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Books have transformed humankind by enabling authors to create, document, and entertain. Yet we know little about the individuals who brought these fascinating objects into existence and of those who first experimented in the art of printing, design, and binding. Who were the renegade book-makers who changed the course of history? We are thrilled to be chatting with author Adam Smyth about this topic so close to our hearts. We hope you can join us!

RECORDING NOTE: This program will be recorded. All registrants will receive the recording via email within 48 hours of the program.

About the book:

The five-hundred-year history of printed books, told through the people who created them. Books tell all kinds of stories—romances, tragedies, comedies—but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture’s most important object, the book, through dynamic portraits of eighteen individuals who helped to define it.

From Wynkyn de Worde’s printing of fifteenth-century bestsellers to Nancy Cunard’s avant-garde pamphlets produced on her small press in Normandy, this is a celebration of the book with the people put back in.

About Adam:

Adam Smyth is Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, Oxford University. He works on the connections between literature and material texts, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, but also more widely. He is the author of four books (most recently, Material Texts in Early Modern England (2018)), and the editor or co-editor of four collections of essays (including Book Parts, with Dennis Duncan). Adam is a founder member of the 39 Steps Press printing collective, based in a barn in Oxfordshire. He co-hosts the literary podcast and sometime radio show LitBits. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books.