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Five Hundred Years of Printing
Originally published in 1955, this text has been substantially revised and updated, taking account of the huge technological changes experienced in the printing industry since the 1970s. The coverage includes censorship, bestsellers, popular series, the history of illustration, the invention of lithography, and the connection between printing and education, language and literature. According to the five hundred years of printing as a creator of changes in human lives.
262 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
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June 9, 2009
First, the rating of two stars is misleading. The first 2/3's of the book is probably a high three or four in the stars rating system. The last 1/3 would earn zero stars. Averaged out I have to give this a two. Mathematically it probably comes closer to three, but that would be misleading. I do not want to mislead.
The Good part of the book was written in 1950-something, by a guy who is now dead. If there is an afterlife he is probably very very angry at the man who ruined his perfectly good book on the history of books. The Good part of the book wasn't great, it was a nice survey though. There was one problem with it, but that was the fault of the meddler.
Now on to the Bad part of the book. The meddlers name is John Trevitt, if the Meddler were a Batman villain he'd be sort of like the Riddler, not too effective, irksome and annoying when having to be exposed to him for any amount of time. The meddlers name is John Trevitt. In a perfect world with a perfect Dantean Hell he would be sitting right between Judas and the King of Hell himself. Yes what he has done to this book is that bad.
In a book where the primary, or original author, is basically a stickler for Good Book design, this book has terrible design, mostly in the case of 7 illustrations being left out. Oh what's a few illustrations you might ask, well they are supposed to be showing what the different types of design are, and it would be fine if there weren't just big gaping holes left on the pages with the captions still there. Can that be forgiven? Well no, because the Meddler "is a book designer and editor, formerly Art and Design Director and a commissioning editor of Cambridge University Press". It's kind of unforgivable. Nevermind that through out the book the illustrations being used sometimes have nothing to do with the text near them, are for examples not mentioned in the text, or aren't in the same order as the text. The pictures chosen are nice to look at, but they are annoying to have to flip through the book trying to see exactly what a William Morris design looks like, or what this particular book would look like that merits it the only good piece of design for a certain error; or when the Meddler states that a particular look is greatest example of Fine Printing in the 20th century, only to find that the picture for this example is one of the big gaping holes.
I'd probably be able to overlook the poor decision made by a professional who has apparently chosen to make his book look like a piece of self-published Urban Fiction, if it wasn't for the fact that his writing is just as bad. After 2/3's of the book being a great example of how to jam 450 years of publishing into an informative and never feeling rushed 175 pages or so, the meddler choses to take the undergrad approach to writing. Difficult topics are handled by saying things like, this is one of the most important advances in printing and the length of this book could not do it justice; and then he says nothing more about whatever this important thing was. I have tried that kind of approach on essay exams in the past. It doesn't work.
There are also gems like this, "one of the noblest monuments to nineteenth-century devotion to learning is the Oxford English Dictionary, the greatest dictionary of modern times (much of it written or edited by James Murray), which was published in parts between 1884 and 1928. Its complex design was hand-set from type cast at the Press and made over 16,000 pages: some compositors stayed with the Dictionary through their working lives. The printed version of the second edition was published in 1989: it took over 100 keyboarders 18 months, expanded the coverage from 400,000 to over 500,000 words and the extent to over 21,000 pages, and was set on a Monophoto Lasercomp. It was since been published as a CD-Rom..." That's all great information but it's in the post 1955 chapter of the book. Shouldn't the OED be considered a triumph of printing for it's original, not as monument to data-entry? Am I being too picky? Maybe, but this is just one example of superfluous facts that take the place of actual meaningful content for the last 1/3 of this book.
When the reader is not snow-balled over with undergrad attempts at avoiding topics, or being given trivial facts in the place of content, the reader can expect to be exposed to the value or judgment based opinions of the author, that are just confusing. The meddler has opinions, and he likes to give them, but as facts. One example would be when talking about the lack of literary merit in most bestsellers through out history (note, the biggest sellers right out of the gate of printing were Eramus, Boccaccio, and Luther - three people who still have their share of supporters in the quality department, but that is a fact from the first 1/3 of the book, so it's like it's in another text). So he's what the Meddler has to say, "Undoubtedly this holds good for perhaps the greater part of fiction bestsellers, from the Amadis romances (which were killed only by Don Quixote), through Richardson's Pamela (which Fielding's Joseph Andrews emphatically did not oust), down to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (greg's note, it did win the Pulitzer Prize, and it is called a good book by the author a few pages later, opps), and in our own time such popular novelists as Catherine Cookson, Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie, Jeffrey Archer, Graham Greene and John Updike."
