
Attendance is not mandatory (yes, I know you have lives outside of the iSchool), but it will be a unique experience.
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Assignments:
Students will select a printed book from before 1850 and compare it with a modern edition of the same title. A formal collation is not required, but students are expected to comment on type, paper, binding, illustration, method of production, readership (i.e. – target audience), plus any characteristics of special interest. The description should be 3-4 pages in length, and is due on 7/30. This assignment is worth 35% of the course grade.
Students will select two monographs or four articles (or some similar combination) from the supplemental reading list and write a 10-15 page paper exploring a particular topic in detail. Students may suggest or request additional readings.
Topics must be approved by 7/30; the paper is due at the last class meeting. This assignment is worth 50% of the course grade.
All topic proposals and written assignments may be submitted electronically. The instructor will acknowledge receipt of any electronic submission within 24 hours.
If no acknowledgement is received, contact the instructor ASAP. Deadline for electronic submission is 8:30pm (ie – when class is scheduled to end).
15% of the course grade will be based on class participation, etc.
Attendance:
This is a concentrated semester, with a lot to cover in a small number of LONG evenings. Moreover, the instructor expects all students to take an active part in classroom discussion. Therefore, it is important that students plan to attend ALL class sessions. UMd attendance standards will (of course!) be observed, but long weekends at Rehoboth or the Outer Banks are not to be considered excused absences.
Supplemental Reading List:
As noted, students will select two monographs or four articles (or some similar combination) from this list and write a 10-15 page paper exploring a particular topic in detail. Students may suggest or request additional readings. This is a broad subject, and this assignment can be interpreted VERY broadly, but your sanity will be less threatened if you stay within the suggested categories. The list is

4 somewhat weighted toward classics; your selection need not be. Please note that these are suggestions only. Again, topics must be approved by 6/10; the paper is due at the last class meeting. This assignment is worth 50% of the course grade.
Descriptive Bibliography and General Works:
Fredson C. Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949).
Robert Darnton, The Case for Books (2009)
Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book (1984).
Stephen Ferguson, “ History of the Book: Field Notes of a Curator.
” Rare Books and
Manuscript Librarianship 14:1 (1999), 33-48.
W.W. Greg, “ What is Bibliography?
” Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 12
(1911-13), 39-53. Any selection of articles or books by Greg is also suitable.
Lynette Hunter, “ Adaption and/or Revision in Early Quartos of Romeo and Juliet.
”
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 101:1 (2007), 5-54.
Norma Levarie, The Art & History of Books (1995).
Falconer Madan, “ On Method in Bibliography.
” Transactions of the Bibliographical
Society 1 (1892-93), 91-102.
Robert McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927).
David Alan Richards, “ Kipling and the Bibliographers.
” Papers of the Bibliographical
of America 102:2 (2008), 221-234.
Laura Stalker and Jackie M. Dooley, “ Descriptive Cataloging and Rare Books.
” Rare
Books and Manuscripts Librarianship 7.1 (1992), 7-23.
G. Thomas Tanselle, Selected Studies in Bibliography (1979) or any selection of articles by GTT. He is the most respected and prolific bibliographical theorist of our era, and has written on every subject in this list.

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David VanderMeulen, Where Angels Fear to Tread: Descriptive Bibliography and
Alexander Pope (1988).
Incunabula and Earlier:
Helen Barolini, Aldus and his Dream Book (1992).
T.H. Barrett, The Woman Who Discovered Printing (2008)
Peter Beal, In Praise of Scribes: Manuscripts and their Makers in 17 th Century
England. (1998)
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (1983)
AND
Elizabeth Eisenstein, Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in
the West (2011)
Lotte Hellinga, Caxton in Focus (1982)
Sandra Hindman (ed.), Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, c.
1450-1520 (1991).
Janet Ing, Johann Gutenberg and his Bible (1988).
Paul Needham, “ Counting Incunables: The IISTC CD-ROM. ” Huntington Library
Quarterly 61 (1999-2000), 456-529.
Allan Stevenson, The Problem of the Missale Speciale (1967).
Roger Stoddard, Marks in Books (1985).
AND
William Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (2008)
Philip Teigen, “ Concurrent Printing of the Gutenberg Bible and the Proton
Milliprobe Analysis of its Ink, ” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 87
(1993): 437-51. If this topic intrigues, Teigen ’ s footnotes will supply whatever other readings are needed.

