A01=Bruce Michelson
american publishing history
americana
Author_Bruce Michelson
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
Category=KNTP1
Category=NHTK
consequences of a revolution
cultural revolution
easy to read
editing and publishing
engaging
epistemological
epistemology
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
famous american writers
historical
history of publishing
international fame
life changes
lifetime
lively
media revolution
metaphysical power
printing press
publishing and printing industry
radical change
retrospective
typesetting
wood cutting
Product details
- ISBN 9780520247598
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Nov 2006
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Trained as a printer when still a boy, and thrilled throughout his life by the automation of printing and the headlong expansion of American publishing, Mark Twain wrote about the consequences of this revolution for culture and for personal identity. "Printer's Devil" is the first book to explore these themes in some of Mark Twain's best-known literary works, and in his most daring speculations - on American society, the modern condition, and the nature of the self. Playfully and anxiously, Mark Twain often thought about typeset words and published images as powerful forces - for political and moral change, personal riches and ruin, and epistemological turmoil. In his later years, Mark Twain wrote about the printing press as a center of metaphysical power, a force that could alter the fabric of reality. Studying these themes in Mark Twain's writings, Bruce Michelson also provides a fascinating overview of technological changes that transformed the American printing and publishing industries during Twain's lifetime, changes that opened new possibilities for content, for speed of production, for the size and diversity of a potential audience, and for international fame.
The story of Mark Twain's life and art, amid this media revolution, is a story with powerful implications for our own time, as we ride another wave of radical change: for printed texts, authors, truth, and consciousness.
Bruce Michelson is Professor of English and Director of the Campus Honors Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is author of Literary Wit and Mark Twain on the Loose: A Comic Writer and the American Self, among other books.
