Author Archives: beatriceco

History of the book

The title is “The Book-Makers” by Adam Smyth (Basic Books, 2024). It is a very interesting history of the physical printed book which is very timely during these contemporary times because the book is increasingly becoming online. This book does not write about authors who wrote books nor is it about well-known collectors of physical books. It is about printers, binders and paper makers whose hands and minds shape the physical objects we now cherish.

Smyth organizes his book into 11 thematic chapters, each of which focuses on a key aspect of book production. This includes printing, binding, paper making, typography and circulation. It personalizes the history and historical changes of physical books through the lives of 18 individuals who made books possible. It shows the transition from handwriting to book printing.

It was interesting to note that the early printed books tried very hard to look like handwritten texts. This was generally attributed to the fact that handwritten texts were the available models during those times. For example, Gutenberg’s Latin Bible of 1455, although printed, was designed to look like handwritten texts.

The first chapter is on Printing and the featured personality is Wynkyn de Worde who lived more than 500 years ago. However, some of his books still survive. De Worde’s books, which he printed, included medieval English romances and comic tales which were actually a reworking of Chaucer’s tales. These were actually the start of what would eventually be called bestsellers.

De Worde was a Dutchman who worked in London. He was considered a pivotal figure in the early efforts to standardize and distribute printed texts in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

The early books were primarily cut and paste. It was John Baskerville and Sarah Eaves that really popularized the process known as typography. Eaves played a critical role in refining type design which changed the nature of bookmaking. One story is that the expertise required to produce the early punches, the product of typography, were closely guarded secrets.

Another chapter is the one on Benjamin Franklin, who became an American printer of national significance. At the age of 23, he became America’s publisher of its most important newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette. It was during his lifetime when printing as a trade spread rapidly in the New World.

The status of the printer-publisher rose from menial workers to national figures. The printed copies of books and newspapers became more accessible and much less expensive. This period was also the start of the introduction of paper money.

Another kind of publication that made people like Benjamin Franklin so well-known was the introduction of almanacs. The early almanacs were cheap, small, eminently portable books which provided readers with monthly calendars; astrological and meteorological prognostications; medical advice and discussions on the influence of the planets on the parts of the body. They were the most popular kind of printed books in 17th century England. For example, in 1666, 43,000 copies of Vincent Wings’ almanac were printed. In the Americas, Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac was printed in 1733.

The person who revolutionized the paper industry was Nicolas Robert, who remains relatively unknown. He invented the technology that produced the modern version of the paper. The original form of paper actually started in China.

The sad story of Robert is that he was never given credit nor did he profit from his invention.

“The Book-Makers’ is not written like an academic publication. It is filled with historical anecdotes and details that bring historical moments to life. For example, when describing the physicality of early bookmaking, Smyth writes: “Books are themselves incredible objects whose beauty and complexity enrich the text being read.” Smyth also stresses the emotional connection between the bookmakers and their creations: “Books are expressive objects which themselves possess an emotional range and which convey in their material forms, in ways that are sometimes legible, the texture of what it meant for a particular bookmaker to be alive.”

In this sentence, Smyth seeks to remind readers that books are more than just vessels for words but they are crafted objects imbued with the personalities and experiences of their makers.

This is a time when digital technology is threatening to overshadow traditional book production. However, Smyth says: “One of the reasons why books will endure is that they do not merely or straightforwardly convey text to readers. They are not only messengers, although they are that too. Books are themselves incredible objects whose beauty and complexity enriches the text being read.”

In his book, Smyth stresses that the physical book was made by people and not by algorithms or by digital technology.

This book is not just a chronicle of technical advancement but a narration and a celebration of individuals whose dedication to their craft made the physical books as we know them today possible. The book that you see everywhere is the product of designers, editors, artists.

Today, the question is still asked: Will the book endure? Or, is the book dead? Smyth writes: “… these questions are mistaken because the five and a half centuries since Gutenberg (the inventor of the printing press) show the book to be a form that has continually adapted to new people, ideas, context and technologies while all the time maintaining its identity as a physical support for text.”

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]

History of the book

The title is “The Book-Makers” by Adam Smyth (Basic Books, 2024). It is a very interesting history of the physical printed book which is very timely during these contemporary times because the book is increasingly becoming online. This book does not write about authors who wrote books nor is it about well-known collectors of physical books. It is about printers, binders and paper makers whose hands and minds shape the physical objects we now cherish.

Smyth organizes his book into 11 thematic chapters, each of which focuses on a key aspect of book production. This includes printing, binding, paper making, typography and circulation. It personalizes the history and historical changes of physical books through the lives of 18 individuals who made books possible. It shows the transition from handwriting to book printing.

It was interesting to note that the early printed books tried very hard to look like handwritten texts. This was generally attributed to the fact that handwritten texts were the available models during those times. For example, Gutenberg’s Latin Bible of 1455, although printed, was designed to look like handwritten texts.

