children's book illustration, any type of picture or decorative work produced for books specifically intended for a youthful audience.

Beginnings of a Genre

Among the first picture books produced in the West and intended for children is Comenius's Orbis Pictus, a primerlike text written in Latin about 1657 or 1658. Earlier works meant for adults but suitable for children include the Japanese Scroll of Animals (12th cent.) with animated sketches by Toba Soja and the first English edition of Aesop's Fables, printed by William Caxton in 1484 and illustrated with woodcuts. John Newbery included woodcuts in The Renowned History of Little Goody Two Shoes (1765). The earliest illustrators of children's books were usually anonymous, but with the appearance of Thomas Bewick's art for Pretty Book of Pictures for Little Masters and Misses; or, Tommy Trip's History of Beasts and Birds (1799), well-known artists began to receive credit for their work in this field.

William Blake printed, engraved, and hand colored his own Songs of Innocence (1789). The Butterfly's Ball (1807), by William Roscoe, was illustrated by William Mulready, and illustrations for the first English version of Grimm's Fairy Tales (1824) were created by George Cruikshank. John Tenniel's remarkable drawings for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) remain unsurpassed. His art creates a visual framework through which the characters of the story come to life.

A Great Tradition

Illustrations for children's books usually enhanced or explained the text, but in the latter quarter of the 19th cent. three artistic giants, Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway, and Randolph Caldecott, gave a new dimension to illustration. They produced the picture storybook in which interdependent text and illustration are given equal emphasis. Crane's nursery-song prints in Baby's Bouquet (1908) combine soft colors with bold composition. Greenaway's Under the Window (1878) is enhanced by delicate garden colors. In the 1870s and 80s Caldecott's nursery books displayed harmonious linear composition and warm color.

The exquisite watercolors in Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit books reveal her careful observation of small wild animals. The grandeur and dignity of Howard Pyle's portraits intensify the heroic adventures of Robin Hood (1883) and Men of Iron (1890). Two of Pyle's students were Jessie Wilcox, who illustrated Robert Louis Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses (1905) and N. C. Wyeth, whose dramatization of individuals and landscape enriched Treasure Island (1917), Robinson Crusoe (1920), and many other works. The master illustrator Arthur Rackham produced a host of magnificent books beginning in 1900 with The Fairy Tales of Grimm. His work is noted for brilliant use of color and dramatic, detailed composition. Ernest Shepard's drawings for A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and for an edition of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows (1931) are warm and humorous.

The Golden Age of Illustration

After a decline during the early 1920s, the golden age of the picture book began with the publication of Wanda Gág's Millions of Cats (1928). In 1938 the American Library Association instituted the Caldecott Medal for the most distinctive American picture book for children. The first recipient was Dorothy Lathrop for Animals of the Bible (1937). A number of major illustrators whose works are still popular emerged in the 1930s. Kurt Wiese illustrated Kipling's Mowgli Stories (1936). Helen Sewell employed a realistic style for The First Bible (1934).

Maud and Miska Petersham's The Christ Child (1931) and Jean de Brunhoff's broadly drawn, delightful Story of Babar, the Little Elephant (1931) were among the outstanding books of the 30s. Robert Lawson's Ben and Me (1939) was the first of many witty books that he wrote and illustrated, including Rabbit Hill (1944) and The Fabulous Flight (1949). Dr. Seuss's popular, cleverly drawn books for young children began with And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937). Boris Artzybasheff illustrated Aesop and The Seven Simeons (both 1937) with bold woodcuts.

In the next decade Robert McCloskey produced superb illustrations for Make Way for Ducklings (1941). Garth Williams's realistic, expressive drawings brought to life E. B. White's Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte's Web (1952). The painter Maxfield Parrish created a series of glowing and colorful illustrations for a children's version of The Arabian Nights (1947). Wesley Dennis created powerful watercolors for many horse books by Marguerite Henry. The first book in the charming Madeleine series, written and illustrated in a broad, painterly style by Ludwig Bemelmans, appeared in 1939; his Parsley (1953), the story of a stag, incorporates a colorful catalog of wildflowers. Marcia Brown's Puss in Boots (1952) is light and whimsical.

