Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Materials
- 2 Writing the words
- 3 Mapping the words
- 4 Designing the page
- 5 Decorating and illustrating the page
- 6 Compiling the book
- 7 Bookbinding
- 8 Commercial organization and economic innovation
- 9 Vernacular literary manuscripts and their scribes
- 10 Book production outside commercial contexts
- 11 Censorship
- 12 Books beyond England
- 13 English books and the continent
- Afterword: the book in culture
- Bibliography
- Index of manuscripts
- General index
Afterword: the book in culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Materials
- 2 Writing the words
- 3 Mapping the words
- 4 Designing the page
- 5 Decorating and illustrating the page
- 6 Compiling the book
- 7 Bookbinding
- 8 Commercial organization and economic innovation
- 9 Vernacular literary manuscripts and their scribes
- 10 Book production outside commercial contexts
- 11 Censorship
- 12 Books beyond England
- 13 English books and the continent
- Afterword: the book in culture
- Bibliography
- Index of manuscripts
- General index
Summary
The Production of Books in England 1350–1500 analyses its subject in starkly material terms. Problems addressed in this volume range from the material constituents of books, through the physical processes involved in their deployment, to the economic relations and ideologies that enabled and constrained production. What materials were books made from, how were they supplied and what did they cost? What kinds of people wrote the texts and decorated the pages, and what processes – linguistic, intellectual, physical – were involved in copying and decorating? What scripts, page layouts, decoration and illustration are used, how are the varieties to be explained, and what costs were involved? Where did scribes and decorators obtain exemplars? What materials and methods were used for binding books, who carried out this work, where and at what cost? How did all of these processes inter-relate on a practical basis: did someone serve as coordinator – as a kind of ‘project manager’ – or was it necessary for the person paying for the work to organize these processes? How did print culture relate to patterns of manuscript production? The purpose of this afterword is to reflect on the significance of the ideas and information in the foregoing chapters for the study of literature and history in the period c.1350–c.1500, to ask how it may help us to think about the medieval book in relation to culture.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Production of Books in England 1350–1500 , pp. 292 - 298Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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