Here is my preliminary reading list for the summer. You can comment simply by clicking the title of this post above. I’d appreciate any thoughts or additional suggested readings. I’ve left out texts that I’m already fairly familiar with (e.g. Middleton’s History of English Craft Bookbinding Technique), but there are probably seminal works that I’m not aware of that should be added here. I’d also like to leave open the possibility that some of these works will lead me to other readings, and that I may not get to all of these books (given that I will want to reserve some time for writing a final paper).
The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
The Uses of Bookbinding Literature by B. H. Breslauer
The Book Before Printing: Ancient, Medieval and Oriental by David Diringer
The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding by J. A. Szirmai
Studies in the history of bookbinding by Mirjam M. Foot
Humanists and bookbinders by Anthony Hobson
English bookbinding styles 1450-1800 by David Pearson
English language bookbinding manuals in the context of the history of English bookbinding by John F. Dean
Functional Developments in Bookbinding by Geoffrey Wakeman and Graham Pollard
Bookbinders at Work: Their Roles and Methods by Mirjam M. Foot
Women Bookbinders, 1880-1920 by Marianne Tidcombe
Fine Bookbinding in the 20th Century by Roy Harley Lewis
You can leave a trackback using this URL: http://www.dougrice.org/readings/wp-trackback.php?p=1
Hey Doug…the Sennet book was interesting to me, but I have been told its not his most well written. You might peek at his earlier writings to put this book in context. Your list looks good to me as a start, I would just say look at David Pye’s “Nature and Art of Workmanship”, its short and good. You might look at how the word codicology is used in relationship to bookbinding.It is a internationally accepted word used most often for the study of medieval books I think. Collected essays in honor of scholars often have gems. In that regard “For the Love of the Binding” in honor of Foot, and “Roger Powell the compleat Binder” in honor of Roger Powell, and “Studies in the book trade in honor of Graham Pollard” are both full of interest, especially the intro’s where the philosophy behind the work is discussed. And finally Pearson just wrote “Books as History”, which as a part on binding, but is mostly interesting in his approach. Do you read any other languages? I look forward to discussing Sennett with you!
cool timeline of bookbinding done up by a grad student at Cal: http://www.historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/index.php?category=Bookbinding>