First Steps Toward a History of Reading

Preface (2014) by Robert DarntonThe "First Steps" toward a history of reading that I described in AJFS twenty-eight years ago have now turned into something of a stampede. They lead in many directions-so many that I cannot map them here. The excellent anthology edited by Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, A History of Reading in the West (English edition, Polity Press, 1999) surveys much of the ground covered by the end of the century. But the twentieth century already looks like the distant past.Why so near and yet so far? The answer, in a word, or rather an acronym, is WWW: the World Wide Web, which came into existence in 1991 and has already transformed reading for millions of people. To be sure, we may exaggerate the change, because we are living in the middle of it. The printed codex is far from dead. In fact, more books are now being published than ever before. In 2012 the number of titles produced in the United States increased by six per cent, and the increase was much greater in developing countries such as Brazil and China. It comes in the form of books composed of printed paper, books to be read by turning pages rather than by scrolling, as the ancients had done before the invention of the codex at the beginning of the common era and as moderns do today when they read texts on computers. Having survived two thousand centuries, the codex will probably continue far into the future. And yet...Yet readers everywhere sense that reading is being revolutionized. They sense it through the tips of their fingers when they touch electronic screens - a Fingerspitzengefuhl unlike the tactility of books held in one's hands. They hear it with the click that takes them instantly from one text to another. They see it as they connect cursors with icons and when they search for information stored in clouds rather than libraries. The physical foundation of texts and the sensory experience of deciphering them are undergoing a transformation greater than anything since the time of Gutenberg.I think it can be called a "revolution". The word is often overused. In "First Steps Toward a History of Reading", I objected to its overuse in the argument, first developed by Rolf Engelsing, that a "reading revolution" took place in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. I did not dispute the importance of changes such as the increased availability of journals, magazines, and a wide variety of light literature; but they struck me as less profound than changes in many Western countries during the nineteenth century - the development of nearly universal literacy and inexpensive reading matter produced by new technology for a mass public. I may have lost that argument, but I find it symptomatic that ,4 History of Reading in the West, which endorses the concept of a reading revolution in the eighteenth century, ignored the revolution that was taking place at the time of its publication. It never mentions the Internet or the Web, not even in the final chapter on the future of reading. Has the history of reading failed to prepare us for comprehending the changes that occurred under our noses?We should not expect historians to be prophets. They have enough difficulty in sorting out the past. But they have identified one tendency that may help us to make sense of the current confusion. In the history of communication, they argue, one medium does not displace another, at least not in the short run. Manuscript publishing continued for centuries after the invention of printing by movable type, and similar continuities can be seen in the history of journalism, cinema and television. The sustainability of the codex in a world of computers, iPads and smart phones should not come as a surprise. Reading has become more complex and varied, not shallower and shorter. Streaming, texting, and tweeting do not signal the extinction of books and libraries. The digital is not the enemy of the analog. They live together in an environment where new possibilities constantly open up without closing off old ones. …