Zipi Talshir’s work on the evolution, formation, and transmission of the Hebrew Bible throughout her academic career, her remarkable ability to integrate the Septuagint into this research, and her profound understanding of the late books of the Hebrew Bible and the process of canonization are well known and appreciated. In this volume, 21 of Talshir’s colleagues and students contribute essays in her honor on these topics that are so close to her heart. A bibliography of her publications and a short biography open and complete this compelling volume presented by renowned authors in the field from all over Europe, Israel, and the U.S.

The author explores what is known about the medieval publishing process by close study of the work of John Capgrave (1393-1464), a prolific author and one of the most learned Englishmen of his day. In the Middle Ages, before the age of printing, the author was often his own scribe and almost invariably his own editor and publisher. Lucas shows how works newly composed by an author were prepared. Capgrave's linguistic and scribal usages are set in the socio-historical context of the 15th century.

Distinguished scholar and library systems innovator Frederick Kilgour tells a five-thousand-year story in this exciting work, a tale beginning with the invention of writing and concluding with the emerging electronic book. Calling on a lifetime of interest in the growth of information technology, Kilgour brings a fresh approach to the history of the book, emphasizing in rich, authoritative detail the successive technological advances that allowed the book to keep pace with ever-increasing needs for information. Borrowing a concept from evolutionary theory--the notion of punctuated equilibria--to structure his account, Kilgour investigates the book's three discrete historical forms--the clay tablet, papyrus roll, and codex--before turning to a fourth, still evolving form, the cyber book, a version promising swift electronic delivery of information in text, sound, and motion to anyone at any time. The clay tablet, initially employed as a content descriptor for sacks of grain, proved inadequate to the growing need for commercial and administrative records. Its successor the papyrus roll was itself succeeded by the codex, a format whose superior utility and information capacity led to sweeping changes in the management of accumulated knowledge, the pursuit of learning, and the promulgation of religion. Kilgour throughout considers closely both technological change and the role this change played in cultural transformation. His fascinating account of the modern book, from Gutenberg's invention of cast-type printing five hundred years ago to the arrival of books displayed on a computer screen, spotlights the inventors, engineers, and entrepreneurs who in creating the machinery of production and dissemination enabled the book to maintain its unique cultural power over time. Deft, provocative, and accessibly written, The Evolution of the Book will captivate book lovers as well as those interested in bibliographic history, the history of writing, and the history of technology.

In recent years, a growing interest in “oriental manuscripts” in all their aspects, including the extrinsic ones, has been observed. Research that focuses on holograph, autograph and authorial manuscripts in Arabic handwritten script has nevertheless been casual, although these manuscripts raise important and varied questions. The study of the working methods of authors from the past informs different disciplines: paleography, codicology, textual criticism, ecdotics, linguistics and intellectual history. In this volume nine contributions and case studies are gathered that address theoretical issues and convey different, disruptive perspectives. A particularly important subject of this book, so far rarely discussed in scientific literature, is the identification of an author’s handwriting. Among the authors specifically dealt with in this volume one will find: al-Maqrīzī (m. 845/1442), al-Nuwayrī (m. 733/1333), Akmal al-Dīn b. Mufliḥ (m. 1011/1603), al-ʿAynī (m. 855/1451) and Ibn Khaldūn (m. 808/1406). Contributors: Frédéric Bauden, Julien Dufour, Élise Franssen, Adam Gacek, Retsu Hashizume, Marie-Hélène Marganne, Elias Muhanna, Nobutaka Nakamachi, Anne Regourd, and Kristina Richardson.