The 1960s and Beyond

During the 1960s a number of seldom-used techniques were introduced, and color printing was much improved. Drawing was freed from the constraints of realistic representation, and fantastic imagery flourished. Photography enriched texts, as in Astrid Sucksdorff's Chendru (1960). Illustrations combining graphic art and collage graced Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day (1962) and Leo Lionni's Inch by Inch (1960). Outstanding folk and fairy tales in a picture-book format include Adrienne Adams's Shoemaker and the Elves (1960) and Evaline Ness's Tom Tit Tot (1965).

A landmark in illustrated books of the 1960s is Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (1963), depicting a surreal and menacing world of make-believe creatures. Sendak's Higgelty Piggelty Pop; or, There Must Be More to Life (1967) is a fantasy reminiscent of Tenniel's work. His In the Night Kitchen (1970) depicts a dream world in robust detail; it was the first children's book to portray nudity. Sendak's style has had a profound influence on contemporary illustration, as in Harriet Pincus's droll figures for Carl Sandburg's The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle and Who Was in It (1967) and Mercer Mayer's comic A Boy, a Dog, a Frog, and a Friend (1967). Mayer's book spawned a number of books in which the story is carried entirely by pictures.

In the mid-1960s a new kind of picture book emerged in which the illustrations dominate the text. Ben Montresor's illustrations for Cinderella (1965) and for Stephen Spender's The Magic Flute (1966) are based on his opera stage designs and incorporate the glittering color of that medium. Brian Wildsmith made expressive use of intense, jewellike colors for many works including La Fontaine's The Lion and the Rat (1963) and Little Wood Duck (1972). Eric Carle's bright, bold collages made from painted tissue paper debuted in Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (1967), and his Very Hungry Caterpillar (1967) has become a preschool classic. Among artists who choose to interpret a single type of book to which their styles are best suited, is Nancy Ekholm Burkert, whose specialty is fantasy and fairy tales; in Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs (1972) her sweeping design and minute detail recall the works of Rackham. Margot and Harve Zemach illustrate and retell folk stories, including the rollicking Duffy and the Devil (1973).

By the 1970s children's book illustration had developed into an artistic feast of incredible variety and richness, expressive of a particularly imaginative range of individual creativity. The 1980s and 90s produced a number of remarkable illustrators as well, including Chris van Allsburg, Barry Moser, Jerry Pinkney, Alice and Martin Provensen, Trina Schart Hyman, Susan Jeffers, and Jeanette Winter.

book publishing. The term publishing means, in the broadest sense, making something publicly known. Usually it refers to the issuing of printed materials, such as books, magazines, periodicals, and the like. There is, however, great latitude of meaning, because publishing has never emerged, and cannot emerge, as a profession completely separate from printing on the one hand and the retailing of printed matter on the other.

Early History

The practice of making extra copies of manuscripts goes back to ancient times; in Rome there were booksellers—Horace mentions the Sosii, who were apparently brothers—and the copying of books by trained slaves reached considerable proportions. With the introduction of printing into Europe in the middle of the 15th cent. (see type), book publishing sprang into lively existence. The author, the printer, and the publisher of a work were sometimes all the same person, as in the case of members of the Estienne family in France in the 16th cent. The differentiation of printer, publisher, and bookseller appeared early, however, as patrons of literature had books printed for distribution and booksellers had their printing done by others to meet the growing demand.

The Emergence of Publishing Houses

The first important publishing house (1583-1791) was that of the Elzevir family in Holland (see Elzevir, Louis). The Elzevirs were businessmen rather than scholars, and the business of bookselling grew as literacy increased. Concurrently, printing, publishing, and bookselling spread learning across the West. Religious controversy bred polemics, and arguments printed in broadsides, pamphlets, and books were handed out zealously and bought eagerly by partisans. An interest in knowing the future also increased the amount of literature issued by bookseller-publishers, and almanacs and the like were issued for the wider public.

With the steadily broadening mass of readers, great publishing houses slowly came into being; many were well established by the late 18th cent. Leipzig had become a printing center in the 15th cent. and retained its eminence, along with Munich; most of the larger German cities had flourishing publishing concerns by the end of the 19th cent. Modern European cities with long traditions of publishing are Vienna, Florence, Milan, Zürich, Paris, London, and Edinburgh. In the United States, Boston, Philadelphia, and especially New York City took the lead.

