The Practice of Book and Print Culture: Sources, Methods, Readings

Abstract

A question less perilous than how to theorise or model book and print culture, or how to redesign its intellectual frameworks, is to ask about practice. How do scholars actually ‘do’ studies in the history and culture of the book when it comes down to working with sources, adopting methodologies and constructing arguments? How do our chosen source materials and methods shape our (mostly unspoken) definitions of ’book culture’ or ‘print culture’? How do scholars use libraries and archives, and how do they think about the provenance of the collections they hold? If book historians make ambitious claims for the central importance of studying ‘print culture’ and ‘the book’, should they not be able to articulate a methodology and approach to research that is shared across the disciplines of our field, and perhaps also across the broad range of places and times in which the book has appeared? And if they cannot succeed in that ambition, is the failure one of practice, or is it something intrinsic to the very concepts of ‘the book’, ‘book history’ and ‘print culture’?