The Oxford Handbook of the History of the Book in Early Modern England

Adam Smyth is Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, Oxford. He works on the connections between literature and material texts, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries. He is the author of four books, including Material Texts in Early Modern England (2019), and the editor and co-editor of four collections of essays (including Book Parts (2019) with Dennis Duncan). He writes regularly for the London Review of Books.

...an outstanding selection of thirty-seven essays... a mix of major thematic pieces and some carefully-considered case studies that reflect on broader subjects. The four parts of the Handbook (Approaching the History of the Book; Making Books; Moving Books; Using Books) work superbly well ...the originality of this volume and its curation means that it will appeal as much to experts as to those learning about English book culture for the first time. ...a treasure trove of scholarship that can be returned to successively for new and inspirational insights.

• 1: Adam Smyth: An Introduction: Thinking about the history of the book 2: Claire M.L. Bourne: The Handmaids' Tale: Book History, Shakespeare, and Women's Textual Labour 3: Megan Heffernan: Cataloguing the Past: Periodisation and the Historiography of Print 4: Jeffrey Todd Knight: The Scale of Book History: Data, Distance, Description 5: Brandi K. Adams: 'Inlaid with inkie spots of jet': Early modern book history and premodern critical race studies 6: Brian Cummings: Religion and the history of the book 7: Alexandra Franklin and Richard Lawrence: Printing and book history: Insights from practice 8: Jason Scott-Warren: Monuments and trifles: which books do we use to tell the history of the book? 9: Paul Nash: What was a print shop, and what happened there? 10: Tamara Atkin: Scribes, Compositors, Correctors 11: Stephen B. Dobranski: Authors 12: Kirk Melnikoff: Publishing Virginia (1608-15): Specialization, Commissioning, Networks 13: Rachel Stenner: Regional book and print trades 14: Katherine Hunt: Representing the labour of printing in image and text 15: Jason Peacey: Printing and the Universities 16: Michael Hunter: Illustrated books 17: James Misson: Typography 18: Harriet Philips: Beyond the book: non-codex texts 19: Adrian Johns: Science and the book in early modern England 20: Anna Reynolds: Waste, offcuts, remains, reuse 21: Ben Higgins: 'The Book-sellars Shop': Browsing, Reading, and Buying in Early Modern England 22: Hanna de Lange and Andrew Pettegree: Internationalism and the English book trade 23: Tara L. Lyons: 'A Gifte of good Moment': A New History of the Stationers' Benevolence to the Bodleian Library, 1610 to 1616 24: A.E.B. Coldiron: Multi-lingual print 25: Michelle O'Callaghan: Contexts for Circulation: Households, University, Inns of Court, and Professional Circles 26: H.R. Woudhuysen: From Duck Lane to Lazarus Seaman: Buying and Selling Old Books in England during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 27: Sujata Iyengar: Conversations about Time and Space: Early Modern Books and Contemporary Artists' Books 28: Jeff Dolven: The Early Modern Book as Metaphor 29: Caroline Duroselle-Melish: Past, Present, and Future: Early Modern Collections and the Work of a Curator 30: Emma Smith: Self-reading books: marginalia, prosopopoeia and book history 31: Georgina Wilson: Book modification 32: Bruce R. Smith: Early Modern Books and Phonography 33: Alexandra Hill: Transience and loss