This book will examine the changing material conditions of print production and reception within modern industrial society between 1800 to the present and will discuss the symbolic function not just of images and texts but of print as a designed object or ‘marked surface’ (to adopt the suggestive term used by Maynard 1997). I suggest this approach to print culture in order to counter the dematerialisation of the study of communication caused by new media developments. The book is addressed to undergraduate and general readers within the areas of cultural history, art and design history, book and print history, media studies, literary studies, and the history of technology. But in addition to these potential readers in academic humanities programmes, this text is also aimed at the many students of practice-based disciplines in art, design, and communication. In considering print as a made object, the book will contextualise and integrate narratives of production and reception at a time when digital technology appears to offer both roles to its readers.