The Book-Makers is a celebration of 550 years of the printed book told through the lives of
eighteen extraordinary men and women who took the book in radical new directions: printers and
binders publishers and artists paper-makers and library founders. This is a story of skill
craft mess cunning triumph improvisation and error. Some of these names we know. We meet
jobbing printer (and American Founding Father) Benjamin Franklin. We watch Thomas
Cobden-Sanderson conjure books that flicker between the early twentieth century and the
fifteenth. Others have been forgotten. We don't remember Sarah Eaves wife of John Baskerville
and her crucial contribution to the history of type. Nor Charles Edward Mudie populariser of
the circulating library - and the most influential figure in book publishing before Jeff Bezos.
Nor William Wildgoose who meticulously bound Shakespeare's First Folio and then disappeared
from history. The Book-Makers puts people back into the story of the book. It takes you inside
the print-shop as the deadline looms and the adrenaline flows - from 1492 Fleet Street to 2023
New York. It's a story of contingencies and quirks of successes and failures of routes
forward and paths not taken. The Book-Makers is a history of book-making that leaves ink on
your fingers and it shows why the printed book will continual to flourish.