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Adrian Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1976).
Hand Press Printing:
Cyprian Blagden, The Stationers ’ Company: A History (1960).
Peter W.M. Blayney, The Bookshops in Paul ’ s Cross Churchyard (1990).
Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre (1984) or The Literary Underground of
the Old Regime (2005).
Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of
Shakespeare, 2 vols. (1963). This counts as two books, but you must take a good look at the Norton facsimile of the First Folio to make sense of what Hinman was up to.
Valerie Hotchkiss & Fred C. Robinson, English in Print: From Caxton to Shakespeare
to Milton (2008).
Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (1998).
Erick Kelemen, “ More Evidence for the Date of A Testimonie of Antiquitie.
”
The Library , 7 th Series, 7:4 (2006), 361-376.
Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing (1683-4, rep.
1978)
Michael Pollak, “ The Performance of the Wooden Printing Press.
” Library Quarterly
42 (1972), 218-264.
Richard-Gabriel Rummonds, Printing on the Iron Handpress (1997)
Maria Wakely, “ Printing and Double-Dealing in Jacobean England.
” The Library, 7 th
Series, 8:2 (2007), 119-153.
Book Illustration and Photography:

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John Buchanan-Brown, Early Victorian Illustrated Books (2005)
Bamber Gascoigne. How to Identify Prints. 2 nd ed. (2004). The first edition is also suitable.
Linda Hults, The Print in the Western World: An Introductory History (1996)
William M. Ivins, Jr. How Prints Look (rev. ed. 1987)
Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (many, many editions)
Gregory R. Suriano, The British Pre-Raphaelite Illustrators (2003)
Nigel Tattersfield, John Bewick: Engraver on Wood 1760-1795 (2001)
Diane Waggoner, ed., The Pre-Raphaelite Lens (2010)
Carol Wax, The Mezzotint: History and Technique (1990)
Binding:
Gabriel Austin, The Library of Jean Grolier (1971)
Douglas Ball, Victorian Publishers ’ Bookbindings (1985).
Stuart Bennett, Trade Bookbindings in the British Isles (2004).
Mirjam M. Foot (ed.) Eloquent Witnesses: Bookbindings and Their History (2004), or Bookbinders at Work (2005) Any work by Foot on any bookbinding subject is worth reading as well, and she has written a great deal.
Jonathan Hill, “ From Provisional to Permanent: Books in Boards, 1790-1840.
” Library
6 th series 21 (1999), 247-273.
Hellmut Lehman-Haupt (ed.), Bookbinding in America: Three Essays (1967).
Howard Nixon, Five Centuries of English Bookbinding (1978).

David Pearson, English Bookbinding Styles, 1450-1800 (2004).
Barbara Shailor, The Medieval Book (1988).
Type and Paper:
Harry Carter, A View of Early Typography (1969)
Frederic W. Goudy, Goudy ’ s Type Designs (1978)
Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (1947, rep. 1978)
Martin Lowry, Nicholas Jenson and the Rise of Venetian Publishing in Renaissance
Europe (1991)
Stanley Morison, On Type Designs Past and Present (1926, rep. 1962) or any selection of books or articles by Morison.
Paul Needham, “ The Paper Supply of the Gutenberg Bible. ” Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America 79 (1985), 303-374.
M. B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: Punctuation in the West (1992)
Ari Rafaeli, Book Typography (2005)
Richard Southall, Printer ’ s Type in the Twentieth Century (2005)
Allen Stevenson, “ Watermarks are Twins.
” Studies in Bibliography 4 (1951-52), 57-
91.
James Sutton and Alan Bartram, An Atlas of Typeforms, (1968, rep. 1988)
Walter Tracy, Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design (1986)
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Daniel Berkeley Updike, Printing Types: Their History, Form, and Use (rep. 2001).
Most recent edition of a classic.
Mechanization/Modernization:
Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
(1994)
Jeff Gomez, Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age (2008)
Basil C. Kahan, Ottmar Mergenthaler, The Man And His Machine (2000).
Hellmut Lehman-Haupt, The Book in America (1939)
Beth Luey, Expanding the American Mind: Books and the Popularization of
Knowledge (2010)
David Pearson, “ Books as History: Changing Values in a Digital Age.
” Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America 100:4 (2006), 405-424.
Anthony Rota, Apart from the Text (1998).
Michael Twyman, “ Lithographic Stone and the Printing Trade in the Nineteenth
Century.
” Journal of the Printing Historical Society 8 (1972), 1-31.
Fine Press and Book Collecting:
Richard Altick, The Scholar Adventurers (1950)
Nicholas Basbanes, A Gentle Madness (1995)
John Dieter Brinks, ed. The Book as a Work of Art (2005)
John Carter and Graham Pollard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth
Century Pamphlets (1934).
AND
John Collins, The Two Forgers (1992).

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Roderick Cave and Sarah Manson, A History of the Golden Cockerel Press 1920-
1960 (2003).
Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus
Copernicus (2004). Skim the astrophysics, concentrate on the bibliography.
Victor E. Neuberg (ed.) Thomas Frognall Dibdin: Selections (1978) or any edition of
Dibdin ’ s Bibliomania you can find.
Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern, Books Have Their Fates (2001) or any other Rostenberg/Stern collaboration.
Marianne Tidcombe, The Doves Press (2003)
Susan O. Thompson, American Book Design and William Morris (1977)
Allison Wiggins, “ What Did Renaissance Readers Write in their Printed Copies of
Chaucer?
” The Library, 7 th Series 9:1 (2008) 3-36.
Looking for a challenge?
Michael Suarez and H.R. Woodhuysen, The Oxford Companion to the Book, 2 vols.
(2010).