A Potencie of Life: Books in Society

by Nicolas Barker

'Books are not absolutely dead things but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as the soule whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.'. The words are John Milton's, and enshrine his concept that a written text has a life independent of its author, and that words, when preserved in the form of a book, have a particular power to move and influence. Texts give nourishment to the press, which in turn feeds the reading public. All depend on the book as an animate object. It is this process of interdependent exchange that is the central theme of these essays, based on lectures given at the William Andrews Clark Library in 1986-7. The contributors shed fascinating light on many aspects of the history of the book. The exceptionally wide range of topics relates to the manuscript as well as the printed book, to papermaking in America, to hand bookbinding, and to authorship and maritime