I dislike Updike but to call him unliterary is a bit strong. I don't think he's going to be remembered a hundred years from now, I think he's a good stylist but with no real lasting power or originality to speak of, but he expresses what he chooses to express in a way I could only wish to half half the clarity of, but he's no Jeffrey Archer. And Graham Greene? Really? Making blanket statements like this is fine in a forum like Goodreads.com, but as an author for an 'authority' text on the history of books? Of course this isn't the only example, he spouts his opinions off like this elsewhere, he also goes back on them and so forth.
This book angered me. I wanted to like it more. Where it's good it's quite satisfying, but the travesty that has been done to the original text (apparently the Meddler cut out an equal number of pages that he added to keep the book at the original length, so somethings he decided we should not have to know, so that we could have space to find out that he doesn't like Graham Greene or John Updike (and never mind Agatha Christie, it's not like she defined a whole genre or anything)).
Maybe you will not agree with me that the Meddler deserves punishment for what he has done, but that is only because I believe I have failed to adequately express myself, and not because he is any less guilty of the crimes against good books that he has committed.
The Good part of the book was written in 1950-something, by a guy who is now dead. If there is an afterlife he is probably very very angry at the man who ruined his perfectly good book on the history of books. The Good part of the book wasn't great, it was a nice survey though. There was one problem with it, but that was the fault of the meddler.
Now on to the Bad part of the book. The meddlers name is John Trevitt, if the Meddler were a Batman villain he'd be sort of like the Riddler, not too effective, irksome and annoying when having to be exposed to him for any amount of time. The meddlers name is John Trevitt. In a perfect world with a perfect Dantean Hell he would be sitting right between Judas and the King of Hell himself. Yes what he has done to this book is that bad.
In a book where the primary, or original author, is basically a stickler for Good Book design, this book has terrible design, mostly in the case of 7 illustrations being left out. Oh what's a few illustrations you might ask, well they are supposed to be showing what the different types of design are, and it would be fine if there weren't just big gaping holes left on the pages with the captions still there. Can that be forgiven? Well no, because the Meddler "is a book designer and editor, formerly Art and Design Director and a commissioning editor of Cambridge University Press". It's kind of unforgivable. Nevermind that through out the book the illustrations being used sometimes have nothing to do with the text near them, are for examples not mentioned in the text, or aren't in the same order as the text. The pictures chosen are nice to look at, but they are annoying to have to flip through the book trying to see exactly what a William Morris design looks like, or what this particular book would look like that merits it the only good piece of design for a certain error; or when the Meddler states that a particular look is greatest example of Fine Printing in the 20th century, only to find that the picture for this example is one of the big gaping holes.
I'd probably be able to overlook the poor decision made by a professional who has apparently chosen to make his book look like a piece of self-published Urban Fiction, if it wasn't for the fact that his writing is just as bad. After 2/3's of the book being a great example of how to jam 450 years of publishing into an informative and never feeling rushed 175 pages or so, the meddler choses to take the undergrad approach to writing. Difficult topics are handled by saying things like, this is one of the most important advances in printing and the length of this book could not do it justice; and then he says nothing more about whatever this important thing was. I have tried that kind of approach on essay exams in the past. It doesn't work.
There are also gems like this, "one of the noblest monuments to nineteenth-century devotion to learning is the Oxford English Dictionary, the greatest dictionary of modern times (much of it written or edited by James Murray), which was published in parts between 1884 and 1928. Its complex design was hand-set from type cast at the Press and made over 16,000 pages: some compositors stayed with the Dictionary through their working lives. The printed version of the second edition was published in 1989: it took over 100 keyboarders 18 months, expanded the coverage from 400,000 to over 500,000 words and the extent to over 21,000 pages, and was set on a Monophoto Lasercomp. It was since been published as a CD-Rom..." That's all great information but it's in the post 1955 chapter of the book. Shouldn't the OED be considered a triumph of printing for it's original, not as monument to data-entry? Am I being too picky? Maybe, but this is just one example of superfluous facts that take the place of actual meaningful content for the last 1/3 of this book.
