The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglamrate Network and LIT Hub Radio.

Hello. We hold a few truths to be self-evident, those of us in the history of literature business.

One is that reading is generally a force for good, and another is that the printed book is an incredible object at once beautiful, impressive, promising,

complex, dynamic, inspiring, and dare we say it, approaching the divine.

You might say that out of the entire gigantic catalog of inanimate objects in the universe,

the book is the closest thing to a human being.

Maybe that's why we love them, and love might not be a strong enough word.

We adore them, we treasure them, we revere them.

At times books are worshipped. At the same time we take books for granted. Books are routinely pulped, spilled upon, overlooked, forgotten.

We think they're there, we know they're there, and so what?

They're just there.

Ho-hum miracles like clouds or fresh water or ants.

How did they get there? How did they come about?

Why are books as long as they are, or as short, or as holdable or as immense.

Somebody decided, that's why, and somebody did the work.

They did it last year and last century this morning and 500 years ago.

There are readers of books and writers of books and they get all the oxygen, don't they?

But there are also makers of books and they are blessed

and mostly unknown definitely unsung until today.

Adam Smythe is a professor of English literature in the history of the book at Balliol College, the University of Oxford.

He's also a bookmaker himself. His love for the craft of making books

led him to convert his barn in Oxfordshire into a working independent press.

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