Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. Volumes 1 and 2. NOTE THERE IS NO SLIPCASE WITH THESE BOOKS. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In the late 17th century the editor of the Dictionnaire des arts et des sciences (Paris 1694) was criticized for too freely crediting the intelligences that had come to him from those who had lived in distant lands but we have been delighted to rely on a remarkable network of reliable knowledge: in all 398 scholars from 27 countries spanning the globe from Helsinki to Dunedin and from Tokyo to Nuuk have contributed to this Companion consisting of 51 essays and 5160 A-Z entries. Animate with the labours of scholars both living and long deceased the OCB seeks to represent in a single work the world of the book as it is known at the close of the first decade of the 21″ century. The practice of assembling a company of experts in their specialist fields to produce a volume of refer- ence is commonly believed to have been initiated in John Harris’s Lexicon Technicum (London 1704). though Harris nowhere acknowledged their contribu- tions. In all likelihood this strategy began much ear- lier. The topics in the Companion like those in Harris’s volume vary in their treatment from concise defini- tions to extended essays of some 13000 words. All but the very shortest entries are signed with their author’s initials for which see the list of Editors and Contributors and the Index of Contributor Initials below. Regrettably what must remain forever inaccessible to the reader are the many conversations (some in person others by telephone most via email) that have enriched particular essays and A-Z entries as well as the architecture and content of the Com- panion more generally. Nevertheless it is our ardent hope that these cross-border dialogues these discus- sions among bibliographers librarians codicologists. and book historians across time zones have here left their traces in ways that will stimulate future con- versations and further research. (OS)