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Palæography is the branch of science which deals with ancient writing (παλαιὰ γραφή). As the Greek word for writing comprises a great deal more than the work of pen and ink, palæographical study would be imperfect if it did not take into consideration the ancient inscriptions upon stone and metal which are usually left to numismatists and other archæologists. In a small treatise like the present, no such ambitious and comprehensive treatment is intended. The object is mainly to summarise the results of other men's labour, and to give a general idea of what is known at the present day about the diffusion of the art of writing and the methods of producing books before the sixteenth century.

The name for book in various ancient languages is indicative of the earliest stage in the history of writing. The English word itself appears in its oldest written form in the Gothic Scriptures of the fourth century, in which boka = writing, and bokos = things written = books. This is believed to be derived from the name of the tree we call beech and the Germans buche, because it is supposed that the bark or wood of that tree was used for cutting runes upon. Similar to this is the Latin liber, which originally meant the inner bark of a tree, and afterwards came to mean book, because leaves were made from that inner bark for the purpose of writing. Diphthera, in ancient Ionic-Greek, was equivalent to book, because it meant a polished skin (like parchment or leather) used for writing upon before the Greeks adopted papyrus (byblos, biblos) from the Egyptians. Then the name for papyrus became the name for a book, and has been retained in modern speech in the word Bible. The word diphthera passed into use among the Persians about five hundred years before Christ, as the material was borrowed by them from the Ionians for the use of the scribes who kept the royal records, and it still remains in the speech of the modern Persians as defter = book. The Hebrew word sepher = engraving, and is therefore used to designate a book; and the same sense underlies the Arabic word Kitab. Writing was a scratching or incising of symbols representing sounds (or ideas) upon stone or metal, upon wood, or bark, or leaves (folia), dressed leather, parchment, papyrus, wax tablets, and paper.

The form in which the sheets (of skin, parchment, bark, papyrus, or paper) were gathered, may have been rolls in which they were united to form a single page, or a square combination of successive leaves united only at one side. The former was of course the earlier mode, but the latter was also in use at a remote date. Greek and Roman scribes had evidently begun to prefer the square fashion during the early days of the Roman empire; and we may take it to have become the prevalent custom in the fourth century. Black ink has always been in use for writing, red and blue ink are of comparatively recent date. The use of gold ink, which was of course so costly that it could never be otherwise than rare, originated probably when the empire was as yet unshaken by barbarian inroads; it was, however, not extinct in Rome during the sixth and seventh centuries, and was relatively not uncommon at the magnificent court of Byzantium. Late examples were produced in Gaul for the Frankish princes in the ninth century; and in these the simple splendour of the Roman style was embellished with ornamentation chiefly drawn from Irish and Anglo-Saxon models.

Although people knew how to write and to read more than five thousand years ago, "a reading public," as we understand the term, came into existence for the first time in Greece in the fifth century B.C., and again in Rome in the first century B.C. By this it is meant that there were people who bought books for the pleasure of reading them, as distinguished from the class which produced or used books as an official necessity. The requirements of that reading public among the Greeks, led to the disuse of skins for the purpose of writing, since only a cheaper and more plentiful material could satisfy the demand. Egyptian papyrus being both cheap and plentiful, it was adopted and remained in use for over a thousand years among the people who spoke Greek and Latin. Books upon vellum or parchment—charta pergamena, an improved form of the old skins—were only produced occasionally, as luxuries, between the second century B.C. and the fifth century of our era. At this latter period, the reading public was extinguished in the revolutions of barbarian conquest, and the cheap material ceased to be necessary. In the absence of a popular demand for books, and when only persons of exceptional learning, churchmen, statesmen, and monks, experienced the need of reading and writing, the supply of vellum was sufficient, and this dearer material was relatively economical because of its durability. A reading public can hardly be said to have come into renewed existence till the fifteenth century, and then once more vellum was superseded by the cheaper material of paper. Paper, from linen or rags, had been made in the Saracenic east for several centuries, but was little used in Europe till the thirteenth century, and was not fabricated in the west to any considerable extent until the fourteenth century.