Anthony Grafton on Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe

May Evening Program

Anthony Grafton

Inky Fingers

Note that registering for the event will provide you with the opportunity to purchase copies of Inky Fingers for $28.50 including tax, shipping, and a custom designed bookplate signed by the author. 

Join us as renowned historian Anthony Grafton illuminates the physical and mental labors that fostered the golden age of the book in early modern Europe.  Professor Grafton will explore how the exertions of scholars shaped influential books, treatises, and forgeries. He will trace the transformation of humanistic approaches to texts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and examine the sustaining and constraining effects of theological polemics on sixteenth century scholars. His recent book, Inky Fingers, has been widely reviewed as both a scholarly and readable tribute to the work of early modern European bookmakers.

Professor Grafton's special interests lie in the cultural history of Renaissance Europe, the history of books and readers, the history of scholarship and education in the West from Antiquity to the nineteenth century, and the history of science from Antiquity to the Renaissance.  He joined the Princeton History Department in 1975 after earning his A.B. (1971) and Ph.D. (1975) in history from the University of Chicago and spending a year at University College London.

This evening will also be the Annual meeting of the Caxton Club and will include the election of Officers as well as Council Class of 2024. All Caxton members are encouraged to attend.