Book Description

Standard Version

For this assignment, you will research a single printed book in preparation for having a detailed conversation with me and a small group of your classmates about the book. Your classmates will be your primary conversation partners. I may sometimes intervene to ask questions that invite you to clarify or expand on something you have said.

When you choose your book, make a selection that will motivate you to learn about the form of the book. Perhaps you love Jane Austen or Zora Neale Hurston's works and want to understand a book from their time. You might remember the first book you read on your own, or a series of books that meant a lot to you as a teenager, but you realize that you never thought much about their physical form. Or you may have seen a book in our class that you want to investigate further. In any case, find a book whose story you want to learn to tell.

Our conversation about the book you choose will cover the following topics:

Section 1: Physical Overview

Describe the general characteristics of the book: its size, paper, cover, and binding. Explain what the paper is likely made from, how the paper was made, and how it has been bound into the form of the book. Guided by Werner's Figure 30 and its surrounding text, be ready to identify the text block, spine, boards, endleaves, turn-ins, and pastedowns.

Section 2: Type and Layout

Describe the kind of typeface or typefaces you see in your book: are they blackletter, roman, modern, or experimental? Serif, slab serif, or sans serif? Old style, transitional, or new style? Geometric or humanist serif? All of these terms are explained well in this five-minute video about the history of type, which you can use to place the typefaces of your book in the larger world of type.

Section 3: Publication History

This description should include two parts. First, describe what the book says explicitly about its publication: the printer, bookseller, place of publication, year, and anything else you see. Note anything unusual that is or is not included, or is included in a location you did not expect. Then do some--a little--basic background research to understand the context of the information. What can you tell about the publisher or the publishing environment of the book's time and place?

Section 4: Intended Audience and History of Use

Describe how the book signals its intended audience, before and after the main content of the book (so mainly the book's covers, materiality, front matter, and back matter). Every book reflects some imagination of the people who will want to read it. How do you see your book attempting to connect with those readers?

Some books also show signs of use that tell you something about the actual readers of your individual book. Those signs can be textual (as in marginal notes) or non-textual (such as stains or rips). Describe any such evidence you see in your book and what it tells you about the book's history of use.

Section 5: Concluding Thoughts

Use this section to reflect on the previous sections of your description. What have you learned about your chosen book, and how do you know think differently about other books as a result of examining that one?

Extra Version

The Extra Version of this assignment involves a follow-up written component in which you conduct a deeper exploration of two elements of your book that especially interest you, based on our initial conversation. (We will agree explicitly on a plan for this extra version; just email me your proposed approach, and I'll give you a quick response.) For this additional assignment, you will use at least three sources and document them in Chicago NB style.