UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Edited by Sabrina Alcorn Baron, Eric N. Lindquist, and Eleanor F. Shevlin

Wide-ranging essays on print culture from Renaissance Europe to the contemporary digital world

Inspiring debate since the early days of its publication, Elizabeth L. Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (1979) has exercised its own force as an agent of change in the world of scholarship. Its path-breaking agenda has played a central role in shaping the study of print culture and "book history"—fields of inquiry that rank among the most exciting and vital areas of scholarly endeavor in recent years.

Joining together leading voices in the field of print scholarship, this collection of twenty essays affirms the catalytic properties of Eisenstein's study as a stimulus to further inquiry across geographic, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries. From early modern marginalia to the use of architectural title pages in Renaissance books, from the press in Spanish colonial America to print in the Islamic world, from the role of the printed word in nation-building to changing histories of reading in the electronic age, this book addresses the legacy of Eisenstein's work in print culture studies today as it suggests future directions for the field.

In addition to a conversation with Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, the book includes contributions by Peng Hwa Ang, Margaret Aston, Tony Ballantyne, Vivek Bhandari, Ann Blair, Barbara A. Brannon, Roger Chartier, Kai-wing Chow, James A. Dewar, Robert A. Gross, David Scott Kastan, Harold Love, Paula McDowell, Jane McRae, Jean-Dominique Mellot, Antonio Rodr’guez-Buckingham, Geoffrey Roper, William H. Sherman, Peter Stallybrass, H. Arthur Williamson, and Calhoun Winton.

"There is no question that Elizabeth Eisenstein deserves a book like this. The contributors all testify to her seminal influence on the field of book history, and their essays are exceptionally well crafted and intriguing."

Jonathan E. Rose, Drew University

"This collection of essays is one of the most important of its kind. The contributions are consistently of very high quality and exhibit a range that is wonderfully engaging. . . . Agent of Change would make a terrific reader for a graduate seminar in book history."

Michael F. Suarez, SJ, Fordham University and Campion Hall, Oxford

Sabrina Alcorn Baron is a lecturer in history at the University of Maryland, College Park. Eric N. Lindquist is a librarian at the University of Maryland, College Park. Eleanor F. Shevlin is a professor of English at West Chester University.

Cultural Studies / Book History
456 pp., 10 illus.
$29.95s paper, ISBN 978-1-55849-593-7
$80.00s library cloth edition, ISBN 978-1-55849-592-0
July 2007

A volume in the series Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book

Published in association with the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress

about placing orders on our secure server
ADD TO CART | VIEW CART | CHECKOUT