Hugh Amory

Hugh Amory (1930-2001) was at once the most rigorous and the most methodologically sophisticated historian of the book in early America. Gathered here are his essays, articles, and lectures on the subject, two of them printed for the first time. An introduction by David D. Hall sets this work in context and indicates its significance; Hall has also provided headnotes for each of the essays. Amory used his training as a bibliographer to reexamine every major question about printing, bookmaking, and reading in early New England. Who owned Bibles, and in what formats? Did the colonial book trade consist of books imported from Europe or of local production? Can we go behind the iconic status of the Bay Psalm Book to recover its actual history? Was Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom really a bestseller? And why did an Indian gravesite contain a scrap of Psalm 98 in a medicine bundle buried with a young Pequot girl? In answering these and other questions, Amory writes broadly about the social and economic history of printing, bookselling and book ownership. At the heart of his work is a determination to connect the materialities of printed books with the workings of the book trades and, in turn, with how printed books were put to use. This is a collection of great methodological importance for anyone interested in literature and history who wants to make those same connections.

Studies in the Print Culture of Early New England

Bibliography and the Book Trades

David D. Hall

Volume 1 of A History of the Book in America encompasses seventeenth and eighteenth century book history.

The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World

Houghton Library

A catalogue of 75 items from the Hyde Collection pertaining to Henry Fielding that were on display at an exhibition at Houghton Library in 1987.

An Exhibition of the Hyde Collection

New Books by Fielding

Robert A. Gross

Michael Schudson

Janice A. Radway

Stephen Nissenbaum

Scott E. Casper

Joan Shelley Rubin

Mary Kelley

David Paul Nord

Carl F. Kaestle

Jeffrey D. Groves

A History of the Book in America: Industrial book, 1840-1880

A History of the Book in America is a five-volume, interdisciplinary series that offers a collaborative history of the book in American culture from the earliest days of European settlement to our own days. Its creation is a principal activity of the American Antiquarian Society. Volume 1, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World 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" to the culture of republicanism. 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.

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

Hugh Amory

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