Canada Book Week – April 15-21, 2024

History of Canada Book Week

Books, as we know them today, are primarily a result of the evolution of the printing press, which was made famous by the Gutenberg Bible. However, books were uniquely handcrafted before that era, with each page personalized through special design features. Each part of the book was analyzed in detail to reveal its purpose, history, ideologies, and philosophies of the era it was written. Furthermore, the book was also examined to determine whether it had readers who interacted with its content. The books were so well packaged that most of the information required of the book beyond the content was evident from the preservation of the books.

The history of books comprises the development of writing and various other inventions such as paper and printing, as well as the modern-day business of book printing. The earliest societally acknowledged history of books predates the conventional idea of books as known today. It begins with tablets, scrolls, and sheets of papyrus. (The presently recognized format of books, with separate sheets fastened together, is called a “codex”, the plural form of which is “codices”).

Then, with the advancement of time came the hand-bound, decorated manuscripts appearing in codex form, eventually giving way to press-printed volumes and, later, the mass-printed volumes as we have them today. Along with these developments came the accessibility of books to people living with disabilities through audiobooks and Braille. The history of books gained ground as an academic discipline during the 1980s. The fundamental purpose of the history of books is to demonstrate and portray the book as an object, not just the text contained within it, as a conduit of interaction between readers and the book’s content.