The History Of Printing And Print Culture: Contexts, Controversies, And Key Issues.pdf

The history of printing and print culture is a dynamic and wide-ranging field of study, as the articles in this special issue demonstrate. By way of background, this Introduction briefly outlines the development of the field and highlights a number of controversial issues that have arisen within it. Although often considered part of ‘the history of the book’ (or ‘book history’), much of the history of printing is concerned with the quotidian production of non-book material including a vast variety of ephemeral printed items known as ‘jobbing printing’. Printed items, both books and ephemera, have made a significant contribution to the history of the Midlands. In particular, printing played a key role in the industrial development of the region and in the ‘Midlands Enlightenment’.

The history of printing (and let us avoid tedious repetition by taking this to include print culture) has been studied for a long time now, from many different viewpoints, though at first not in a very systematic way, resulting in a patchwork quilt of studies of people (printers, booksellers, readers and many others), and of processes, machinery and typefaces. These have formed the preoccupation of most printing historians; collectively they provide us with an understanding of printing history from the perspective of the West—printing history being predominantly a western preoccupation.

This piecemeal approach was brought together—to some extent at least—during the latter half of the twentieth century when two related academic fields became established: printing history and ‘book history’ (or ‘the history of the book’). Printing history encompassed the history of printing techniques, type and typography, the design of printed material, printing technology and the social, cultural, industrial and economic histories of the trade. Printing history tended to be practised by printers and typographers, while book history presented itself as a more traditionally academic field, approached from a variety of angles by historians—especially, but not only, cultural historians—and by literary scholars, librarians, and many others. With hindsight, it seems surprising that the two fields were ever separate.

By the start of the present century, the boundaries between book history and printing history had become less apparent, and the two fields have recently grown together into a vibrant interdisciplinary field of study, approaching the topic of the creation (writing, manuscript, print, typography, graphic design, illustration, binding, etc.), distribution (publishing, bookselling, etc) and ‘consumption’ (reading and other methods of use) of the printed word—not only books—from many different starting-points. It has grown into a thriving interdisciplinary field of study, offering much to interest the non-academic reader as well as the specialist. As Rick Poynor noted recently, commenting on the history of graphic design—and it applies equally to printing history—the field: urgently needs to be scrutinised by observers who are not graphic designers and can bring other disciplinary perspectives, social and ethnic backgrounds and life experiences to the discussion. While these initiatives might choose to take the nature of practice into account to achieve a nuanced understanding, they should not be constrained by professional concerns and objectives’.