[Gutenberg 33413] • The Story of Books

Excerpt from The Story of Books

The Beginning of Writing - Books began with writing, and writing began at the time when man first bethought himself to make records, so that the progenitor of the beautiful handwriting and no less beautiful print of the civilised world is to be looked for in the rude drawing which primeval man scratched with a pointed flint on a smooth bone, or on a rock, representing the beast he hunted, or perhaps himself, or one of his fellows. The exact degree of importance be attached to these drawings we cannot hope to discover. They may have been cherished from purely aesthetic motives, or they may have served, at times, a merely utilitarian end and acted, perhaps, as memoranda. However this may be, these early drawings are the germs from which sprang writing, the parent of books, and liberator of literature, that great force Of which a book is but the vehicle. How these drawings were gradually changed into letters, in other words, the story of the alphabet, has been already told in this series by Mr. Edward Clodd, and therefore we need not deal further with the subject here.

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