Non-European Printing: an Enigma

Welcome, dear reader, to a dark tale of endless wo, of deadends and murky fens, of victory and defeat.

Looking down the list of topics, I found the entry "Non-European Printing." With visions of sweeping reference works carrying me conveniently to my destination atop a pile of relevant sources, I set off to the campus library.

What I found there was...less than idyllic. While the library computer catalog provided me with a few hits, its very generality of purpose renders it nearly useless. By the third page of results of one search I was reading about King Louis XIV's history, and "printing" brings up Uinta County: its place in history. Really?

Still, I found a few gems this way. I started off looking for A Short History of the Printing Press without paying mind to the publication year. This was in the section on the 5th floor about printing--which is well picked over at this point. I noticed quite a few titles that were intriguing. First, though, is the book I was looking for:



Hoe, Robert. A Short History of the Printing Press. The Gillis Press, New York, 1902. HBLL Library catalog. [Found using library catalog]

• Selected for its self-declared broad scope.
• Turned out to be a remarkable history of printing machinery, Gutenberg to now, but Eastern and ancient printing was not discussed.
• 1902 was a surprise--it's an old, thin book. Baskerville style. :)

At that shelf I started browsing around and found some interesting items. Indexes and Tables of Contents were present but sometimes unhelpful in older books. For example,

Palmer. A General History of Printing. Burt Franklin, New York. 1733 (reprinted later). LoC# Z124.P17 1972 [Found in the pile of recently-referenced books in the History of Printing section of the library]

• Finally! This will be a sweeping general history that will take be my long-sought for panacaea! Heh. That will be the last time I ignore publication dates in the catalog. Lucky for me it was a fairly legible Roman font.
• Took it upon itself to preach (in my own words) The Falsehood of Guttenbergh's Role in the Invention of the Printing Press. Very axe-grindy, vaguely historical. Could also be used under "Abuses of Print."
• Section XI is titled "The conclusion, with an account of the ancient method of Printing." Exactly one sentence mentions China. Ancient method my foot!
• I went to find this wonderful volume's catalog entry. Turns out I would have skipped it from that angle, as the title is "A general history of printing, from the first invention of it in the city of Mentz to its propagation and progress thro' most of the kingdoms in Europe: particularly the introduction and success of it here in England".

Another of the titles that was intriguing in my catalog searches was this one (Alas! I started like I always do in a library search, and did not catalog my search terms):

Edwards, Brendan Frederick R. Paper Talk: A History of Libraries, Print Culture, and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada before 1960. Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2005. Amazon.com. [Found by sifting through some pages of uninteresting catalog search results for odd titles and non-European subject matter]

• Selected as it's Non-European, though fairly recent.
• Details a non-print culture both adopting print and being influenced by an external print culture.

My last catalog lead was as follows:

Chia, Lucille and De Weerdt, Hilde. Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print: China, 900-1400. Brill, 2011. Amazon.com [Catalog search result]

• Bad Mousetrap effect from binding.
• Dense writing.
• Table of contents and spot checks indicate that it is very evidence-organized and carefully chronologized.
• Very good at indicating printing's impact on culture and vice versa.
• Goldenrod cover. Must come back to.
• Amazon lists this book as nearly $200. Wow academia...probably has a kick-butte bibliography.

After walking over to the section of shelves containing that Goldenrod Wonder, I was intrigued by the vast majority of potentially uninformative titles on the shelf near it. I love this aspect of libaries--one never knows what one will find next door to a treasured tome. This time, a thin green volume caught my eye:

Laufer, Berthold. Paper and Printing in Ancient China. Burt Franklin, N.Y. 1931 (1973 reprint). Amazon. [Found browsing the bookshelf near a catalog result]

• thin, green, and concise
• this seems to be a fairly matter-of-fact statement of known facts about Chinese printing. Reminds me of Robert Hoe's book that I described earlier.
• odd font

Sticking to this little book was a much larger one with an intriguing title: "Gutenberg in Shanghai." Well, upon closer inspection:

Reed, Christopher A. Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism 1876-1937. UBC Press. 2004. Amazon. [Stuck to book found by browsing]

• While it is still non-Euorpean printing, it is less interesting in the context of the Renaissance and the early years of print media.
• I found that I was out of time in the library (for various reasons) when I got to this book, so I may or may not go back to examine it.

In conclusion...sure, I found books. I found them a fun way, right there in the library among numbers and titles and shelves. Were they all useful or even applicable? No, but it was fun anyhow. :)