The Story of Books

The Story of Books

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation; changes (corrections of spelling and punctuation) made to the original text are marked like this. The original text appears when hovering the cursor over the marked text. The book family is a very old and a very noble one, and has rendered great service to mankind, although, as with other great houses, all its members are not of equal worth and distinction. But since books are so common nowadays as to be taken quite as matters of course, probably few people give any thought to the long chain of events which, reaching from the dim past up to our own day, has been necessary for their evolution. Yet if we look round on our bookshelves, whether we measure their contents by hundreds or by thousands, and consider how mighty is the power of these inanimate combinations of rag-paper with black ink on them, and how all but limitless their field of action, it is but a step further to wonder what the first books were like. Given the living, working brain to fashion thoughts and create fancies, to whom did it first occur to write a book, what language and characters and material did he use, when did he write, and what did he write about? And although these questions can never be answered, an attempt to follow them up will lead the inquirer into many fascinating bye-ways of knowledge. It is not, however, the purpose of these pages to deal at length with the ancient history of the manuscript book, but, after briefly noticing the chief links which connect the volumes of to-day with primeval records, to present to the reader a few of the many points of interest offered by the modern history of the printed book. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 33413
Author: Rawlings, Gertrude Burford
Release Date: Aug 13, 2010
Format: eBook
Language: English