Digital American Literature Collections

This page has been moved from posts to the list of permanent pages.

Bookish Sites (mostly) on American Bindings

These sites are “bookish” in the sense that they provide access to images and information about books, manuscripts, or periodicals as material objects, as objects of interest for their status as objects of art and manufacture. These are not links to transcriptions of texts.

• American Publishers’ Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books, an easy-to-navigate, informative site.
• Gold-Stamped Publishers’ Bindings of the 19th Century at Columbia.
• Unseen Hands: Women Printers, Binders and Book Designers at Princeton.
• Painted Prints at Baltimore Museum of Art. Not American and not books but neat nonetheless. See Online Exhibitions and click Painted Prints link. After some use, I began to wish one were given better control over the zooming. But I did begin to think critically about my edition of black-and-white Hogarth engravings and woodcuts in the Norton Shakespeare.