Reading lesson: Introduction to the writing history, literacy and document types
This lesson covers some periods of writing history, literacy and document types.
Ancient times
Where did books and libraries come from?
Middle Ages
What to know about codices, the decorated documents of the Middle Ages
Modern Age
The age of mass book production
Ancient times
Soon after the invention of writing, people had already created texts that may be compared to books in terms of their length and sophistication, even if such documents are, in many respects, quite dissimilar to what books have eventually evolved to be.
The Sumerians were familiar with writing as early as the 4th millennium BC, and they used it to record various kinds of information. They wrote in cuneiform script*, which evolved from pictographic writing*, writing on clay tablets. These tablets may be considered the first books of humankind. In ancient Mesopotamia, such tablets were used for economic and other purposes (such as keeping records and accounts). However, cuneiform script was also used to create more complex written works, with even laws being recorded in cuneiform texts.
Cuneiform script
Cuneiform script is a type of writing invented by the Sumerians in the 4th millennium BC. It was similar to pictographic writing, attempting to depict objects and concepts. Eventually, it became increasingly abstract and more and more similar to alphabetic writing.
Pictographic writing
This is one of the oldest forms of writing, in which things were represented by a sketchy picture. A special, advanced form is the hieroglyphs used by the Egyptians.
Having decoded Sumerian cuneiform script in the 19th century, researchers set to understanding another, quite different type of writing, i.e., Egyptian hieroglyphic writing*. More closely related to pictographic writing, hieroglyphics were eventually deciphered using a bilingual (Greek and Egyptian) inscription engraved in stone. However, the Egyptians not only wrote in stone and on walls but they also used papyrus scrolls* made from papyrus sedge. Egyptian priests used these scrolls to inscribe religious texts, which are now considered to be literary in terms of their quality. As the direct predecessor of today’s books, papyrus scrolls were used as a writing medium for thousands of years.
Hieroglyphics
Hieroglyphics is the advanced pictographic script used by the ancient Egyptians, whose signs had abstract meanings.
Papyrus scroll
A papyrus scrroll is a material made from papyrus reeds, suitable for writing, which is stored rolled up.
In ancient Pergamon, people who engaged in writing experimented with various materials to use. They ultimately made membranes from animal skin, with this writing material later being named parchment*. In terms of its form, parchment was initially modeled after papyrus scrolls, but, as a material, it was more flexible and easier to handle than papyrus. Similarly to how some fragments of Egyptian scrolls have been found by archaeologists, the remains of parchments dating back 2000 years have been unearthed. One of the most sensational discoveries was made in Israel after the Second World War, when archaeologists discovered dozens of relatively intact parchment scrolls containing biblical texts, which later came to be known as the famous Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls.
Parchment
Finely worked animal skin, initially stored in scrolls, later in folded sheets. Many of the codices were also written on this material. Parchment was invented in the ancient city of Pergamon.
Middle Ages
Towards the end of antiquity, in the early Middle Ages, people realized that parchment was more manageable if it was not rolled up but folded into sheets and bound together. The folded sheets were usually placed between wooden boards and written on in handwriting. Such manuscripts are called codices*. Today, there are probably only a few thousand such codices left in the world, which makes them highly valuable.
Codex
Codex is a term collectively used for handwritten books. Codices were most commonly used in the Middle Ages, before the advent of printing. Initially, the parchment sheets were placed between wooden boards, hence the name codex, from the Latin word 'caudex', meaning 'block of wood'.
Over the centuries, codices have evolved to contain certain elements (some practical, some decorative) that remain with us to this day in the form of elements found in modern books. In this regard, it is important to note that most of the codices are beautifully decorated by hand.
In codices and early books, the name of a larger, decorated initial letter that introduces a column, chapter or paragraph. The name comes from the Latin initium = beginning.
A ‘miniature’ is a relatively small, hand-painted illustration used to decorate the pages of codices.
Since large codices were made from the skins of thousands of animals and written over the course of several decades, a codex is enormously valuable.
Around the 13th and 14th centuries, there was an increase in the demand for books (due to the intellectual boom that accompanied economic prosperity). This led to the establishment of large secular workshops where codices were copied by professional scribes in order to be “produced” in increasingly growing numbers in more basic versions. However, soon the need for a simpler, “mechanized” way of production became evident.
Aroud the same time, the Chinese had already been using woodblock printing for thousands of years to produce a mirror image of patterns or writing carved into woodblocks, which allowed for relatively large numbers of copies to be printed. This Chinese technology was adopted in Europe only in the 15th century, most probably as a result of Arabic block printing spreading across the continent.
