HIST 111: Ruin and Renewal: Europe to 1500 (HC)

Aldus Manutius (1455-1515) was the greatest printer of the Italian Renaissance. Active in Venice, Aldus was the first to print the canon of Greek classics, the first to print in italic type, and the first to publish books in a portable format, making great literature available to a mass audience for the first time in history. In honor of the quincentennial of his death, the exhibition catalogue explores each of these "firsts," and considers the enduring influence of Aldus on the way we capture knowledge to this day. - See more at: http://www.oakknoll.com/pages/books/126651/g-scott-clemons-h-george-fletcher/

In an invitingly tactile history of this 2,000-year-old medium, Houston follows the development of writing, printing, the art of illustrations, and binding to show how we have moved from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the hardcovers and paperbacks of today. The Book gives us the momentous and surprising history behind humanity’s most important—and universal—information technology.

Reconstructs the first 150 years of the world of print, exploring the complex web of religious, economic and cultural concerns surrounding the printed world. From its very beginnings, the printed book had to straddle financial and religious imperatives, as well as the very different requirements and constraints of the many countries who embraced it, and, as Pettegree argues, the process was far from a runaway success.

What did most people read? Where did they get it? Where did it come from? What were its uses in its readers' lives? How was it produced and distributed? What were its relations to the wider world of print culture? How did it develop over time? These questions are central toThe Oxford Historyof Popular Print Culture, an ambitious nine-volume series devoted to the exploration of popular print culture in English from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present.

This companion provides a comprehensive guide to issues relevant to the early printed book, covering the significant cultural, social and technological developments from 1476 (the introduction of printing to England) to 1558 (the death of Mary Tudor). Divided into thematic sections (the printed book trade; the book as artifact; patrons, purchasers and producers; and the cultural capital of print), it considers the social, historical, and cultural context of the rise of print.

Behind every great writer is a great editor-so goes the maxim that writers abhor and publishers adore. The struggle between writer and publisher is as long and fraught as the history of print itself. As distinguished historian Anthony Grafton reveals inThe Culture of Correction, even during the Renaissance authors fumed and cursed over what became of their work in the printing house as it was prepared for publication.

"Focusing on documents from the late sixteenth and early mid-seventeenth century, the author explains the complex process of viewing documents as artefacts, showing readers how to describe documents properly and how to read their physical properties. This helpful guide demonstrates how we are to use this information, together with an understanding of the processes of production and modification, as a tool for studying the transmission of literary documents."--BOOK JACKET.

See in particular these chapters:
The Arrival of Print
The Reign of the Book
The Forms and Functions of Writing: Fifteenth-Eighteenth Centuries

From handwritten texts to online books, the page has been a standard interface for transmitting knowledge for over two millennia. It is also a dynamic device, readily transformed to suit the needs of contemporary readers. In How the Page Matters, Bonnie Mak explores how changing technology has affected the reception of visual and written information.

The essays in this volume address important issues about books and their users in the 15th century. A unifying theme is the complex relationships between producers - be they authors, printers or decorators - the economic conditions of book distribution, and the requirements of readers or other users of books.

In commerce, finance, statecraft, scholarly life, science, and communication, early modern Europeans were compelled to place a new premium on information management. These developments had a profound and transformative impact on European life. The huge expansion in paper records and the accompanying efforts to store and taxonomize them are intertwined with many of the essential developments in the early modern period, including the rise of the Print Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and the Republic of Letters.

What perceptions did people have of printed material after its introduction into England? How did these perceptions determine their own practices in dealing with books and documents—both as producers and consumers? Drawing from a wide range of surviving materials from the period, Boffey approaches textual production from the points of view of readers and writers, investigating the choices they made and shedding light on the different ways that both adapted to the availability of the new technology.

Blaine Greteman uses new analytical tools to examine early English print networks and the systemic changes that reshaped early modern literature, thought, and politics. In early modern England, printed books were a technology that connected people--not only readers and writers, but an increasingly expansive community of printers, publishers, and booksellers--in new ways. By pairing the methods of network analysis with newly available digital archives, Greteman aims to change the way we usually talk about authorship, publication, and print.

This exhibition catalog documents the impact of the printing revolution on the economic and social development of early modern Europe. It uses digital tools and innovative methods of communication to present tens of thousands of data collected by a large international research network.

"In this book, Carl Goldstein examines the print culture of seventeenth-century France through a study of the career of Abraham Bosse, a well-known printmaker, book illustrator, and author of books and pamphlets on a variety of technical subjects"-- Provided by publisher.

What difference did printing make? Although the importance of the advent of printing for the Western world has long been recognized, it was Elizabeth Eisenstein in her monumental, two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, who provided the first full-scale treatment of the subject. This illustrated and abridged edition surveys the communications revolution of the 15th century. After introducing the establishment of printing shops, it considers how printing effected three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.

Written for students of book history, materiality of text and history of information, this book explores the many aspects of the early printing process of books and explains how their form is understood today. She addresses questions such as: How was paper made? What were different book formats? How did the press work? The text is filled with examples that demonstrate how understanding the early processes can be helpful to today's researchers.

Joseph A. Dane’s What Is a Book? is an introduction to the study of books produced during the period of the hand press, dating from around 1450 through 1800. Using his own bibliographic interests as a guide, Dane selects illustrative examples primarily from fifteenth-century books, books of particular interest to students of English literature, and books central to the development of Anglo-American bibliography.