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Epilogue: Falling Asleep over the History of the Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Seth Lerer
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Extract

Ten years ago, in the introduction to his edited collection The Future of the Book, Geoffrey Nunberg predicted, “If we take the book in its broad sense to refer simply to bound, printed volumes, then most books will likely disappear soon.” Imagining the prospect of electronic books, of devices that would present text not just on a screen but on something “almost the equivalent of paper in [its] weight and flexibility,” Nunberg looked forward to a time when printed pages would no longer be the primary bearer of textual information (12). That time has not come. The e-book never seemed to make it, either as a viable technology or as an attractive commercial product. More bound and printed volumes are being made and sold than ever. And the history of the book as an academic discipline continues to grow—not out of a sense that books are history (in the colloquial sense of that phrase) but out of a conviction that they are here to stay and that to know their future we should know their past.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 1: Special Topic: The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature , January 2006 , pp. 229 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

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References

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