Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830

by David McKitterick

This major study re-examines fundamental aspects of what has been widely labeled the printing revolution of the early modern period. David McKitterick argues that many of the changes associated with printing were only gradually absorbed over almost 400 years, a much longer period than usually suggested. He re-evaluates the modern myths and misconceptions surrounding the emergence of print and invites readers to work forward from the past, rather than backwards into it.

Genres: History, Books About Books, Nonfiction, European History

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

David John McKitterick, FSA, FBA is an English librarian and academic, who was Librarian and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

He worked at the Cambridge University Library from 1969 to 1970 and from 1971 to 1986. He was a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge from 1978 to 1986. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge: he served as its librarian from 1986 to 2015 and its Vice-Master from 2012 to 2016. He held the Lyell Readership in Bibliography at the University of Oxford in the 1999/2000 academic year. In 2006, he was made an Honorary Professor of Historical Bibliography by the University of Cambridge.

He is the author of various works on bibliography and library history, including a history of Cambridge University Library in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Reviews

[Meghan Fidler · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the writing is a bit dry (the, though, ink is rather shiny. McKitterick's long relationship with Cambridge press may have lent him special powers of persuasion for fancy ink and heavy paper), this academic text is full of insights: McKitterick has had a lifetime of handling rare books and manuscripts--and common, unadorned, but old papers. Drawing from this experience, "Print, Manuscript, and the Search for Order" highlights the development of printing alongside manuscript creation from the fifteenth century through the nineteenth century.
While there is a general assumption that the technology of the printing press outright replaced handwritten manuscripts, McKitterick makes clear that both methods of book production co-existed for centuries. There were benefits to both texts: manuscripts, for example, provided clear and easy means for illustrations (though illustrated texts were rare). The divide between print and handwritten texts emerged not from production, but from the need for libraries to devise separate cataloging systems for the sake of easily finding texts.
My favorite line of analysis follows assumptions on the stability and finality of the written word: McKitterick demonstrates the fluid nature of texts as printers, authors, correctors (and even the audience) continually make changes and alterations to the written word: in margins, as palimpsests, and paper inserts for already printed editions.
The depth and detail of this research makes clear the benefits from handling books: one which may be altered as many readers switch to digital editions, and may be lost altogether as rare book rooms replace handling a text with access exclusive to scanned copies in an attempt for preservation.

[Daniel Burton-Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

McKitterick convincingly depicts several hundred years of dynamic interface between print and manuscript, in place of a more facile picture of the former quickly vanquishing the later. His hands on immersion with the material objects of the period he covers is everywhere evident. I found his remarks on the uniqueness of not only each edition, but each copy, of pre-modern books quite relevant to East Asia as well.