Abstract
The book presents studies focusing on the historiography and history of books and book culture. The aim of the volume is to capture the transformations that the study of book culture, in the sense of analysing the complex relationships between the social existence of the printed text, its material form and the meanings it carries, has undergone, particularly in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
It focuses on key texts that have defined the objects and methods of the historiography of the book. It also includes studies by scholars elaborating on various aspects of Darnton's model of the book communication circuit, which connects authors to readers through networks of publishers, bookbinders, printers, booksellers, distributors, and librarians.