Specialization

During the late 19th cent. and throughout the 20th cent., specialization has been an increasingly important factor in book publishing. Music publishing became a completely separate business, as did map publishing. Some publishing houses now specialize in religious books, textbooks, art books, technical books, and children's books. Frequently a house issuing works for the general trade may also have a strong textbook department, juvenile division, or reference department. A house founded for more or less special purposes may broaden its scope, as sometimes happens with the university press.

In the late 19th and 20th cent., specialization also grew within publishing houses. Editorial departments became distinct from production, and both were quite separate from the sales or marketing departments. Publishers also specialized in the means by which their books were distributed. Trade books are fiction and nonfiction books sold to readers primarily through bookstores, whereas textbooks are directed toward school boards and faculty for use by students in the classroom. Many volumes are issued with the book club market in mind.

Paperback Books

Since books are basically a luxury item, a purchaser can dispense with them in hard times. One partial solution in the United States has been the issuance of paperback books, long a standard form of book publication in Europe. During the 1930s and 40s the paperbound, pocket-size book rose meteorically in popularity in English-speaking countries, and in the 1950s the "quality" paperback appeared, presenting durable yet inexpensive editions of well-known writers. By 1998 mass-market and trade paperbacks represented about 14% of all books sold in the United States.

New Technologies

By the 1970s, the advent of new technologies for the transmission, storage, and distribution of data, once the prerogative of book publishing, had become a problem for the industry; television screens and databases became symbols of the challenges to editors and publishers (see computer; information storage and retrieval). The increasing use of sophisticated copying machines posed new problems to the need of publishers and authors to protect their property by copyright, and in 1976 the U.S. Congress passed a major revision to the federal copyright law that attempted to define to what extent published material could be reproduced without payment of royalties.

In the late 20th cent., computers and such related innovations as the CD-ROM (see compact disc) and the Internet allowed publishing to expand, making readily updated texts available on line and on disk and fostering multimedia presentations and interactive uses (see hypertext). The easy access to and copying of electronically published material raised additional copyright issues, and in 1998 Congress passed legislation that extended copyright protection to on-line material. In addition, the wide availability of computer-driven desktop-publishing technology to small presses and individuals gave impetus to the production of a wide variety of self-published books. By the beginning of the 21st cent. several large U.S. publishers had set up separate electronic ventures and a number of independent on-line print-on-demand (or publish-on-demand) web companies had been created. The fastest growing of the independents, Lulu.com, was founded in the United States in 2002. Only four years later it had more than 30,000 titles available, was creating about 1,000 new ones every month, and had expanded its operations into several European countries.

Technology also led to the development of the "electronic book" or "e-book," which combines the storage, search capabilities, and adaptability of a computer with the simulated page format of a traditional book; early versions appeared in the late 1990s. By 2000, thousands of books were being digitized, to be read on line, downloaded, printed out by the reader, or printed on demand by the publisher, thus assuring that their electronic versions need never go out of print. That same year, as reading devices became more compact and sophisticated, several of the largest U.S. publishing houses opened separate on-line publishing ventures while smaller electronic publishing start-ups became more common. Meanwhile, some books also became available in component parts (chapters, maps, tables, and even paragraphs) that, for a price, could be customized into new entities created by their readers and, like other electronic books, be either downloaded from the Internet or printed on demand by the publisher, bound, and shipped to the customer. Initial forecasts for the overwhelming success of e-books, however, proved to be premature, as comparatively few examples of the format were sold during the first years of their widespread release.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Publishing traditionally had been an industry of numerous, small, family-owned firms. After the 1960s, however, publishing houses were regularly purchased by and consolidated with other companies. For example, Rinehart & Company and the John C. Winston Company were purchased by Henry Holt & Company to form Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc. In addition, publishing firms were being taken over by conglomerates, e.g., Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., was purchased by the Columbia Broadcasting System; in 1986, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (now Harcourt, Inc.) bought the educational and publishing division of CBS Inc., which included Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Henry Holt & Company was then sold to the Holtzbrinck group of Germany (Holtzbrink now also owns St. Martin's). Time Warner, the world's largest entertainment and media company, owns Little, Brown & Co., Warner Books, Time Life Books, Book of the Month Club, and many popular magazines.

Some publishing houses became part of larger corporations in other countries. Rupert Murdoch's Australia-based News Corporation acquired HarperCollins (formerly Harper & Row), William Morrow, and Avon, plus many other American, Australian, and British publications as well as television and radio stations. Doubleday, along with its houses Delacorte and Dell, was bought by the German firm Bertelsmann and merged with Bantam; when Bertelsmann later (1998) acquired Random House, it became the largest U.S. trade publisher. Robert Maxwell of England bought Macmillan, the New York Daily News, and many other publishing enterprises. Maxwell's empire collapsed in the early 1990s, and Macmillan was eventually acquired by Viacom, which already owned Simon & Schuster. Viacom (which also owned Prentice Hall, Scribner, and other companies) later (1998) sold many of these publishing operations to the Pearson Group of England. Pearson's holdings now include Allyn & Bacon, Appleton & Lange, Macmillan, Penguin Putnam, Prentice Hall, Silver Burdett Ginn, and Simon & Schuster.

Associations and Awards

Among publishers' associations, the most notable in the United States is the Association of American Publishers. Some professional associations present awards for books of unusual merit. The National Book Committee, for example, presents the National Book Awards in five categories: fiction; poetry; arts and letters; history and biography; and science, philosophy, and religion.

Related Entries

For material on magazine and newspaper publishing see journalism; newspaper; periodical; see also book; book collecting; children's literature.

book of hours, form of prayer book developed in the 14th cent. from the prayers of clerics appended to the main service. The subjects of the miniature illustrations (see miniature painting) were frequently derived from the appendix of the Psalter. The book of hours served as a devotional work containing various prayers and meditations appropriate to seasons, months, days of the week, and hours of the day. Many such books are masterpieces of illumination and were symbols of refinement and wealth in fashionable houses of the 15th cent. Jean, duc de Berry, was among the most renowned collectors of books of hours, and his Très Riches Heures (Musée Condé, Chantilly), illustrated in part by the Limbourg brothers (c.1415), is among the greatest achievements in this genre.

book lung, terrestrial respiratory organ characteristic of arachnids such as scorpions and primitive spiders. Each book lung consists of hollow flat plates. Air bathes the outer surface of the plates and blood circulates within them, facilitating the exchange of gases. In most species, adequate gas exchange occurs without any muscular movement to ventilate the lung.

book gill: see horseshoe crab.

book collecting, or bibliophily, the acquiring of books that are, or are expected to become, rare and that possess permanent interest in addition to their texts. Collecting has traditionally concentrated on first editions in the field of pure literature.

History

Contemporary accounts mention personal manuscript collections in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; because manuscript media—scrolls and papyri—were scarce and expensive (and illiteracy general), collecting was confined to religious leaders and heads of state. During the Middle Ages monastic institutions were the main accumulators of valuable manuscripts.

Book collecting proper began after the invention of movable type (c.1437) and the proliferation of inexpensive books. The aim of early collectors, such as Willibald Pirkheimer (1470-1530) and Jean Grolier de Servières, was to assemble personal working libraries. Many early collections became the cornerstones of public libraries. The Bodleian Library at Oxford and the Harleian Library of the British Museum were founded respectively on the private collections of Sir Thomas Bodley and Robert Harley, 1st earl of Oxford. By the end of the 17th cent., book auctioning was common throughout Europe.

In the 18th cent. collectors shifted their focus from building up libraries to seeking original editions, including incunabula, of earlier works. At first criteria were more visual than literary: early printing, fancy binding, and colorful illumination. Richard Heber (1773-1833), whose collection of first editions of literature and history filled several houses, was one of the first collectors to consider contextual factors primary.

During the 19th cent. first editions of native contemporary literature began to attract book collectors. The two most notable collectors of the second half of the century were Henry Huth (1815-78), an Englishman, and Robert Hoe, the first important American collector. In 1884 Hoe became the first president of the newly founded Grolier Club, a New York-based society dedicated to the appreciation of fine book production. The three greatest American book collectors were Henry Clay Folger, John Pierpont Morgan (see under Morgan family), and Henry E. Huntington. During the 20th cent. book collecting on the massive scale practiced by Huntington has declined. Institutional libraries now vie with private collectors for rare books dispersed by auction and through antiquarian bookshops.

Approaches and Costs

The three traditional approaches to collecting first editions are the author collection, the subject collection, and the cabinet collection. This last is a collection of deliberately small size (originally a single bookcase) designed to represent the epitome of one bibliophilic category, such as 15th-century French illumination. The most valuable first editions are of literary classics and early or obscure works of famous authors. The desirability of the first edition is based not only on speculative but also on historical considerations; a first edition is one step from a manuscript. Book collectors use points, such as broken type and text excisions, to distinguish between different issues of first editions.

Modern collectors who cannot afford first editions—Poe's Tamerlane (Boston, 1827) generated $165,000 at an auction in 1990—collect in peripheral fields. Such fields include Americana; books illustrated by famous artists; early books on natural history (especially those with colored plates); books printed by such noted private presses as the Kelmscott Press, the Cuala Press, and the Nonesuch Press; early books recounting travel and exploration; ancient manuscripts; and letters. Some books in these fields, sold at auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's, bring substantial prices. For example, John James Audubon's The Birds of America was sold at Christie's in New York for $4.07 million dollars in 1992, a record price for both an illustrated book and a printed piece of Americana.

Information on the existence, location, and prices of collector's items can be found in author bibliographies, dealer and auction catalogs, and book-collecting periodicals such as The Colophon (1930-50), The Book Collecting World, and the Antiquarian Bookman. American Book Prices Current (published annually since 1895) lists titles and prices of books sold at important auctions in the United States, Britain, and Canada.

book clubs. As a phenomenon in American cultural life, book clubs have made an impact in two periods of history. During the 18th and 19th cent. book clubs were formed for the purposes of discussion and debate. Foremost among these was the Junto, a literary society formed by Benjamin Franklin in 1726; more representative was the Cadmus Club of Galesburg, Ill., founded in 1895 for the promotion of good fellowship, good reading, and literary works of local interest. The late 20th cent. saw a revival of such book clubs, with the notable addition of on-line clubs and Oprah Winfrey's televised club.

The common 20th cent. understanding of "book club" is not a club at all but an organization that promotes the mail-order sale of books. Among the best known are the Book-of-the-Month Club, with its offshoot paperback book club, Quality Paperback Books, and the Literary Guild. There are also clubs devoted to more specialized interests and forms, such as cooking, gardening, science fiction, computers, and books on audio tape. Mail-order clubs—set up as they are to ensure that the tastes and choices of their readership will be met—are models of mass production and distribution methods aimed to supply individual consumers. Although various book clubs apply different methods, the Book-of-the-Month Club licenses publishers' printing plates in order to print its selections cheaply and bind them sturdily for mailing. Members order negatively; that is, they let the club know which books they do not want by returning an order card. Although mail-order book clubs enjoy large memberships, they lost some ground to the rise of discount chain bookstores in the 1980s and on-line booksellers in the late 1990s.

book. The word book has come to have many meanings, e.g., any collection of sheets of paper, wood, or other material sewn or bound together; a division of a written work (books of the Bible, books of Caesar's Gallic War); and statements of financial accounting (bookkeeping). The primary meaning today is, however, a written work either in manuscript or in printed form that is of substantial length.

Early Books

Early in the history of bookmaking the printed book was distinguished in size by the number of times the original large sheet of paper on which the type was printed had been folded, i.e., folio, quarto, octavo, and duodecimo. With the advent of machine-made paper, these sizes were standardized. The standard octavo, according to the American Library Association, is between 20 cm and 25 cm in height.

Books apparently did not come into existence until long after writing, e.g., inscription, was widespread. Fragmentary early papyri represent literature in ancient Egypt and may possibly be considered as books, although it is customary to speak of the Book of the Dead as the first of the Egyptian papyrus books. The cuneiform tablets gathered into the great Assyrian library of Assurbanipal represented an enormous collection of works, but the book as we know it may be said to be derived from the Egyptian writings on papyrus.

