The volume contains a reassessment of the economic and social impact of the printing revolution on the development of early modern European society, using 15th-century printed books, which still ...survive today in their thousands, as historical sources. Papers on production, trade, the cost of books in comparison with the cost of living, literacy, the transmission of texts in print, and the use and circulation of books and illustration are the result of several years of international, collaborative, and multidisciplinary research coordinated by the 15cBOOKTRADE project funded by an ERC Consolidator grant (2014-2019) and supported by the Consortium of European Research Libraries.
This volume examines a number of different book lists from a variety of European countries during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It offers a wide-ranging re-evaluation of one of ...the most interesting and underused resources for early modern book history.
Geographies of the Book Withers, Charles W. J; Ogborn, Miles
2010, 20160415, 2010-04-01, 2016-04-15, 2012-11-28
eBook
The geography of the book is as old as the history of the book, though far less thoroughly explored. Yet research has increasingly pointed to the spatial dimensions of book history, to the ...transformation of texts as they are made and moved from place to place, from authors to readers and within different communities and cultures of reception. Widespread recognition of the significance of place, of the effects of movement over space and of the importance of location to the making and reception of print culture has been a feature of recent book history work, and draws in many instances upon studies within the history of science as well as geography. 'Geographies of the Book' explores the complex relationships between the making of books in certain geographical contexts, the movement of books (epistemologically as well as geographically) and the ways in which they are received.
As we rely increasingly on digital resources, and libraries discard large parts of their older collections, what is our responsibility to preserve 'old books' for the future? David McKitterick's ...lively and wide-ranging study explores how old books have been represented and interpreted from the eighteenth century to the present day. Conservation of these texts has taken many forms, from early methods of counterfeiting, imitation and rebinding to modern practices of microfilming, digitisation and photography. Using a comprehensive range of examples, McKitterick reveals these practices and their effects to address wider questions surrounding the value of printed books, both in terms of their content and their status as historical objects. Creating a link between historical approaches and the emerging technologies of the future, this book furthers our understanding of old books and their significance in a world of emerging digital technology.
This first book-length analysis of Amazon's Kindle explores the platform's technological, bibliographical, and social impact on publishing. Four Shades of Gray offers the first book-length analysis ...of Amazon's Kindle and its impact on publishing. Simon Peter Rowberry recounts how Amazon built the infrastructure for a new generation of digital publications, then considers the consequences of having a single company control the direction of the publishing industry. Exploring the platform from the perspectives of technology, texts, and uses, he shows how the Kindle challenges traditional notions of platforms as discrete entities. He argues that Amazon's influence extends beyond “disruptive technology” to embed itself in all aspects of the publishing trade; yet despite industry pushback, he says, the Kindle has had a positive influence on publishing. Rowberry documents the first decade of the Kindle with case studies of Kindle Popular Highlights, an account of the digitization of books published after 1922, and a discussion of how Amazon's patent filings reflect a shift in priorities. Rowberry argues that while it was initially convenient for the book trade to outsource ebook development to Amazon, doing so has had adverse consequences for publishers in the mid- and long term, limiting opportunities for developing an inclusive and forward-thinking digital platform. While it has forced publishers to embrace digital forms, the Kindle has also empowered some previously marginalized readerships. Although it is still too early to judge the long-term impact of ebooks compared with that of the older technologies of clay tablets, the printing press, and offset printing, the shockwaves of the Kindle continue to shape publishing.
In Licensing Loyalty, historian Jane McLeod explores the evolution of the idea that the royal government of eighteenth-century France had much to fear from the rise of print culture. She argues that ...early modern French printers helped foster this view as they struggled to negotiate a place in the expanding bureaucratic apparatus of the French state. Printers in the provinces and in Paris relentlessly lobbied the government, hoping to convince authorities that printing done by their commercial rivals posed a serious threat to both monarchy and morality. By examining the French state’s policy of licensing printers and the mutually influential relationships between officials and printers, McLeod sheds light on our understanding of the limits of French absolutism and the uses of print culture in the political life of provincial France.
What was a book in early modern England? By combining book history, bibliography and literary criticism, Material Texts in Early Modern England explores how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books ...were stranger, richer things than scholars have imagined. Adam Smyth examines important aspects of bibliographical culture which have been under-examined by critics: the cutting up of books as a form of careful reading; book destruction and its relation to canon formation; the prevalence of printed errors and the literary richness of mistakes; and the recycling of older texts in the bodies of new books, as printed waste. How did authors, including Herbert, Jonson, Milton, Nashe and Cavendish, respond to this sense of the book as patched, transient, flawed, and palimpsestic? Material Texts in Early Modern England recovers these traits and practices, and so crucially revises our sense of what a book was, and what a book might be.
Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World brings together a diverse range of case studies to reconstruct the characteristics of specialist book production in the early modern period.
This study analyses the history of the Dutch publishers and booksellers firm Blussé between 1745 and 1830. The development of this company is connected with the history of the Blussé family in this ...period, combining book history and family history in an innovatory way.
The current volume aims to shed new light on the relationships between Catholicism and books during the early modern period, gathering studies with special focus on trade, common readings and the ...mechanisms used to control readership in different territories.
