The History and Power of Writing

by Henri-Jean Martin, Lydia G. Cochrane (Translator)

Cultural history on a grand scale, this immensely readable book—the summation of decades of study by one of the world's great scholars of the book—is the story of writing from its very beginnings to its recent transformations through technology.

Traversing four millennia, Martin offers a chronicle of writing as a cultural system, a means of communication, and a history of technologies. He shows how the written word originated, how it spread, and how it figured in the evolution of civilization. Using as his center the role of printing in making the written way of thinking dominant, Martin examines the interactions of individuals and cultures to produce new forms of "writing" in the many senses of authorship, language rendition, and script.

Martin looks at how much the development of writing owed to practical necessity, and how much to religious and social systems of symbols. He describes the precursors to writing and reveals their place in early civilization as mnemonic devices in service of the spoken word. The tenacity of the oral tradition plays a surprisingly important part in this story, Martin notes, and even as late as the eighteenth century educated individuals were trained in classical rhetoric and preferred to rely on the arts of memory. Finally, Martin discusses the changes to writing wrought by the electronic revolution, offering invaluable insights into the influence these new technologies have had on children born into the computer age.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Writing, Language, Design

608 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 1994

About the author

Henri-Jean Louis Paul Martin (16 January 1924 – 13 January 2007) was a leading authority on the history of the book in Europe, and an expert on the history of writing and printing. He was a leader in efforts to promote libraries in France, and the history of libraries and printing.

Born in Paris, Henri-Jean Martin's initial professional position was that of conservateur in the réserve des imprimés of the Bibliothèque nationale, a position he held from 1947 to 1958. In 1958 he published his famous work, L'Apparition du Livre (The Coming of the Book), which he co-authored with the French historian Lucien Febvre. In 1962 he was named conservateur en chef of the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon. With master printer Marius Audin he helped create Lyon's Musée de l’Imprimerie. In 1970 he left Lyon for Paris, and a chair of bibliography the history of the book at the École Nationale des Chartes, where he taught until 1993.

Henri-Jean Martin also taught at the École Nationale Supérieure des Bibliothèques (ENSB, in Paris, today the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Science de l'Information et des Bibliothèques / ENSSIB in Lyon), and at the École pratique des hautes études where he served thirty years as a directeur des études in the IV° section.

He died in Paris of cancer.

Reviews

[Verónica Juárez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book, I already enjoyed it so much, it was enlightening and with a lot of historical information that you have to process very slowly and, maybe you have to go back sometimes just to reinforce all the knowledge you're getting with this book. It should be definitively a must and a reference book for librarians, students of librarianship and people related with book industry. I'm convinced every librarian around the globe must have this book in his/her personal library

However I said I have mixed feelings and this is because although in the title never mention anything about "universal" history of writing, sometimes (especially from chapter 6 to the end of the book) I feel it was just about the history of writing in Europe and specially in France, with a few exceptions talking about Germany, England and the United States. The author never mention the case of Mexico and I think it's a huge mistake not to include a country where we had the first press in all the continent, even before the United States.

And what about the ebook? Although the last part talks about of the development of machines and their impact to writing culture, it never really talks about the most important development for writing records since Gutenberg's press. The book was first published in 1988, of course we can talk about the boom of the ebook in the 2007 but in fact ebooks have been around 70s.

It deserves another revision in order to solve this two big missing points of a great, great history.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martin's analysis of the impact of writing, particularly the chapters on the early years of printing, are an invaluable guide for anyone seeking to understand what we do to ourselves when we write and read. See beyond the pieces of the puzzle, including the scribal monks, Gutenburg, the printing press, book binding and distribution to the whole process that has been in motion since we first began to write through the early days of the computer revolution (the book was published in the mid-90s).

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

history,books,nonfiction