The vast literature of the Greeks, collected in the greatest library of the ancient world, in Alexandria, was generally written on large sheets of papyrus, which were glued together and rolled up. The rolls varied greatly in size; many were about 1 ft (30 cm) wide and about 30 ft (9 m) long when unrolled. In the Hellenistic era large works were divided into tomes [Gr.,=cutting] that were stored together in cylinders and labeled.

The method of having the leaves held together in quires (24 or 25 sheets) in the fashion of the modern book seems not to have originated until about the 2d cent. A.D. From at least the early part of the 2d cent. B.C. the more permanent vellum (a type of fine parchment first used in the Middle East) was also used for writing books, and this grew to be very popular in the Middle Ages when books were copied by monks in the scriptoria of monasteries. In the scriptoria the art of illumination flourished, making artistic masterpieces of many medieval liturgical volumes.

Book Printing

The production of books in great quantity had to await the mechanical processes of printing from movable type. Printing was invented in China, where the first book printed by means of woodblocks is thought to date from the 9th cent. Korea developed movable metal type during the 13th cent. In the West movable metal type was developed by Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, and to a very large extent the history of the book is henceforth the history of printing.

Book production developed very rapidly, the craft becoming enormously sophisticated by the 16th cent. Italian printers set the standards of format and quality retained in Europe until the 19th cent. Great printing houses also arose in France and the Netherlands and, after a general decline in the 17th cent., in England and the United States. The 19th cent. witnessed machine replacement of all the old manual processes. By the end of the century printing quality had been so debased that a revolution, led by William Morris during the arts and crafts movement in England, was necessary to restore the concept of beauty to bookmaking.

Modern Book Production

In recent years computer technology has revolutionized book production and the printing and distribution of comparatively inexpensive softcover books, or paperbacks, has expanded. During the latter part of the 20th cent. the standing of the book as an information source was challenged by other media including television, computers, and on-line databases. In addition, the very definition of a book as a collection of printed sheets of paper has also been challenged, as books recorded on audio tape and CD-ROM have become increasingly common and electronic book readers (small computers designed to display pages of books on their screens) have been introduced that can store many books in digital form.

Related Entries

See also book clubs; book collecting; book publishing; incunabula; library; manuscript; type; typography; writing.

block book. Before and after the invention of printing from movable types in the mid-15th cent., some books were printed in Europe from engraved wooden blocks, with one block for each page. This method was developed by the 9th cent. A.D. in China. The practice has a richer history in the East than in the West since the number of characters used in Chinese writing made printing from movable type exceedingly difficult. Chinese and Japanese illustrated block books are often beautifully printed in colors. European block books, on the contrary, were crude and inexpensive. They were, however, the first examples of printed book illustration in the West. The best-known block book is the Biblia pauperum [poor man's Bible].

Yellow Book, English illustrated quarterly published (1894-97) in book form in London. Henry Harland was literary editor, and Aubrey Beardsley, whose exotic and provocative drawings brought immediate attention to the publication, was art editor until 1896. The Yellow Book was a miscellany of short stories, articles, poetry, and drawings. It was able to draw material from writers with wide differences of style and viewpoint, but its emphasis was on the bizarre, the "modern," and the aesthetic. It included among its contributors Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm, John Davidson, Richard Le Gallienne, William Butler Yeats, Ernest Dowson, and Arnold Bennett.

Prayer, Book of Common: see Book of Common Prayer.

Jubilees, Book of: see Pseudepigrapha.

Jashar or Jasher, Book of, lost Hebrew work, apparently a collection of songs celebrating national events. Fragments appear in the books of Joshua and Second Samuel.

Exeter Book, manuscript volume of Old English religious and secular poetry, of various dates of composition, compiled c.975 and given to Exeter Cathedral by Bishop Leofric (d. 1072).

Doomsday Book: see Domesday Book.

