‘The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book’ Review: Our Back Pages
source link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-oxford-illustrated-history-of-the-book-review-our-back-pages-11671809077
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
‘The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book’ Review: Our Back Pages
By the late 1600s, readers awash in print titles turned to a new type of aid: book-review journals.
What is a book, anyway? If you have ever read a novel on your smartphone, you can’t help but ponder that question. In the 1990s, when “the history of the book” was taking off as an academic field, the scholars involved couldn’t quite decide which objects they were supposed to study. I once dined with an eminent professor who, overtaken by epistemological panic, waved his menu in front of me and demanded to know “Is this a book?!”
I couldn’t see why not. It was a gathering of printed pages, it conveyed information to readers, and it revealed something significant about the society that produced it. Clearly it was worth studying.
Continue reading your article with
a WSJ membership
Special Offer
$2 Per month
Already a member? Sign In
Recommend
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK