Old Books and New Histories: An Orientation to Studies in Book and Print Culture

by Leslie Howsam

Studies in the culture and history of the book are a burgeoning academic specialty. Intriguing, rigorous, and vital, they are nevertheless rooted within three major academic disciplines - history, literary studies, and bibliography - that focus respectively upon the book as a cultural transaction, a literary text, and a material artefact. Old Books and New Histories serves as a guide to this rich but sometimes confusing territory, explaining how different scholarly approaches to what may appear to be the same entity can lead to divergent questions and contradictory answers. Rather than introduce the events and turning points in the history of book culture, or debates among its theorists, Leslie Howsam uses an array of books and articles to offer an orientation to the field in terms of disciplinary boundaries and interdisciplinary tensions. Howsam's analysis maps studies of book and print culture onto the disciplinary structure of the North American and European academic world. Old Books and New Histories is also an engaged statement of the historical perspective of the book. In the final analysis, the lesson of studies in book and print culture is that texts change, books are mutable, and readers ultimately make of books what they need.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Books About Books, Research, Theory

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

Reviews

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended to students of book history or in any book-related discipline.
I enjoyed reading it and I was fascinated by author's writing and combining theories and bibliography of the subject. I found it online but I would try to buy it in print as well.
I understood better what is the field of bibliography about, how it is connected with other disciplines, and the importance of "standing somewhere before I pick up a book" as a reader.

[Mary Tsiara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books happen; they happen to people who read, reproduce, disseminate, and compose them; and they happen to be significant.

As Howsam states at the beginning, this book is 'unashamedly a strongly engaged defence of the perspective of the discipline of history upon the history of the book'. To make things less complicated, she introduces the triangle of the interdisciplinary approach that guides the cultural study of books. This triangle, which is susceptible to rotation, is presented as such: history (agency), bibliography (document), literature (text).

Concepts like the book as a commercial commodity vs the book as literary art arise, whereas authorship, readership, and publishing are examined from a cultural perspective.

‘Readers need to stand somewhere before they pick up a book,’ meaning that the societal contexts of gender, politics, economic and intellectual factors shape the way we read- a thought I find a bit unoriginal, but then again there were many aspects of book culture that were left unexplored in this one.

I must say it put me in the mood for more reading on book history and the idea of the book within history though, and that is something I didn't expect (neither did my TBR pile, hello there).

There is always a chance I included in this review only what made more sense to me. After all,
Texts change, books are mutable, and readers make of books what they need.

[Sougeitu · Rating 4 out of 5]

一本簡單的學科定位書，但值得反復琢磨。

[Wens Tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful introduction to recent developments in book history and notable thinkers, such as historian Robert Darnton and the communications circuit model (1982), bibliographers Thomas R. Adams and Nicolas Barker and the book-centred model (1993), Peter D. McDonald's fleshing out of Darnton's model in his book "British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice 1880-1914" in which he showed numerous social groups form their own communications circuit, and James A. Secord in "Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'" showed how printed works were appropriated and used in debate, politics, and identity formation.

Howsam noted that history, literature and bibliography offers three distinct approaches to book history. Historians tend to focus on agency and power, literary writers focus on texts and criticisms, while bibliographers focus on the documents and the books as objects.

[Epifras]

En bok som innan läsning verkar dödstråkig men som visar sig öppna upp ett helt område - studierna kring "bibliografi" och bok/läshistoria liknar vetenskapshistoria och STS (Science and technology studies) ganska mycket på precis detta sätt: nämligen att de tar ett område (den tryckta boken och vetenskapen) som framstår som självklar, rationell och standardiserad och sedan "avförtrollar" dessa föreställningar. Här lär man sig exempelvis att den rörliga typen (från Gutenberg osv) inte nödvändigtvis resulterade i en mer "standardiserad" och "fixerad" text utan att hela tryckindustrin genomsyras av olika intressen från läsare, försäljare, förlag och mecenater som styr olika tryck, upplagor och utgåvor - till och med specifika kopior - precis som hur i ett laboratorium så finns det alltid ett "socialt tryck" (Collins, Latour, Bloor) som resulterar i specifika resultat. Varken boken eller vetenskapen är alltså någonting "determinerat" av tekniken eller logiken. Sedan kan också typsättaren helt enkelt göra fel, precis som munken råkade felkopiera i sitt manuskript. Detta innebär alltså att varje kopia på ett sätt är "partikulär" oavsett hur universell och standardiserad upplagan verkar vara av ett verk.

Likaså kan man ifrågasätta förhållandet mellan uppkomsten av tryckkultur och ökad läskunnighet, och så förhållandet mellan "rationalitet" och tryckkultur samt läskunnighet.

Och visst är det intressant hur vi så ofta förbiser det materiella i vår läsning av en bok, vi strävar ständigt bortom till en abstrakt "text" eller en "mening" men glömmer att allting är konkret och partikulärt. Vi glömmer vad det faktiskt är som vi läser. Vad är detta för drift?

Undrar vad som händer om man bara uppehåller sig vid detta partikulära och materiella? Jag har ingen aning, vi kanske borde syssla mer med bibliografi.

Historiska läsningar av ett verk är också inte givna, varje person utvinner det hon behöver från ett verk under en specifik period. Bibliografin och läsningens och bokens historia återstår alltså att skriva. Fältet är öppet.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

More a long essay than a book (it's only 77 pages of text), this provides a solid overview of the ways in which three disciplines of academia come at the study of book history. The bibliography alone makes it worthwhile for anyone wanting to begin learning about this topic.

[Cioran · Rating 4 out of 5]

She manages to get a lot done with just less than a hundred pages. Truly remarkable.

[Grace Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

closer to a 3.5? honestly didn’t rlly justify itself as a full book imo, but full credit for the diagrams!!

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

If this can be called a book (it's relatively large type, and only 77 pages long without notes and references), it isn't a very thorough one. Howsam divides the disciplinary origins of book history scholarship amongst three fields: English, history, and bibliography. However, her attempts to flesh out those histories are heavily skewed toward history, and her neglect of other relevant disciplines feels less like an oversight than shoddy scholarship. Her lack of exhaustive survey might be excused if the purpose of her book was to do something else. However, since one of her primary goals is to provide a background to the field, her overall lack of depth is conspicuous at best. What her book does do nicely is illuminate how book historians are always driven by ancillary questions that relate to, but more importantly supplement, the overarching "what is the history of the book?" question. These questions, largely driven by disciplinary concerns, inform both the paths of scholarship and methodologies it takes up. In the end, Howsam's text serves as an adequate and occasionally thought provoking meditation on the work of book historians across a select number of disciplines, but its glimpse ins cursory and introductory at best, and (unfortunately) reductionist and under-researched at worst.

[Cacology · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contains some factual errors that I caught, so I worry about the ones that I might have missed. Otherwise, very good. Overview of disciplinary boundaries in book and print culture with many footnotes and bibliography. Focuses on theory and history. Three major branches are bibliography, history, and literary theory. Argues that many people, including librarians, can do work in book history.

[Janice Liedl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic balance of scholarship ON scholarship about books with an interesting set of prescriptions about where such studies will go in future.