I became an Associate Professor of Book History in the spring of 2023, at a time when ChatGPT appeared to be revolutionizing the internet and transforming our understanding of information acquisition. The printed book, which had been central to our cultural traditions for centuries, appeared to be receding further into the past. Marshall McLuhan had foreseen a radical transformation of the Gutenberg galaxy, but now it seemed to be coming to an end. The internet, dominated by search engines, was being challenged by bots that could write essays more fluently than most humans.
My interest in the history of books was sparked in the 1990s, a time when the printed book connected us to a centuries-old tradition. AltaVista was just an exciting addition to the culture of the printed word, and libraries were still the central place to obtain information. I taught a course on the history of reading, which argued for continuity as a slowly changing activity. At the end of the 20th century, we were still reading in the same way as the elite of the early 19th century, with only the amount of reading changing. There were more printed books and other publications than ever before, and the rudimentary pages of the internet only increased the amount of reading.
In this late-20th-century world, book history continues to study an essential product. Today, it deals with a cultural phenomenon that is in danger of disappearing. This is precisely why I find the discipline of book history more interesting than ever. It deals with a product that is becoming as distant as a foreign country, while at the same time book history teaches us to think about the role of technology in the transmission of information, the changing role of authorship, and the many ways in which knowledge circulates.
The blog’s title is a rephrasing of Robert Graves’ renowned autobiography, which he authored at the age of slightly over 30. The image featured in this post serves as a poignant reminder of the Holland House Library’s fate after an air raid. Nonetheless, the primary focus of this blog is not limited to England or the early 20th century. Rather, it endeavors to examine the book’s historical evolution across an extended period, predominantly in Western civilization, while also contemplating the written word’s future.