When the reader is not snow-balled over with undergrad attempts at avoiding topics, or being given trivial facts in the place of content, the reader can expect to be exposed to the value or judgment based opinions of the author, that are just confusing. The meddler has opinions, and he likes to give them, but as facts. One example would be when talking about the lack of literary merit in most bestsellers through out history (note, the biggest sellers right out of the gate of printing were Eramus, Boccaccio, and Luther - three people who still have their share of supporters in the quality department, but that is a fact from the first 1/3 of the book, so it's like it's in another text). So he's what the Meddler has to say, "Undoubtedly this holds good for perhaps the greater part of fiction bestsellers, from the Amadis romances (which were killed only by Don Quixote), through Richardson's Pamela (which Fielding's Joseph Andrews emphatically did not oust), down to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (greg's note, it did win the Pulitzer Prize, and it is called a good book by the author a few pages later, opps), and in our own time such popular novelists as Catherine Cookson, Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie, Jeffrey Archer, Graham Greene and John Updike."
I dislike Updike but to call him unliterary is a bit strong. I don't think he's going to be remembered a hundred years from now, I think he's a good stylist but with no real lasting power or originality to speak of, but he expresses what he chooses to express in a way I could only wish to half half the clarity of, but he's no Jeffrey Archer. And Graham Greene? Really? Making blanket statements like this is fine in a forum like Goodreads.com, but as an author for an 'authority' text on the history of books? Of course this isn't the only example, he spouts his opinions off like this elsewhere, he also goes back on them and so forth.
This book angered me. I wanted to like it more. Where it's good it's quite satisfying, but the travesty that has been done to the original text (apparently the Meddler cut out an equal number of pages that he added to keep the book at the original length, so somethings he decided we should not have to know, so that we could have space to find out that he doesn't like Graham Greene or John Updike (and never mind Agatha Christie, it's not like she defined a whole genre or anything)).
Maybe you will not agree with me that the Meddler deserves punishment for what he has done, but that is only because I believe I have failed to adequately express myself, and not because he is any less guilty of the crimes against good books that he has committed.
October 11, 2009
100 pages fell out of this book in one big clump, vanished into the papery chaos of my house, and did not resurface again. I feel ok about this. It was an educational read, but one which felt really, really educational - the book equivalent of lima beans. The most enjoyable parts came when the author let loose with some venomous comment about Soviet Russia or why we should even bother to teach the masses to read, as they'll waste their literacy on crappy books. Despite the bile, it gave a human touch to an otherwise monotonous read.
July 4, 2020
I had an old Penguin Paperback (1955 ed) copy of this book kicking about, and had a 10 to 15 minutes a day to fill, I started reading this. It is now one of my all time favourite books, incisive, amusing (laugh out funny at times?) and so much information about how printing took hold and spread around the world.
Why Welsh and Irish as languages, nearly became extinct due to a lack of fonts for their respective languages?
Why some fonts took hold, and others didn't, who were the main movers and shakers in early printing, why England was so slow getting printing.
From reading some other reviews it would appear that the text has been extended, so stop at 1955, and just enjoy a gem of a book?
Why Welsh and Irish as languages, nearly became extinct due to a lack of fonts for their respective languages?
Why some fonts took hold, and others didn't, who were the main movers and shakers in early printing, why England was so slow getting printing.
From reading some other reviews it would appear that the text has been extended, so stop at 1955, and just enjoy a gem of a book?
August 29, 2025
500 Years of Printing.
Published in 2017
It may be important to preface this review by stating the obvious: AI, Google, and the internet have diminished the traditional printing, book, publishing, advertising, and newspaper industries. The industry was started by Gutenberg in 1435 with the invention of the printing press, which would revolutionize the world for the next 500 years.
Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type. The alloy was a mixture of lead, tin, and antimony that melted at a relatively low temperature for faster and more economical casting and created a durable type. As a goldsmith, this process was probably not a very far stretch from the skills he had already been employing.
The expansion of the printing press was a little slower in some places across the world. It took until around 1780 for Australia to obtain a printing press, while the immediate expansion took place in Germany and Italy. According to this book, the printing press actually saved the local vernacular languages in some Scandinavian countries (like Finland), which might have otherwise been subsumed by the larger Polish and German languages.
New printing press inventions in the 1780s increased the production of books tenfold. Two of these improvements were the Stanhope iron press and the papermaking machine (1799). The publisher became a necessity as the literacy rate skyrocketed and the demand for books grew immensely. There also became a lot of financial risk in bookmaking, and there was a need to protect against unauthorized reproduction of successful books.
Published in 2017
It may be important to preface this review by stating the obvious: AI, Google, and the internet have diminished the traditional printing, book, publishing, advertising, and newspaper industries. The industry was started by Gutenberg in 1435 with the invention of the printing press, which would revolutionize the world for the next 500 years.
Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type. The alloy was a mixture of lead, tin, and antimony that melted at a relatively low temperature for faster and more economical casting and created a durable type. As a goldsmith, this process was probably not a very far stretch from the skills he had already been employing.
