This is a major new work from one of the world's leading historians of print culture and the book. Chartier shows that, in the early history of the book, the roles played by the printer and the typesetter were just as important as the role played by the author: they were often invisible but they wer[...]

The fear of oblivion obsessed medieval and early modern Europe. Stone, wood, cloth, parchment, and paper all provided media onto which writing was inscribed as a way to ward off loss. And the task was not easy in a world in which writing could be destroyed, manuscripts lost, or books menaced with de[...]