Elizabeth Eisenstein in 1979 as the first resident scholar for the Center for the Book at theBorn( 1923-10-11)October 11, 1923DiedJanuary 31, 2016 (2016-01-31) (aged 92)NationalityAmericanAlma materScientific careerFieldsInstitutionsElizabeth Lewisohn Eisenstein (October 11, 1923 – January 31, 2016 ) was an American historian of the and early 19th-century France. She is well known for her work on the history of early, writing on the transition in media between the era of ' and that of ', as well as the role of the in effecting broad cultural change in.

Book review: The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe Jonathan Fine Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. ISBN 0 521 44770 4 (paper-back) $7.95, $11.95, 300 + xiv pages, Cambridge University Press (Canto imprint). This book is an abridgement for the lay reader of a.

Contents.Career Eisenstein was educated at where she received her B.A., then went on to for her M.A. It was there she studied under. She reported that in the early 1950s she was not able to find a position in a university history department, not even part-time work. In 1957, after she had obtained her PhD, she and her husband moved to Washington, D.C. Where she applied to multiple institutions for teaching positions, including Georgetown, George Washington University, Howard, and the University of Maryland.

She eventually found a part-time position at.She taught as an at from 1959 to 1974, then the, where she was the Professor of History. In 1979 she was resident consultant for the at the Library of Congress.She held positions as a fellow at the Humanities Research Center of the and at the (Palo Alto). Eisenstein was visiting professor at, and published her lectures from that period as Grub Street Abroad.

She was professor emerita at the University of Michigan and an honorary fellow of.Her last work was, the Reception of Printing in the West (Penn Press, 2011).Family and personal life Eisenstein is the third daughter of, son of and Margaret Seligman, granddaughter of and Babet Steinhardt.From the age of 50, Eisenstein began competing in senior tennis tournaments, becoming well-known and winning three national grand slams between 2003-2005. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.

Eisenstein describes the conditions of scarcity that characterized the book as artifact in the age of the scribe.Eisenstein's best-known work is The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, a two-volume, 750-page exploration of the effects of printing on the literate elite of post-Gutenberg Western Europe. In this work she focuses on the printing press's functions of dissemination, standardization, and preservation and the way these functions aided the progress of the, the, and the.

Eisenstein's work brought, rigor, and clarity to earlier ideas of and others, about the general social effects of such media transitions.This work provoked debate in the academic community from the moment it was published and is still inspiring conversation and new research today. Her work also influenced later thinking about the subsequent development of. Her work on the transition from manuscript to print influenced thought about new transitions of print text to digital formats, including and new ideas about the definition of text.Eisenstein’s book has also received sharp criticism. Paul Needham, now Librarian at ’s, described it as 'almost impossible to comprehend' and suffering 'from more general flaws of historical method: an unconcern for exact chronology; a lack of historical context; an exclusive reliance of sic secondary writings, not always accurately absorbed, not always particularly relevant ' The Unacknowledged Revolution Eisenstein's book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change lays out her thoughts on the 'Unacknowledged Revolution,' her name for the revolution that occurred after the invention of print. Print media allowed the general public to have access to books and knowledge that had not been available to them before; this led to the growth of public knowledge and individual thought.

The ability to formulate thought on one's own thoughts became reality with the popularity of the printing press. Print also 'standardized and preserved knowledge which had been much more fluid in the age of oral manuscript circulation' Eisenstein recognizes this period of time to be very important in the development of human culture; however, she feels that it is often overlooked, thus, the 'unacknowledged revolution'.Awards Eisenstein has received various awards and recognitions, including fellowships from the, the, and the. In 2002, she received the 's Award for Scholarly Distinction, and in 2004 the University of Michigan awarded her the honorary degree of.In 1993, the National Coalition of Independent Scholars created the Eisenstein Prize, which is awarded biannually to members of the organization who have produced work with an independent focus. Selected bibliography. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Based on the Rosenbach lectures, March 2010. The printing revolution in early modern Europe (2nd ed.).

Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Includes a new afterword by the author. abroad: aspects of the French cosmopolitan press from the age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Series: Lyell lectures 1990-1991. 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. The printing revolution in early modern Europe (abridged edition of The printing press as an agent of change ed.). Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. 1983. The printing press as an agent of change: communications and cultural transformations in early modern Europe (2 vols. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.

1979. 'Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report,' The Journal of Modern History Vol. 1, March 1968. The First Professional Revolutionist:. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

1959.Further reading. and Burke, Peter(2005) A Social History of the Media: from Gutenberg to the Internet(second Edition) Polity, Cambridge. Baron, Sabrina A., Eric N.

Lindquist, & Eleanor F. Shevlin (eds), 'Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L.

Eisenstein' (2007)See also.References. Locher, Frances C. P. Patkus, Ron (February 4, 2016). EXLIBRIS-L (Mailing list).

Retrieved February 5, 2016. ^ Baron, Sabina Alcorn (2007).

Agent of Change. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

P. 410. ^ (2011). New York: Pantheon. Cherry Williams, 'Analytical Intellectual Biography of Elizabeth L. Eisenstein' (student paper, UCLA, 2004), 27. Student Digital Library, IS 281. Archived from on 2007-02-13.

Retrieved 2007-05-03. CS1 maint: archived copy as title. The Library of Congress. 'Book and Library History Update (November 2001) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin.' . Elizabeth L.

Eisenstein, 'An Unacknowledged Revolution Revisited,' American Historical Review 107, no. 1 (February 2002): 105. Peter F. McNally, ed., The Advent of Printing: Historians of Science Respond to Elizabeth Eisenstein's 'The Printing Press as an Agent of Change' (Montreal: McGill University Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, 1987). Sabrina Alcorn Baron, Eric N. Lindquist, and Eleanor F.

Shevlin, eds. Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies After Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (Amherst:, 2007). James A.

Dewar, The Information Age and the Printing Press: Looking Backward to See Ahead, RAND Paper 8014 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1998),. Needham, Paul (January 1980). 'Review: Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., The Printing Press as an Agent of Social Change'. VI (1): 23–35. Briggs, Asa; Burke, Peter (2005). A Social History of the Media: from Gutenberg to the Internet (second ed.). Cambridge: Polity.

American Historical Association, '2002 Book Awards and Prizes,'. University of Michigan, 'U-M to bestow two honorary degrees,'.