The expansion of the printing press was a little slower in some places across the world. It took until around 1780 for Australia to obtain a printing press, while the immediate expansion took place in Germany and Italy. According to this book, the printing press actually saved the local vernacular languages in some Scandinavian countries (like Finland), which might have otherwise been subsumed by the larger Polish and German languages.
New printing press inventions in the 1780s increased the production of books tenfold. Two of these improvements were the Stanhope iron press and the papermaking machine (1799). The publisher became a necessity as the literacy rate skyrocketed and the demand for books grew immensely. There also became a lot of financial risk in bookmaking, and there was a need to protect against unauthorized reproduction of successful books.
July 14, 2017
While some of the sections - best-sellers, etc - are snappy and infectious, most of the writing is composed of history that gallops all too quickly until the text hits the mud of some longueur intimately dissecting minute changes in an obscure printing technology. In other words, the authorial voice is either too little, or far too much, and I often found myself glazing over. The main takeaway from both the intimate details and the too quickly stated histories is that capital, the profit-motive, and ever evolving technologies have forced innumerable permutations in book-printing in order to respond to ever changing material conditions. Methods of commercial printing are always caught in a flux due to capitalism, which, as of late, usually produce worsening material standards while hypothetically expanding audiences.
July 6, 2024
Well researched, very insightful and reflective for its time. The book is broken into three main subdivisions, The Incunabula, the 250 years following, beginning with the early 17th century, and finally the mid to late 19th and 20th centuries. It was a fascinating exploration of the role the printing press (and by extension the printed word) has had on the western world since Gutenberg's invention 500 years prior.
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August 31, 2023No rating, read for uni.
June 14, 2024
Passa per grande classico ma è un pallonetto elenco di nomi e date.
Utile forse per una tesi, ma la mancanza di un profilo generale fa proprio storiografia anglosassone.
Utile forse per una tesi, ma la mancanza di un profilo generale fa proprio storiografia anglosassone.
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December 9, 2025Books about books... could be a little more exciting.
October 24, 2008
invaluable resource and starting point for anybody wishing to explore the world of media and print. the edition i read is one of the first ones - it was issued in 1955 - and is slightly tinted with some iron-curtain rhetoric, but i guess the newer editions will have gotten rid of that. oh, and they can certainly live without the arrogant attitude of the author to any print events and participants outside of England. I especially oppose his argument that the Slavic countries in a way reinstated their uncivilized backwardness by refusing to adopt the Latin alphabet and moreover, choosing to "enforce it" on other countries [the USSR was envisaged here]. I just do not understand why the ideas of Humanism are so inextricably bound to the Latin alphabet and how come Greece slides clean out between the drops of this argument?
But anyway, quite thorough and entertaining history of the printed word.
But anyway, quite thorough and entertaining history of the printed word.
December 9, 2022
While this seems like it would be an interesting topic, the first half or so of the book is interesting, but after that, it just drags and is dry. There are some good illustrations and examples of printed pages, though.
This is one of those books that part of me wants to keep because it's good history and may be a good reference one day, but part of me wants to get rid of because it's a waste of space, and if it's *really* a good history and reference, some other book will refer to it and I'll have that info again.
Some reviewers have commented on Steinberg's humor, which I either hadn't noticed or didn't remember, but then I came across this: "A ridiculous attempt to fuse Fraktur and Antiqua...the most remarkable specimen of typographical folly ever thought of..."
This is one of those books that part of me wants to keep because it's good history and may be a good reference one day, but part of me wants to get rid of because it's a waste of space, and if it's *really* a good history and reference, some other book will refer to it and I'll have that info again.
Some reviewers have commented on Steinberg's humor, which I either hadn't noticed or didn't remember, but then I came across this: "A ridiculous attempt to fuse Fraktur and Antiqua...the most remarkable specimen of typographical folly ever thought of..."
Read
October 3, 2008"Jenson, one of the greatest type-designers of all time, cut his roman fount for the printing of a Roman text, Cicero's Epistolae ad Brutum (1470)...We may no longer share the exaggerated enthusiasm of William Morris, who maintained that 'Jenson carried the development of roman type as far as it can go,' but the strength and nobility of this first true roman at once set the highest standard for every subsequent roman face."
December 28, 2024
read for academic purposes, will state though, that this needs a thorough editing and maybe some parts of it to be re-written in a more accessible way, or in a manner where the reader wants to find out more - instead of just stating facts.
February 1, 2008
An avalanche of information.
March 1, 2009
A readable overview of the history of the book since the invention of movable type and the printing press.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews