A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts - by Mark Bland (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts provides an introduction to the language and concepts employed in bibliographical studies and textual scholarship as they pertain to early modern manuscripts and printed texts

• Winner, Honourable Mention for Literature, Language and Linguistics, American Publishers Prose Awards, 2010
• Based almost exclusively on new primary research
• Explains the complex process of viewing documents as artefacts, showing readers how to describe documents properly and how to read their physical properties
• Demonstrates how to use the information gleaned as a tool for studying the transmission of literary documents
• Makes clear why such matters are important and the purposes to which such information is put
• Features illustrations that are carefully chosen for their unfamiliarity in order to keep the discussion fresh

From the Back Cover

A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts provides a concise introduction to the language and concepts employed in bibliographical studies and textual scholarship as they pertain to early modern manuscripts and printed texts.

Focusing on documents from the late sixteenth and early mid-seventeenth century, the author explains the complex process of viewing documents as artefacts, showing readers how to describe documents properly and how to read their physical properties. This helpful Guide demonstrates how we are to use this information, together with an understanding of the processes of production and modification, as a tool for studying the transmission of literary documents.

An invaluable resource illuminating the complex relationship between the material processes and the meanings of the written and printed word, A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts is essential reading for anyone interested in book history and textual scholarship.

About the Author

Mark Bland is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at De Montfort University, UK. He has published extensively on early printed books and manuscripts, paper, censorship, stemmatics, and editorial practice, as well as on Ben Jonson and his contemporaries. He is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford edition of The Poems of Ben Jonson