THE BOOK-MAKERS

Fascinating stories about books and the people who made them.

Smyth, a professor of English literature and history, nimbly traverses more than five centuries as he illuminates some influential men and women in the bookmaking trade. The author begins in 1490s London with the savvy Dutchman Wynkyn de Worde, who published more than 800 titles, roughly 15% of “the entire known printed output in England before 1550.” Smyth explores the meticulous and demanding art of bookbinding via William Wildgoose and his work on Shakespeare’s First Folio, sold off by the Bodleian Library after the Third was published. Throughout this interesting narrative, Smyth drops countless bookish tidbits—e.g., in 1634, two sisters cut up Bibles and glued pieces into a large collage, Gospel Harmony, which told the chronological story of Christ’s life. The author also examines typography and its unique language, focusing on the 18th-century work of John Baskerville and the lesser-known Sarah Eaves, who married him and “released his imagination.” After an inky visit to the “colonial autodidact” Benjamin Franklin, who read books as he printed them, Smyth turns to paper and the man who revolutionized paper making with his “continuous paper” machine in 1798 (sadly, he was never financially rewarded). Readers will also learn about the popular art of “extra-illustration,” radical book modification akin to Gospel Harmony. In 1860, the “Smaug-like” Mudie’s circulating library, with its rented books, “revolutionised reading”—but you couldn’t check out George Moore’s scandalous A Modern Lover. At William Morris’ Kelmscott Press (founded in 1891), limited-edition books were works of art. The controversial, exotic Nancy Cunard published Beckett’s first poem in 1930 at her Hours Press amid a flowering of small presses, including Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press. Smyth closes with zines, DIY publishing, boxed sets, and artists’ books.

Bibliophiles will savor this sprightly walk down the book’s memory lane.