The first chapter is on Printing and the featured personality is Wynkyn de Worde who lived more than 500 years ago. However, some of his books still survive. De Worde’s books, which he printed, included medieval English romances and comic tales which were actually a reworking of Chaucer’s tales. These were actually the start of what would eventually be called bestsellers.

De Worde was a Dutchman who worked in London. He was considered a pivotal figure in the early efforts to standardize and distribute printed texts in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

The early books were primarily cut and paste. It was John Baskerville and Sarah Eaves that really popularized the process known as typography. Eaves played a critical role in refining type design which changed the nature of bookmaking. One story is that the expertise required to produce the early punches, the product of typography, were closely guarded secrets.

Another chapter is the one on Benjamin Franklin, who became an American printer of national significance. At the age of 23, he became America’s publisher of its most important newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette. It was during his lifetime when printing as a trade spread rapidly in the New World.

The status of the printer-publisher rose from menial workers to national figures. The printed copies of books and newspapers became more accessible and much less expensive. This period was also the start of the introduction of paper money.

Another kind of publication that made people like Benjamin Franklin so well-known was the introduction of almanacs. The early almanacs were cheap, small, eminently portable books which provided readers with monthly calendars; astrological and meteorological prognostications; medical advice and discussions on the influence of the planets on the parts of the body. They were the most popular kind of printed books in 17th century England. For example, in 1666, 43,000 copies of Vincent Wings’ almanac were printed. In the Americas, Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac was printed in 1733.

The person who revolutionized the paper industry was Nicolas Robert, who remains relatively unknown. He invented the technology that produced the modern version of the paper. The original form of paper actually started in China.

The sad story of Robert is that he was never given credit nor did he profit from his invention.

“The Book-Makers’ is not written like an academic publication. It is filled with historical anecdotes and details that bring historical moments to life. For example, when describing the physicality of early bookmaking, Smyth writes: “Books are themselves incredible objects whose beauty and complexity enrich the text being read.” Smyth also stresses the emotional connection between the bookmakers and their creations: “Books are expressive objects which themselves possess an emotional range and which convey in their material forms, in ways that are sometimes legible, the texture of what it meant for a particular bookmaker to be alive.”

In this sentence, Smyth seeks to remind readers that books are more than just vessels for words but they are crafted objects imbued with the personalities and experiences of their makers.

This is a time when digital technology is threatening to overshadow traditional book production. However, Smyth says: “One of the reasons why books will endure is that they do not merely or straightforwardly convey text to readers. They are not only messengers, although they are that too. Books are themselves incredible objects whose beauty and complexity enriches the text being read.”

In his book, Smyth stresses that the physical book was made by people and not by algorithms or by digital technology.

This book is not just a chronicle of technical advancement but a narration and a celebration of individuals whose dedication to their craft made the physical books as we know them today possible. The book that you see everywhere is the product of designers, editors, artists.

Today, the question is still asked: Will the book endure? Or, is the book dead? Smyth writes: “… these questions are mistaken because the five and a half centuries since Gutenberg (the inventor of the printing press) show the book to be a form that has continually adapted to new people, ideas, context and technologies while all the time maintaining its identity as a physical support for text.”

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]

IrishCentral Book of the Month: “Wounds – A Memoir of War and Love” by Fergal Keane

“Wounds – A Memoir of War and Love” is the April 2025 selection for the IrishCentral Book Club.
Each month, we will pick a new Irish book or a great book by an Irish author and celebrate the amazing ability of the Irish to tell a good story for the IrishCentral Book Club.

IrishCentral Book Club
Looking for Irish book recommendations or to meet with others who share your love for Irish literature? Join IrishCentral’s Book Club on Facebook and enjoy our book-loving community.

After nearly three decades reporting conflict from all over the world for the BBC, Fergal Keane went home to Ireland to tell a story that lies at the root of his fascination with war. “Wounds” is a family story of war and love, and how the ghosts of the past return to shape the present.
Published by Harper Collins in 2017, “Wounds” went on to win the 2017 Non-Fiction Irish Book of the Year Award and the 2018 Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. It was also a Sunday Times bestseller.

Synopsis of “Wounds – A Memoir of War and Love”
“Wounds” is a powerful memoir about Irish people who found themselves caught up in the revolution that followed the 1916 Rising, and in the pitiless violence of civil war in north Kerry after the British left in 1922.

It is the story of Keane’s grandmother Hannah Purtill, her brother Mick and his friend Con Brosnan, and how they and their neighbours took up guns to fight the British Empire and create an independent Ireland.
And it is the story of another Irishman, Tobias O’Sullivan, who fought against them as a policeman because he believed it was his duty to uphold the law of his country.
Many thousands of people took part in the War of Independence and the Civil War that followed. Whatever side they chose, all were changed in some way by the costs of violence.

Keane uses the experiences of his ancestral homeland in north Kerry to examine why people will kill for a cause and how the act of killing reverberates through the generations.

