What is the History of Books? The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Darnton, Robert. 1982. What is the history of books? Daedalus 111(3): 65-83. Published Version http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024803 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3403038 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA ROBERT DARNTON What Is the History of Books? "Histoire du livre" in France, "Geschichte des Buchwesens" in Germany, "history of books" or "of the book" in English-speaking countries?its name varies from to as an new place place, but everywhere it is being recognized important even discipline. It might be called the social and cultural history of communica were not a to tion by print, if that such mouthful, because its purpose is were understand how ideas transmitted through print and how exposure to the printed word affected the thought and behavior of mankind during the last five hundred years. Some book historians pursue their subject deep into the period on before the invention of movable type. Some students of printing concentrate newspapers, broadsides, and other forms besides the book. The field can be most concerns extended and expanded inmany ways; but for the part, it books an area so since the time of Gutenberg, of research that has developed rapidly seems to a during the last few years, that it likely win place alongside fields like art canon the history of science and the history of in the of scholarly disciplines. Whatever the history of books may become in the future, its past shows how a can on a field of knowledge take distinct scholarly identity. It arose from the on convergence of several disciplines a common set of problems, all of them to having do with the process of communication. Initially, the problems took concrete the form of questions in unrelated branches of scholarship: What were Shakespeare's original texts? What caused the French Revolution? What is the connection between culture and social stratification? In pursuing those ques a tions, scholars found themselves crossing paths in no-man's-land located at the a intersection of half-dozen fields of study. They decided to constitute a field of own to their and invite in historians, literary scholars, sociologists, librarians, to as a and anyone else who wanted understand the book force in history. The own history of books began to acquire its journals, research centers, confer as as ences, and lecture circuits. It accumulated tribal elders well Young Turks. And although it has not yet developed passwords or secret handshakes or its own can one population of Ph.D.'s, its adherents recognize another by the glint to a common one in their eyes. They belong cause, of the few sectors in the a a human sciences where there is mood of expansion and flurry of fresh ideas. not To be sure, the history of the history of books did begin yesterday. It to not stretches back the scholarship of the Renaissance, if beyond; and it began earnest in during the nineteenth century, when the study of books as material to objects led the rise of analytical bibliography in England. But the current 65 66 ROBERT DARNTON a work represents departure from the established strains of scholarship, which may be traced to their nineteenth century origins through back issues of The or Library and B?rsenblatt f?r den Deutschen Buchhandel theses in the Ecole des Chartes. The new strain developed during the 1960s in France, where it took root in institutions like the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and spread through publications like LApparition du livre (1958), by Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, and Livre et soci?t? dans la France du XVII le si?cle (two volumes a Vie 1965 and 1970) by group connected with the section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. The new book historians brought the subject within the range of themes on studied by the "Annales school" of socioeconomic history. Instead of dwelling to uncover of book fine points of bibliography, they tried the general pattern over production and consumption long stretches of time. They compiled contents statistics from requests for privil?ges (a kind of copyright), analyzed the currents of private libraries, and traced ideological through neglected genres like fine no the biblioth?que bleue (primitive paperbacks). Rare books and editions had on most sort interest for them; they concentrated instead the ordinary of books, to because they wanted discover the literary experience of ordinary readers. They put familiar phenomena like the Counter Reformation and the an Enlightenment in unfamiliar light by showing how much traditional culture in fare of the entire outweighed the avant-garde the literary society. Although come a set the they did not up with firm of conclusions, they demonstrated new new and new importance of asking questions, using methods, tapping sources.1 Their example spread throughout Europe and the United States, reinforcing as in indigenous traditions, such reception studies Germany and printing to a common history in Britain. Drawn together by their commitment new historians to enterprise, and animated by enthusiasm for ideas, book began new meet, first in caf?s, then in conferences. They created journals?Publishing History, Bibliography Newsletter, Nouvelles du livre ancien, Revue fran?aise d'histoire zur du livre (new series), Buchhandelsgeschichte, and Wolfenb?tte 1erNotizen Buchge new in the schichte. They founded centers?the Institut d'Etude du Livre Paris, Arbeitskreis f?r Geschichte des Buchwesens inWolfenb?ttel, the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. Special colloquia?in Geneva, Paris, Boston, a Worcester, Wolfenb?ttel, and Athens, to name only few that took place in the late 1970s?disseminated their research on an international scale. In the brief a span of two decades, the history of books had become rich and varied field of study. now a a So rich did it prove, in fact, that it looks less like field than tropical can across At rain forest. The explorer hardly make his way it. every step he a of and becomes entangled in luxuriant undergrowth journal articles, disoriented by the crisscrossing of disciplines?analytical bibliography pointing and in this direction, the sociology of knowledge in that, while history, English, out territories. He is beset claims to comparative literature stake overlapping by new newness?"la nouvelle bibliographie mat?rielle," "the literary history"?and bewildered by competing methodologies, which would have him collating reams of editions, compiling statistics, decoding copyright law, wading through at a reconstructed common and manuscript, heaving the bar of press, WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF BOOKS? 67 psychoanalyzing the mental processes of readers. The history of books has so with one can no see become crowded ancillary disciplines, that longer its contours. can general How the book historian neglect the history of libraries, of publishing, of paper, type, and reading? But how can he master their technologies, especially when they appear in imposing foreign formulations, like Geschichte der Appellstruktur and Bibliom?trie bibliologique? It is enough to make one want to retire to a rare book room and count watermarks. To some run to see get distance from interdisciplinarity riot, and the subject as a it be useful to a whole, might propose general model for analyzing the way come books into being and spread through society. To be sure, conditions have so varied much from place to place and from time to time since the invention of movable that be to type, it would vain expect the biography of every book to conform to the same But pattern. printed books generally pass through roughly the same life cycle. It could be described as a communications circuit that runs from the author to the publisher (if the bookseller does not assume that role), the the the printer, shipper, bookseller, and the reader. The reader completes the circuit, because he influences the author both before and after the act of Authors are composition. readers themselves. By reading and associating with other readers and form notions of a writers, they genre and style and general sense of the which literary enterprise, affects their texts, whether they are sonnets or composing Shakespearean directions for assembling radio kits. A writer in to may respond his writing criticisms of his previous work or reactions that his text will anticipate elicit. He addresses implicit readers and hears from reviewers. runs explicit So the circuit full cycle. It transmits them en as to messages, transforming route, they pass from thought writing to characters and back to concerns printed thought again. Book history each phase of as a this process and the process whole, in all its variations over space and time and in all its relations with other systems, economic, social, political, and cultural, in the surrounding environment. That is a large undertaking. To keep their task within manageable proportions, book historians generally cut into one segment of the communications circuit and it to a analyze according the procedures of single for means discipline?printing, example, which they study by of analytical But the do not take on bibliography. parts their full significance unless they are related to the whole, and some holistic view of the book as a means of communication seems if book is to necessary history avoid being fragmented into esoteric cut off from arcane specializations, each other by techniques and mutual The misunderstanding.