The history of how books were made, sold, banned and read: print runs and paper shortages, censorship regimes, circulating libraries, the paperback shift and the distribution systems that decided who could read what. Dates and figures included. For readers interested in books as material history.
Chained libraries fastened their books to shelves with iron because one volume could cost a scribe half a year — and the largest survivor, at Hereford Cathedral, still keeps its cases, chains and locks of 1611.
