Geographies of the Book

The geography of the book is as old as the history of the book. Yet, while the history of the book is an established research field, including important work on the production and dissemination of the book, on print culture and on reading practices and other matters of reception, there has been much less focus on geographical approaches to studying the book. Increasingly, however, work has pointed to the spatial dimensions of book history, to the transformation of texts as they are made and moved from place to place, from authors to readers and within different communities and cultures of reception. Widespread recognition of the significance of place, of the effects of movement over space and of the importance of location to the making and reception of print culture has been a feature of recent book history work, and draws in many instances upon studies within the history of science as well as geography. While it is divided into three main sections: Geographies of Production; Geographies of Circulation; Geographies of Reception, the book makes clear that the relationships between the making of books in certain geographical contexts, the movement of books (epistemologically as well as geographically) and the reception of and reaction to books are complex.