A History of the Book in America: Volume 1, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World

Book excerpt: Volume 1 of A History of the Book in America, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, encompasses the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is organized around three major themes: the persisting colonial relationship between European settlements and the Old World; the gradual emergence of a pluralistic book trade that differentiated printers from booksellers; and the transition from a 'culture of the Word', organized around an understanding of print as a vehicle of the sacred, to the culture of republicanism, epitomized by Benjamin Franklin, and culminating in the uses of print during the Revolutionary era. The volume will also describe nascent forms of literary and learned culture (including the circulation of manuscripts), literacy and censorship, orality, and the efforts by Europeans to introduce written literary to Native Americans and African Americans.