David Pearson. Books as History: The Importance of Books beyond Their Texts. London: British Library; New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2008. 208p. alk. paper, $49.95 hardback (ISBN9781584562337). LC2008-039127.
Will books die? Reports of the death of the book may be greatly exaggerated, but the pace of technological change means that librarians, publishers, and all those for whom books are a way of life will face increasingly difficult decisions in the coming years. David Pearson writes Books as History in the age of the Amazon KindleTM and Google Book Search, not as a defensive Luddite against technological innovation. He writes amid the potential closing of Brandeis’ Rose Art Museum and the deaccessioning of hundreds of thousands of print volumes from academic libraries, as a voice of caution and advocacy. He deliberately and openly declines to wrestle with potential and future alternatives to the book as gateways to the written texts of human civilization; he takes these alternatives and future improvements in their long-term sustainability for granted. Pearson does, on the other hand, argue passionately in favor of the "interesting characteristics of [a book], which are not replicated in whatever surrogate or alternative." (p. 182) Pearson takes as his positive thesis that value exists in each individual copy of a physical book beyond its mere text and that understanding this can empower librarians in making difficult decisions between expending scant resources on books or on electronic alternatives. Technological change will change our relationship as a society to books and to libraries; Books as History asks us to consider the value of books before discarding them.
The bulk of Pearson’s Books as History is devoted to a lavishly illustrated explication of the various features that can contribute to the uniqueness, and thus the value, of any particular copy of a book. Not only does the book itself carry iconic weight in Western society as an emblem of wisdom and cultural development, but Pearson also argues that every physical detail of a single book can preserve unique information about its history, cultural and intellectual context, and readership. Each detail of typeface, page layout, illustration, and even basic paper quality can contribute to a different experience between the reader and the text. The author demonstrates the point with a number of full-color comparisons of the typography and layout of different editions of the same text, as well as different designs for cover art and the different expectations each might engender in a potential reader. Even within an "identical" modern print run, he shows how variations and corrections may be present and meaningful.
Pearson’s strongest argument for a book’s particular value details the individuality stamped upon a book by its various owners (reinforced by his personal studies in provenance research). Following the work of Don McKenzie and Owen Gingerich, Pearson discusses the various possible interactions between a book and its owners: from binding notes and nameplates, to both the presence and content of marginal notes, corrections, and annotations. His illustrations include marginal notes from Gabriel Harvey to Samuel Coleridge, from Henry VIII and Thomas Cranmer to William Blake. Other distinctive features include the "veneration [due a book] through association": the particular historical interest in the copy of the Prayer Book carried by Jane Grey to the scaffold, for instance, or the slashed and mutilated manuscript used as a shield by St. Boniface while being martyred. Pearson’s chapter on bindings (a second scholarly specialty of his) is also vivid in illustrative comparisons. Until relatively recently in our history, the binding of printed book pages was a handcrafted art, and thus the different physical and ornamental structures that contained different instances of a book carry indications of the wealth of an owner, the historical aesthetic of his or her time, and the very cultural and intellectual regard for the text inside.
Sadly, one of the slimmest chapters is the one discussing the "Collective Value of Libraries." Pearson proposes his book’s thesis against our changing cultural relationship to both individual books and the institutional libraries that for the past hundred years or more have been these books’ principal preservation hubs. The first five chapters of Books as History richly explore the cultural and historical value of individual books—especially those that today tend to be preserved in archives and "special collections." He does in one chapter defend the value of complete library collections. However, his correspondingly rich exemplars of aggregate library value are correspondingly singular and esoteric, from the spectacular collections of Samuel Pepys and William Gladstone to the institutional and collective memory reflected in the library of a cathedral or English country home. These examples provide less ammunition for the collection management or preservation librarians serving more mainstream academic institutions facing budget cuts.
On the other hand, the very physical object of each copy of Books as History powerfully argues the value proposition for the experience of a book beyond its mere text. Oak Knoll Press has provided the edition with not only a very select topical bibliography and index but also more than two hundred full-color illustrations. These often frame the text in artful modes, offer instructive comparisons (including an appended "case study" comparing five editions of the same text), or capture the reader’s full attention in multiple openings of full-color facsimile; the illustrations run the gamut from medieval manuscripts to "book art," marginal annotations referencing Shakespeare and Cranmer to Oscar Wilde signatures, as well as bindings, illustrations, and cover art spanning centuries of technical and aesthetic developments. The overall layout on each page of the volume is elegant and tasteful—even reminiscent of manuscript and earlier print traditions—with marbled endpapers and plenty of white space interrupted only by picture captions as if a "gloss" framing each page of the text. Pearson himself seems aware of this aspect of the book’s production: his last textual instruction is, "Reader, write your thoughts in the margins of this copy … and turn it into a unique object for posterity." (p. 183) My copy of Books in History, at least, will never be the same object as its text on an electronic screen.—Timothy J. Dickey, OCLC Research, Columbus, Ohio.