Domesday Book, record of a general census of England made (1085-86) by order of William I (William the Conqueror). The survey ascertained the economic resources of most of the country for purposes of more accurate taxation. Royal agents took the evidence of local men in each hundred (county subdivision), the latter acting as inquest jurors. Descriptions of each piece of land, its present and former holders, the holding itself, and the population on it were among the facts recorded. For the thoroughness and speed with which it was taken, the Domesday survey as an administrative measure is unsurpassed in medieval history. Written from the data thus gathered, the Domesday Book is an invaluable historical source. It furnished the material for F. W. Maitland's masterly survey, Domesday Book and Beyond (1897), which deals with social and economic conditions in Anglo-Saxon and Conquest times. Many of the Domesday records have been printed by counties in the Victoria County Histories, and several portions have been independently published. The name domesday is a variant of doomsday, meaning day of judgment.

Dead, Book of the: see Book of the Dead.

Book of the Dead, term used to describe Egyptian funerary literature. The texts consist of charms, spells, and formulas for use by the deceased in the afterworld and contain many of the basic ideas of Egyptian religion. At first inscribed on the stone sarcophagi, the texts were later written on papyrus and placed inside the mummy case. The earliest collection, known as the Heliopolitan Recension, dates from the XVIII dynasty (1580-1350 B.C.). It also contains selections from the two previous collections of Egyptian religious literature—the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom (c.2000 B.C.) and the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom (c.2600-2300 B.C.). The Theban Recension, a text that may be contemporary or slightly later, has a distinctive format. There are several noteworthy papyruses, valuable for their art. Among them are the Papyrus of Ani and The Book of the Dead of Hunefer. The two most celebrated English translations were made by Sir Peter le Page Renouf (1892-97) and Sir E. Wallis Budge (1895, repr. 1967).

Book of Kells: see Ceanannus Mór.

Book of Concord, name under which the collected documents of the authoritative confessions of faith of the Lutheran Church were published in 1580, the 50th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession. The Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian creeds were included with the particular Lutheran confessions that had appeared from 1530 to 1580. These were the Augsburg Confession, Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Schmalkald Articles, Luther's Larger and Smaller Catechisms, and the Formula of Concord.

Book of Common Prayer, title given to the service book used in the Church of England and in other churches of the Anglican Communion. The first complete English Book of Common Prayer was produced, mainly by Thomas Cranmer, in 1549 under Edward VI. Essentially it was a selection and translation from the breviary and the missal, with some additions from other sources. It was made compulsory by the Act of Uniformity (1549). Revision, undertaken by Cranmer, resulted in the Prayer Book of 1552, which showed the influence of foreign reformers then resident in England, for it made possible a wide diversity of views regarding the Eucharist, all justified by this official service book. The prayer book was in use only about eight months before Queen Mary's repeal legislation restored Roman Catholicism in England. In 1559, under Elizabeth I, the Prayer Book of 1552 was restored in a slightly altered version. From 1645 to 1660, under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, the prayer book was suppressed. In a new revision after the Restoration, it was again declared the only legal service book for use in England by an Act of Uniformity (1662). Alterations in the 1662 revision were largely those making for liturgical improvement. In 1927 a revised form was submitted to Parliament, whose approval was (and is) still required, and passed by the House of Lords but rejected by the Commons; it was resubmitted (with certain modifications) in 1928 and again rejected. Nonetheless, the revised prayer book was quite widely adopted in the Church of England with episcopal approval. This situation was finally legalized by the Prayer Book Measure, passed by Parliament in 1965. In addition to authorizing revisions already in use, the act approved the experimental use of new forms of worship drawn up by a liturgical commission; the Alternative Service Book (ASB) was adopted in 1980 and authorized for use alongside the Book of Common Prayer until the end of 2000. Revision of ASB is underway and under the general title Common Worship some revisions have already been authorized and published. In 1789, when the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States met, a revised version of the Book of Common Prayer was adopted; it embodied such changes as were required by the new conditions. In the U.S. Episcopal Church, as in other churches of the Anglican Communion over which the British Parliament has no control, there has been greater freedom in liturgical revision; the last U.S. revision of the Book of Common Prayer was in 1979.

