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Books

by Gerald Donaldson

Dust jacket, blue cover with gilt lettering to spine and contents in very good clean condition. Minor age spotting to top of page block.

Accession 9780714822365 ISBN 9780714822365 Publisher Phaidon

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on_shelf: True
position_updated_at: 2026-05-05 17:11
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binding_type: Hard Back
dimensions: none captured
spine_text: Donaldson BOOKS Φ

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Topics and Themes

1. **The History & Evolution of Books**
Gerald Donaldson's *Books* traces the long arc of the book as an object and cultural artefact — covering its origins, development through manuscript and print, and its enduring role in civilisation. The full subtitle references "history, art, power, glory, infamy and suffering," signalling a sweeping historical sweep.

Connect to books about: history of writing, history of printing, the Gutenberg press, manuscript culture, the codex.

2. **Bibliomania & Book Collecting**
A central delight of the book is its treatment of the obsessive love of books — the compulsive collector, the rare-book hunter, and the irrational devotion readers feel toward physical volumes. Donaldson approaches this with both affection and humour.

Connect to books about: book collecting, rare books, bibliophilia, antiquarian bookselling.

3. **The Art & Craft of Publishing**
The book covers the making of books — from authorship and editing to printing, binding, and design — illuminating publishing as both an industry and an art form. Its rich illustrations include facsimile pages, bindings, and artwork.

Connect to books about: the publishing industry, typography, book design, bookbinding, printing history.

4. **Reading Culture & the Literary Life**
Through a curated anthology of quotations from writers, critics, monarchs, and readers across centuries, the book examines what it means to be a reader — and how people throughout history have thought about the act of reading itself.

Connect to books about: reading habits, literacy, the history of the reader, literary culture, commonplace books.

5. **The Power & Politics of Books**
Donaldson's subtitle explicitly invokes "power, glory, and infamy," and the book engages with how books have shaped — and been suppressed by — political and religious authority. Censorship, banned books, and the danger of ideas are all present threads.

Connect to books about: censorship, banned books, intellectual freedom, propaganda, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

6. **Authors, Critics & the Literary World**
The book is populated with sharp, often witty exchanges between authors and their critics, capturing the tensions, vanities, and rivalries of literary life across eras. It humanises the people behind books as much as the books themselves.

Connect to books about: literary biography, the writing life, author memoirs, criticism and reviewing.

7. **Books as Material Objects & Visual Culture**
With 120 illustrations — including artwork, photographs, and reproductions of bindings — the book treats the physical book as a visual and aesthetic object, not merely a vessel for text. This bridges book history with art history.

Connect to books about: book arts, illuminated manuscripts, visual culture, decorative arts, the history of illustration.

8. **Wit, Humour & the Anthology Form**
Donaldson's approach is explicitly lighthearted and curated — a compendium of quotations, anecdotes, and observations gathered to entertain as much as to inform. The anthology form itself is a subject worth exploring.

Connect to books about: literary anthologies, quotation collections, humour in literature, commonplace book tradition, miscellanies.

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