A Companion to the History of the Book [Paperback]

From the early Sumerian clay tablet through to the emergence of the electronic text, this Companion provides a continuous and coherent account of the history of the book.

• Makes use of illustrative examples and case studies of well-known texts
  
• Written by a group of expert contributors
  
• Covers topical debates, such as the nature of censorship and the future of the book

List of Illustrations viii

Notes on Contributors x

Introduction 1
Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose

Part I Methods and Approaches 7

1 Why Bibliography Matters 9
T. H. Howard-Hill

2 What is Textual Scholarship? 21
David Greetham

3 The Uses of Quantifi cation 33
Alexis Weedon

4 Readers: Books and Biography 50
Stephen Colclough

Part II The History of the Material Text 63

The World before the Codex 65

5 The Clay Tablet Book in Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia 67
Eleanor Robson

6 The Papyrus Roll in Egypt, Greece, and Rome 84
Cornelia Roemer

The Book beyond the West 95

7 China 97
J. S. Edgren

8 Japan, Korea, and Vietnam 111
Peter Kornicki

9 South Asia 126
Graham Shaw

10 Latin America 138
Hortensia Calvo

11 The Hebraic Book 153
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