The Print in the Western World is a comprehensive history of the print from its origins in the fifteenth through the late twentieth century. A source of inspiration to many great painters, such as Titian, Rembrandt, and Manet, printmaking has established its own criteria of aesthetic excellence as well as its own expressive language, both of which are explored here.

More than 700 illustrations, forty-nine of them in color, show the evolution of the relief, intaglio, planographic, and stencil processes through the centuries.

Giving detailed treatment to the work of five master printmakers - Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco Goya, Pablo Picasso, and Jasper Johns - the book also discusses in depth numerous other artists such as Martin Schongauer, Andrea Mantegna, Hendrik Goltzius, Jacques Callot, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, William Hogarth, Honore Daumier, Edouard Manet, Paul Gaugin, Edvard Munch, Kathe Kollwitz, Max Ernst, and Andy Warhol.

Although its primary focus is the fine art original print, The Print in the Western World also addresses in detail the reproductive tradition in printmaking that reached its peak in the eighteenth century and touches on book illustrations, posters, political satires, and vernacular print such as chromolithographs.

Author Linda C. Hults emphasizes the meaning and historical context of prints, the consequences of the print's accessibility to many strata of society, and the relationship among artist, context, subject matter, and technique. The volume includes a glossary of basic printmaking terms, as well as full bibliographies at the end of each chapter, giving readers access to a wide range of recent scholarship on prints.