An even greater step in the evolution of printing was the invention of a printing press that allows for the arrangement of individual letters with ease of assembly and disassembly. The person who invented this press was a goldsmith from Germany who created his type pieces for printing from lead. His name was Johannes Gutenberg, and he printed the Bible in 100 copies in 1455. Even though they were printed, books continued to resemble codices in several respects. For instance, for quite some time, they were still decorated by hand, with separately drawn initials, which was essentially a way of ensuring that they could be sold at high prices. These books, printed between 1455 and 1500, are called incunabula*.
Incunable / incunabulum
Incunabula are books produced in the first era of printing, before 31 December 1500. They were more like codices than the books of today.
It is only natural that medieval Hungary was no exception when it came to creating codices. One such codex is Márk Kálti’s beautifully decorated book on history, entitled the Chronicon Pictum (Pictorial Chronical), which was considered to be an outstanding codex in Europe at the time. In addition, as one of the greatest European rulers in the second half of the 15th century, King Matthias (1458–1490) of Hungary owned one of the largest and most famous codex libraries in Europe, housing around 2,500 volumes, according to estimates by scholars. These codices were known as the ‘corvinas’, named after the family coat of arms (depicting a raven, or ‘corvus’), which appeared in each book. Unfortunately, the collection is now scattered, and there are only 52 corvinas left in the country.
Soon after Gutenberg’s invention revolutionized printing, book printing started to gain ground in Hungary, too. The first book printed in the country was the Budai Krónika (The Buda Chronicles), printed by András Hess in 1473. Although the Ottoman occupation of Hungary did not help the proliferation of printing, more and more printing shops were set up, producing beautiful books in increasing numbers. By the 17th century, Hungary also saw the emergence of prominent figures in the history of printing, including the world-class artist and scholar, Miklós Misztótfalusi Kis (1650–1702). He learned the craft of printing while working at excellent Dutch printing houses before returning to Hungary to put his love of printing to good use.
Modern Age
Taking a giant leap straight to the 19th century, we see an age characterized by mass book production, with significant advancements in terms of the types of books available to the public. This shift was due to technological improvements and also to an increased demand for books. All of this is in line with the fact that, by 1890, literacy had become practically universal in Western Europe and in the United States of America. This in turn lead to the creation of books such as chapbooks, which were short, often anonymous publications on a variety of subjects, printed on cheap paper, and intended to serve as reading material for lower-class readers.
Printing became increasingly mechanized. By the 1830s, steam-powered printing machines had become widespread, especially in printing houses that printed copies of major newspapers such as The Times in London. At the same time, there was a virtual revolution in paper production as well, with the time-consuming process of typesetting remaining the real bottleneck in terms of book production. However, that problem was ultimately solved, too, when Linotype and Monotype machines appeared on the scene. With all these issues resolved, book production boomed, with a striking effect on the spread and price of publications.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the publishing industry was characterised by an increasing concentration of publishing and printing companies and underwent such fundamental changes that they still have an impact today, as illustrated by the following list of some of the most important names in publishing.
- Penguin Books: Penguin Books is a British publishing house, founded in the 1930s, which played a significant role in making inexpensive books widespread and creating the modern paperback format.
- Random House: Random House is book publisher founded in 1927 in New York, and it is still one of the largest and most prominent publishing companies in the United States.
- HarperCollins: HarperCollins is a British publishing company founded in 1817, which has published countless famous books by countless famous authors.
- Oxford University Press: Oxford University Press is one of the oldest and largest university presses in the academic world, founded in 1478, and modernized and revitalized many times since.
- Cambridge University Press: Cambridge University Press is a publisher founded in 1534 to “rival” Oxford University Press, which became the “industry” leader in publishing academic books and journals at the turn of the 19th and 20th
- Éditions Gallimard: Éditions Gallimard is a French publisher founded in 1911, which is still one of the leading book publishers in France, publishing works by authors such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Marcel Proust.
- Brockhaus: Brockhaus became a household name in Germany, starting in Amsterdam at the beginning of the 19th century, and it became a household name for a long-lived encyclopaedia.
These publishing and printing houses have grown into international businesses, sometimes functioning as virtual empires that still play a dominant role in publishing.
This is also the golden age of newspapers and magazines, and the beginning of the age of “mass media“. This era has seen many newspapers become economic and political actors, with editorials in daily papers capable of overthrowing governments, or literary journals influencing readers’ tastes and ushering in new literary periods in terms of style.