Dr Miriam Foot explores the use and purpose of bookbindings and, by implication, the purpose of the study of the book as a physical object. She shows how the techniques of binding and decorating books reflect developments in the book trade itself, and how the production of the binding links with questions of authorship, publishing, reading and collecting; how it relates to the spread of literacy and learning, to education, and to religion, but also to economic and political circumstances and social attitudes