Remarks on the History of the Book in Britain as a Field of Study within the Humanities, with a Synopsis and Select List of Current Literature

This article outlines the development of the history of the book not only as an academic discipline in its own right but as a field of study of critical, potentially central, importance for the advancement of the humanities in general. The history of the book helps revise the earlier relative marginalisation of cultural vis-à-vis political history. The publication in 1958 of L’apparition du livre by Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin has been followed by a series of multivolume, multi-authored national histories of the book and libraries, first in France, then in Britain, the United States and elsewhere. The history of book is having considerable influence in many areas of historical investigation, such as general history, literary history, the history of science and the history of religion. With the ‘Digital Revolution’, the history of the book is now converging with studies of the other media and, together with the growth of postcolonial/post-imperial studies in general, offers the prospect of a balanced and nuanced approach within the global academy to understanding the world’s media past, present and future.