D. F. McKenzie
Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts
Cambridge University Press, 1999


In the Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts D.F. McKenzie shows how the material form of texts crucially determine their meanings. He demonstrates that as works are reproduced and reread, they take on different forms and meanings. This is true of all forms of recorded information, McKenzie claims, including sound, graphics, films, landscape and new electronic media. The bibliographical skills first developed for manuscripts and books can, he shows, be applied to a wide range of cultural documents. This book offers a unifying concept of texts that seeks to acknowledge their variety and the complexity of their relationships.

D.F. McKenzie was Emeritus Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism at the University of Oxford