Elizabeth Eisenstein is an American historian of the French Revolution and early 19th c. France, educated at Wellesley. 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.

Selected Bibliography

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

• Series : Lyell lectures 1990-1991.

• Series : The Sixth Hanes lecture.

See also

• Historiography
• History of the book
• List of historians - by name
• List of historians by area of study
• List of historians of the French Revolution

Historians | History books