Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

First and last page of the 4-page prospectus for the 1967 book printed on grey paper. Notice that the publishers used Reynolds Stone's graphic for the 1963 edition.

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

The text of the 1967 prospectus provides useful information concerning the people responsible for its compilation, and credits the overall idea to Santley Morison.

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

A proof copy of the 1967 book issued in green printed wrappers and on thinner, lower quality paper than the published edition issued soon thereafter.

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

Dust jacket, designed by Herb Lubalin, for the American issue of the 1967 Printing and the Mind of Man book. Apart from the dust jackets the English and American issues were identical.

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

A typical page opening in the 1967 book. Unlike the 1963 catalogue, which included a number of quality half-tone plates, the 1967 book was illustrated only with line-shots.

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

Reynolds Stone signed my copy of the 1967 book at the foot of the right woodcut title page. This double-page spread is a masterpiece of wood engraving.

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

I obtained Reynolds Stone's signature on my copy of the 1967 Printing and the Mind of Man book when I attended his lecture on October 21, 1969 at the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco.

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

Reynolds Stone wrote his contact information down for me on my copy of the invitation to the lecture. At the lecture he handed out the small keepsake.

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

One of a very few copies of the 1967 book interleaved and bound in two volumes by the publisher, Cassell. Laid in this copy are various notes that I was collecting during the 1970s and 1980s with the idea of updating the book--a project that I never undertook. Most of those ideas, and, of course many others, found their way into HistoryofInformation.

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

In the late 1970s I corresponded with Percy Muir, one of organizers of both the 1940 Fitzwilliam exhibition, and the 1963 PMM exhibition and co-editor of the 1967 PMM book, concerning my idea of revising or expanding the work to bring in more contemporary ideas. From the inscription to me on the offprint of Muir's 1967 paper one can tell that Muir was in favor of bringing the book up to date. Other editors were less enthusiastic. In retrospect, I believe that the contents of the original 1963 exhibition catalogue and 1967 book should remain unchanged.
The titles of the papers, of which Muir inscribed offprints for me, are "Ian Fleming: A Personal Memoir," and "Printing and the Mind of Man: The Inside Story". Muir sent me his account of Muir's business and social relationship with Ian Fleming because Fleming was a key pioneer in collecting influential books of the type exhibited in the 1940 Fitzwilliam and 1963 PMM exhibitions.

The Revised & Expanded Edition of "Printing and the Mind of Man"

1967

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Dust jacket for the Cassell English version of PMM

Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

This was Cassell's English dust jacket for the 1967 Printing and the Mind of Man book. Stylistically formal, it was in keeping with the overall style of the volume.

The 1963 catalogue for the Printing and the Mind of Man exhibition in London was followed in 1967 by a further-expanded larger format cloth-bound edition with a dramatic double-page wood-engraved title page by Reynolds Stone, significantly more detailed annotations, and notably without discussion of "printing mechanisms," entitled Printing and the Mind of Man. A Descriptive Catalogue Illustrating the Impact of Print on the Evolution of Western Civilization. The book was compiled and edited by antiquarian booksellers and bibliographers John Carter and Percy H. Muir, assisted by book historian and writer Nicolas Barker, antiquarian bookseller H.A. Feisenberger, bibliographer Howard Nixon and historian of printing S.H. Steinberg.

The 1963 exhibition, and especially the 1967 book based on it, was, and remains fifty years later, immensely influential on both institutional and private collectors of landmark books that influenced the development of Western Civilization.

Taking place at the dawn of online searching and the ARPANET, and roughly twenty years before the development of the personal computer, this exhibition and its catalogues may also record the peak of the print-centric view of information before the development of electronic information technology leading to the Internet. The only references to computing in the exhibition and its catalogues were to Napier on logarithms, and to Leibniz's stepped-drum calculator. The exhibition and catalogues included references to the invention of radio, telephone and films, but not to television.

Sebastian Carter, "Printing & the Mind of Man," Matrix 20 (2000) 172-180.