Black on White

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Excerpt from Black on White: The Story of BooksWhat did the first book look like? Was it printed or written out by hand? Was it made of paper or of some other material? If it is still in existence in what library can it be found?They say that there really was a man once so fool ish as to hunt through all the libraries of the world for the first book. Day after day he searched among heaps and stacks of mouldy books, yellowed with age. His clothes and boots were covered with a thick layer of dust' as if he had been travelling for miles along a dusty way. Finally he met his death falling from a high-step ladder leaning up against the book shelves. But if he had lived a hundred years longer, nothing would ever have come of his search. The first book rotted away in the ground many thousands of years before he was born.The first book was not in the least like a book ofto-day. It had hands and feet. It didn't lie on a shelf. It could talk. It could even sing. To make a long story short, it was a living book - a human book.In those days people could not write. But their memories were much better than ours. Some of the old people were actually living books. They told marvellous stories about the olden times. Stories which had been told them in their own childhood. These people died but their stories lived on handed down from father to son, from grandfather to grandchild. The stories changed as they passed from mouth to mouth. Some things were added and some things forgotten. They were smoothed and polished by time just as stones are polished by run ning water. The legend of some brave Chieftain would be changed into a fairy tale about a giant who feared neither arrow nor spear - who could range the wood in the form of a wolf and ¿y through the air in the form of an eagle.In far-off corners of the world to-day there are still old men and women story tellers who relate happenings which have never been written down fairy tales about giants.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.