A celebration of the printed book, told through the lives of 18 people who took it in radical new directions.
''This really is the loveliest of books'' I
''I cannot recommend it highly enough'' SPECTATOR
This is an extraordinary story of skill, craft, mess, cunning, triumph, improvisation, and error. Of printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders.
Some we know. We meet jobbing printer (and United States Founding Father) Benjamin Franklin, and watch Thomas Cobden-Sanderson conjure books that flicker between the 20th and 15th centuries. Others we-ve forgotten. We don''t recall Sarah Eaves, wife of John Baskerville, and her crucial contribution to the history of type. Nor Charles Edward Mudie, populariser of the circulating library - and the most influential figure in publishing before Jeff Bezos. Nor William Wildgoose, who meticulously bound Shakespeare-s First Foli
