Reading is not a mere intellectual exercise, nor just an experience arousing deep emotions, but also a practice closely linked to the materiality of books as objects. This text tells the story of the main forms that books have assumed from early Roman times to the present and explains the innovations that have occurred as concerns book materials (wood, papyrus, parchment, paper), book types (tablet, scroll, codex, printed volume), professionals involved in book production (copyist, illuminator, composer, typographer), and practices for the processing, reception and circulation of texts among the reading public. The final chapter is devoted to the digital revolution and the rise of e-books, which have broken up the heretofore indivisible union between text and book, thus making it possible to achieve the ideal of the universal library, comprising the entirety of humanity’s written heritage.

Marco Cursi teaches Codicology at the Sapienza University in Rome.