Alastair Fowler presents a fascinating study of title-pages printed in England from the early modern period to the nineteenth century. He examines pictorial title-pages in the context of the History of the Book for the firsttime. The first part of The Mind of the Book explores the forerunner of the frontispiece in late antiquity; the use of frames and borders in title-pages; portraits; printers' devices; emblematic title-pages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially attending to explanatory verses and arcane features such as chronograms; title-pages as 'memory prompts'; and eighteenth and nineteenth-century title-pages, tracing 'the rejection of emblematic and symbolic features and the introduction of unadorned, unpictorial, title-pages'. The second part of the book presents illustrations of sixteen significant title-pages with commentaries, ranging from Chaucer's Works in 1532 through Bacon's Instauratio Magna in 1620, Dicken's The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1870, and arriving back at Chaucer with Edward Burnes-Jones's illustrated title-page for the Works of 1896.
By:
Alastair Fowler (Professor Emeritus Professor Emeritus University of Edinburgh)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 240mm,
Width: 172mm,
Spine: 19mm
Weight: 490g
ISBN: 9780198717669
ISBN 10: 0198717660
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 13 February 2017
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction Historical setting Borders Architectural structures Portraits Printers' devices Emblems Chronograms Compartments Later history Plates and commentaries Geffray Chaucer, Workes (1532) Great Bible (1539) John Dee, General and Rare Memorials (1577) John Harington, Orlando Furioso (1591) Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion (1612, 1622) Ben Jonson, The Workes (1616) Francis Bacon, Instauratio Magna (1620) Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) Francis Barlow, Aesop's Fables (1666) Edward Sherburne, The Sphere of M. Manilius (1673) Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733) John Baskerville, Virgil's Works (Birmingham, 1757) Thackeray, The Rose and the Ring (1855) Charles Dickens, Edwin Drood (1870) Geoffrey Chaucer, Works (1896)
Alastair Fowler is Regius Professor Emeritus of Edinburgh University, and was previously Professor of English at the University of Virginia. For many years he divided his time between the United States and Britain, where he now lives. His publications include an annotated edition of Paradise Lost (1968); Kinds of Literature (1982); Renaissance Realism (2003); and Literary Names (2012).
Reviews for The Mind of the Book: Pictorial Title-Pages
In The Mind of the Book Fowler has presented us with a detailed but lucid schooling in the history and characteristics of the title page, and a reminder of some of the continuities that, while not always easy to recognize, link the earliest printed books to those of our own age. * Dennis Duncan, Times Literary Supplement *
