Video: 'Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe' by Professor Anthony Grafton

Professor Anthony Grafton, AB’71, AM’72, PhD’75, presented his new book, Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe, at this Virtual Library Book Presentation on October 28. A video of the event is now available here.

In this celebration of bookmaking in all its messy and intricate detail, the author and renowned historian invites readers to see the scholars of early modern Europe as diligent workers. Grafton illuminates the physical and mental labors that fostered the golden age of the book and shows how the exertions of scholars shaped influential books, treatises, and forgeries. Finally, Inky Fingers traces the transformation of humanistic approaches to texts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and examines the sustaining and constraining effects of theological polemics on sixteenth century scholars.

Professor Grafton was welcomed by Michael Thompson, Library Society Chair, and Elizabeth Frengel, Curator of Rare Books.

Presented by the University of Chicago Library Society