Posters: A Global History

Posters: A Global History, by Elizabeth E. Guffey, was published in 2015. The book lives up to its ambitious subtitle, offering a worldwide survey of poster art from the Industrial Revolution to the present. Guffey’s scope extends beyond design and aesthetics, to consider posters as physical objects within the urban environment, “not in textbooks or museums but in the alleys of Ramallah, the barber shops of Lagos and the market stalls of Chennai.”

The last comprehensive book on the subject, The Poster by Alain Weill, was published more than thirty years ago. Weill covered Chinese and Japanese posters in addition to more familiar Western examples, though Guffey’s book breaks new ground with coverage of posters from India, Africa, and the Middle East. Posters features only 100 colour illustrations, though these are supplemented by vintage photographs, historical newspaper cartoons, and other ephemera.