Elizabeth Eisenstein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elizabeth Eisenstein is an American historian of the French Revolution and early 19th c. France, educated at Vassar and Radcliffe. She is well-known for her work on the history of early printing: the transition in media between the era of the manuscript and that of print, and the role of the printing press in effecting broad cultural change in Western civilization.

Eisenstein's work on early printing brought historical method, rigor, and clarity to earlier ideas, of Marshall McLuhan and others, about the general social effects of such media transitions. Her work also influenced later thinking about the subsequent development of digital media: thought about new transitions of print text to digital formats, including multimedia and new ideas about the definition of text.

She taught at American University in Washington, DC, and at the University of Michigan, from which she retired as the Alice Freedman Palmer Professor of History.

Since her 50s she has become quite adept at tennis as well, winning numerous senior women's championships around the world. She is famous for her drop shot then lob technique.

[edit] Selected Bibliography

(The author is Elizabeth L. Eisenstein unless indicated otherwise.)

(2005) The printing revolution in early modern Europe. Cambridge UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-84543-2, ISBN 0-521-60774-4.

(1992) Grub Street abroad : aspects of the French cosmopolitan press from the age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution. Oxford ; New York: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-812259-4. Series : Lyell lectures 1990-1991.

(1986) Print culture and enlightenment thought. [Chapel Hill]: Hanes Foundation, Rare Book Collection/University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Series : The Sixth Hanes lecture.

(1983) The printing revolution in early modern Europe. Cambridge UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-25858-8, ISBN 0-521-27735-3.

(1979) The printing press as an agent of change : communications and cultural transformations in early modern Europe. Cambridge UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22044-0.