Book of Changes or I Ching, ancient Chinese book of prophecy and wisdom. The oldest parts of its text are thought to have attained their present form in the century before Confucius. Its images and concepts were taken partly from oracles and partly from the mythology, history, and poetry of earlier ages. The I Ching consists of eight trigrams, corresponding to the powers of nature, which according to legend were copied by an emperor from the back of a river creature. The trigrams are used to interpret the future with the textual help of supplementary definitions, intuitions, and Confucian commentary. The work is one of the Five Classics (see Chinese literature). The best-known English edition is that by Cary F. Baynes (3d ed. 1970); it is a translation of the German version by Richard Wilhelm.

Biblical Antiquities, Book of: see Pseudepigrapha.

Bay Psalm Book, common hymnal of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Written by Richard Mather, John Eliot, and Thomas Weld, it was published in 1640 at Cambridge as The Whole Book of Psalms Faithfully Translated into English Metre. The announced effort of the authors to make a literal rendering at the expense of elegance is successful if the crudity of the verse be a criterion. This was the first book published in the Thirteen Colonies.

Body of written works produced to entertain or instruct young people. The genre encompasses a wide range of works, including acknowledged classics of world literature, picture books and easy-to-read stories, and fairy tales, lullabies, fables, folk songs, and other, primarily orally transmitted, materials. It emerged as a distinct and independent form only in the second half of the 18th century and blossomed in the 19th century. In the 20th century, with the attainment of near-universal literacy in most developed nations, the diversity in children's books came almost to rival that of adult popular literature.

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Piece of furniture fitted with shelves, formerly often enclosed by doors. In early times the ambry, or wall cupboard, was used to hold books. Bookcases were included in the medieval fittings of college libraries in Britain. The earliest dated domestic examples were made of oak in 1666 for the diarist Samuel Pepys.

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Marketing service that offers books to subscribers through the mail, often at reduced prices. The first U.S. book club, the Book-of-the-Month Club, was founded in 1926; the rival Literary Guild appeared a year later. By the 1980s nearly 100 book clubs existed in the U.S., most of them specialized (e.g., for history books, mysteries, etc.). A common incentive for attracting new members is the offer of several free or heavily discounted books; long-standing members often receive bonuses.

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Written (or printed) message of considerable length, meant for circulation and recorded on any of various materials that are durable and light enough to be easily portable. The papyrus roll of ancient Egypt is more nearly the direct ancestor of the modern book than is the clay tablet; examples of both date to circa 3000 BC. Somewhat later, the Chinese independently created an extensive scholarship based on books, many made of wood or bamboo strips bound with cords. Lampblack ink was introduced in China circa AD 400 and printing from wooden blocks in the 6th century. The Greeks adopted the papyrus roll and passed it on to the Romans. The parchment or vellum codex superseded the papyrus roll by AD 400. Medieval parchment or vellum leaves were prepared from the skins of animals. By the 15th century, paper manuscripts were common. Printing spread rapidly in the late 15th century. Subsequent technical achievements, such as the development of offset printing, improved many aspects of book culture. In the late 1990s, downloadable electronic books became available over the Internet.

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(1086) Original record or summary of William I the Conqueror's survey of England. The most remarkable administrative feat of the Middle Ages, the survey was carried out, against popular resentment, by panels of commissioners who compiled accounts of the estates of the king and his tenants. As summarized in the Domesday Book, it now serves as the starting point for the history of most English towns and villages. Originally called “the description of England,” the name Domesday Book (a reference to doomsday, when people face a final accounting of their lives) was later popularly attached to it.

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Ancient Egyptian collection of mortuary texts made up of spells and charms and placed in tombs to aid the deceased in the next world. It was probably compiled and reedited during the 16th century BC. Later compilations included hymns to Re. Scribes produced and sold copies, often colorfully illustrated, for burial use. Of the many extant copies, none contains all of the approximately 200 known chapters.

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Illuminated manuscript version of the four Gospels, circa late 8th–early 9th century. A masterpiece of the ornate Hiberno-Saxon style, it features geometric design (rather than naturalistic representation), flat areas of colour, and complex interlaced patterns. The illumination was probably begun at the Irish monastery on the Scottish island of Iona; the book was apparently taken to the monastery of Kells in County Meath, Ire., after a Viking raid and may have been completed there. Seealso Lindisfarne Gospels.

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