Book

I

Introduction

Book, a volume of many sheets bound together, containing text, illustration, or music. Unlike an inscribed monument, a book is portable; and unlike a private diary, which may be in book form, it is intended for circulation. A book is larger than a pamphlet and is a single independent unit as distinguished from a periodical. The term is applied by extension to the scrolls used in the ancient world. In an editorial sense the word book refers to some literary works, such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or to major divisions of a literary work, such as the books of the Bible or the Roman epic the Aeneid. Books, as relatively durable and portable artefacts, have preserved and diffused knowledge and feeling over vast distances of space and time. Modern civilization is unthinkable without them.

II

Handwritten Books

The forerunners of books were the clay tablets, impressed with a stylus, used by the Sumerians, Babylonians, and other peoples of ancient Mesopotamia. Much more closely related to the modern book were the book rolls, or scrolls, of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. They consisted of sheets of papyrus, a paperlike material made from the pounded pith of reeds growing in the Nile River delta, formed into a continuous strip and rolled around a stick. The strip, with the text written with a reed pen in narrow, closely spaced columns on one side, was unrolled as it was read. Papyrus rolls varied in length; the longest extant is the Egyptian Harris papyrus in the British Museum, London, 40.5 m (133 ft) long. Later, during the Hellenistic period, in the 4th century bc, a long book roll was subdivided into a number of shorter rolls, about 10 m (about 35 ft) long, stored together in one container.

Scrolls were often covered with wrappings and tagged with the title and the author's name. Professional scribes reproduced works either by copying a text or by setting it down from dictation. Athens, Alexandria, and Rome were great centres of book production and exported books throughout the ancient world. Hand labour was slow and expensive, however, and books were owned chiefly by temples, rulers, and a few rich people. Most education at that time, and for centuries thereafter, was by oral repetition and memorization.

Although papyrus was easily made, inexpensive, and an excellent writing surface, it was brittle; in damp climates it disintegrated in less than 100 years. Thus, a great part of the literature and records of the ancient world has been irretrievably lost. Parchment and vellum (especially prepared animal skins) did not have those drawbacks. The Persians, Hebrews, and other peoples of the ancient Middle East, where papyrus did not grow, had for centuries used scrolls made of tanned leather or untanned parchment. The production of parchment was improved by King Eumenes II of Pergamun in the 2nd century bc; thereafter its use greatly increased and, by the 4th century ad, it had almost entirely supplanted papyrus as a medium for writing.

A

The Early Codex

The 4th century also marked the culmination of a gradual process, begun about the 1st century, in which the inconvenient scroll was replaced by the rectangular codex (Latin, “book”), the direct ancestor of the modern book. The codex, as first used by the Greeks and Romans for business accounts or school work, was a small, ringed notebook consisting of two or more wooden tablets covered with wax, which could be marked with a stylus, smoothed over, and reused many times. Additional leaves, of parchment, were sometimes inserted between the tablets. In time the codex came to consist of many sheets of papyrus or, later, parchment, gathered in small bundles folded in the middle. These gatherings were laid one upon the other, stitched together through the folds, and attached to wooden boards by thongs. The columns of writing were wider than those on scrolls and covered both sides of a parchment page. The codex made it easier for readers to find their place or to refer ahead or back. It was particularly useful in the observance of the Christian liturgy.

The word codex is part of the title of many ancient handwritten books, especially celebrated manuscripts of the Bible. The Codex Sinaiticus, for example, is a 4th-century Greek manuscript from Palestine now in the British Museum.

B

Medieval European Books

In the early Middle Ages in Europe books were written chiefly by Churchmen for other Churchmen and for rulers. Most were portions of the Bible, commentary, or liturgical books, although some were copies of classical texts. The books were laboriously written out with a quill pen by monastic scribes working in the scriptoria (Latin, “writing rooms”) of monasteries. At first they used a variety of local styles in capital letters only, a custom carried over from classical scrolls. As a result of the revival of learning initiated by Charlemagne in the 8th century, scribes shifted to capital and minuscule (small) letters, penned in a clear, round Carolingian script that harked back to classical models and eventually inspired the typographers of the Renaissance. After the 12th century, however, bookscript deteriorated into the black letter style, which consisted of narrow, heavily drawn, angular letters crowded close together in thin columns that were difficult to read.

Many medieval books were brilliantly illuminated in gold and colours to indicate the start of a new section of text, to illustrate the text, or to decorate the borders. They ranged from the all over, intricately stylized ornament of the Book of Kells (Trinity College, Dublin), an 8th- to 9th-century copy of the Gospels made in Scotland and Ireland, to the delicate, detailed scenes of everyday life in Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (Musée Condé, Chantilly, France), a prayer book made by the Limbourg brothers in the Low Countries in the 15th century. Medieval books had wooden covers, often strengthened with metal bosses and fastened with clasps. Many covers were bound in leather, sometimes richly adorned with gold and silver work, enamels, and gems. Such beautifully produced books were works of art, which, by the late Middle Ages, were usually created by professional scribes, artists, and jewellers. Books were few and costly; they were commissioned by the very small percentage of the population that could afford them and that knew how to read (see Illuminated Manuscripts).