Reviews of “Wounds – A Memoir of War and Love” 
“Few books this year have been as moving Keane’s account of his family’s experience during the conflicts that tore Ireland apart… Keane writes with an impeccable eye for details and a profound sensitivity to human suffering” – Books of the Year, Sunday Times, Dominic Sandrook
“While Keane is acutely aware of the allure and the danger of myth, he also has an objective reporter’s eye for the human tragedies of those caught up in the heightening viciousness … Ireland has not always borne in mind all its dead. To its great credit, this deeply absorbing book does” – The Times

“Couldn’t put down the brilliant, moving, eye-opening book Wounds by Fergal Keane. You don’t need interest in Irish history to be swept away by characters who leap off page, facing impossible choices in the struggle for dignity and independence” – Samantha Power, author of “A Problem from Hell”
“A fine and troubling book … Keane is a gifted writer whose scarifying experiences in war zones have not coarsened his humanity. Nor does his emotional reaction to terrible cruelty lessen his determination to tell the truth. He admits here to just one bias: ‘a loathing of war and of all who celebrate the killing of their fellow men and women.’ He has unsparingly used his family history to show how many of us, in certain circumstances, might be killers and worse. Even in our own backyards” – Sunday Times

About Fergal Keane
Fergal Keane, who was born in London and raised in Dublin and later Cork, is one of the BBC’s most distinguished correspondents and an award-winning broadcaster and author. He has been awarded a BAFTA and named reporter of the year on television and radio, winning honours from the Royal Television Society and the Sony Radio Awards. He has also been named Report of the Year in the Amnesty International Press Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the US Overseas Press Association.
(Synopsis, reviews, and biographical information provided by Harper Collins.)

IrishCentral Book of the Month: “Wounds – A Memoir of War and Love” by Fergal Keane

“Wounds – A Memoir of War and Love” is the April 2025 selection for the IrishCentral Book Club.
Each month, we will pick a new Irish book or a great book by an Irish author and celebrate the amazing ability of the Irish to tell a good story for the IrishCentral Book Club.

IrishCentral Book Club
Looking for Irish book recommendations or to meet with others who share your love for Irish literature? Join IrishCentral’s Book Club on Facebook and enjoy our book-loving community.

After nearly three decades reporting conflict from all over the world for the BBC, Fergal Keane went home to Ireland to tell a story that lies at the root of his fascination with war. “Wounds” is a family story of war and love, and how the ghosts of the past return to shape the present.
Published by Harper Collins in 2017, “Wounds” went on to win the 2017 Non-Fiction Irish Book of the Year Award and the 2018 Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. It was also a Sunday Times bestseller.

Synopsis of “Wounds – A Memoir of War and Love”
“Wounds” is a powerful memoir about Irish people who found themselves caught up in the revolution that followed the 1916 Rising, and in the pitiless violence of civil war in north Kerry after the British left in 1922.

It is the story of Keane’s grandmother Hannah Purtill, her brother Mick and his friend Con Brosnan, and how they and their neighbours took up guns to fight the British Empire and create an independent Ireland.
And it is the story of another Irishman, Tobias O’Sullivan, who fought against them as a policeman because he believed it was his duty to uphold the law of his country.
Many thousands of people took part in the War of Independence and the Civil War that followed. Whatever side they chose, all were changed in some way by the costs of violence.

Keane uses the experiences of his ancestral homeland in north Kerry to examine why people will kill for a cause and how the act of killing reverberates through the generations.

Reviews of “Wounds – A Memoir of War and Love” 
“Few books this year have been as moving Keane’s account of his family’s experience during the conflicts that tore Ireland apart… Keane writes with an impeccable eye for details and a profound sensitivity to human suffering” – Books of the Year, Sunday Times, Dominic Sandrook
“While Keane is acutely aware of the allure and the danger of myth, he also has an objective reporter’s eye for the human tragedies of those caught up in the heightening viciousness … Ireland has not always borne in mind all its dead. To its great credit, this deeply absorbing book does” – The Times

“Couldn’t put down the brilliant, moving, eye-opening book Wounds by Fergal Keane. You don’t need interest in Irish history to be swept away by characters who leap off page, facing impossible choices in the struggle for dignity and independence” – Samantha Power, author of “A Problem from Hell”
“A fine and troubling book … Keane is a gifted writer whose scarifying experiences in war zones have not coarsened his humanity. Nor does his emotional reaction to terrible cruelty lessen his determination to tell the truth. He admits here to just one bias: ‘a loathing of war and of all who celebrate the killing of their fellow men and women.’ He has unsparingly used his family history to show how many of us, in certain circumstances, might be killers and worse. Even in our own backyards” – Sunday Times

About Fergal Keane
Fergal Keane, who was born in London and raised in Dublin and later Cork, is one of the BBC’s most distinguished correspondents and an award-winning broadcaster and author. He has been awarded a BAFTA and named reporter of the year on television and radio, winning honours from the Royal Television Society and the Sony Radio Awards. He has also been named Report of the Year in the Amnesty International Press Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the US Overseas Press Association.
(Synopsis, reviews, and biographical information provided by Harper Collins.)