Books printed in the fifteenth century have been the subject of much in-depth research. In contrast, the beginning of the sixteenth century has not attracted the same scholarly interest. This volume brings together studies that charter the development of printing and bookselling throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It presents new research and analysis on the impact of the Reformation, on how texts were transmitted and on the complex relationships that affected the production and sale of books. The result is a wide-ranging reappraisal of a vital period in the history of the printed book. Contributors include Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik, Jürgen Beyer, Amy Nelson Burnett, Neil Harris, Brenda M. Hosington, Johannes Hund, Henning P. Jürgens, Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba, Hans-Jörg Künast, Urs Bernhard Leu, Matthew McLean, Andrew Pettegree, David Shaw, Christoph Volkmar, Hanno Wijsman and Alexander Wilkinson.

Customised Books in Early Modern Europe and the Americas, 1400‒1700 examines the form, function, and meaning of alterations made by users to the physical structure of their book, through insertion or interpolation, subtraction or deletion, adjustments in the ordering of folios or quires, amendments of image or text. Although our primary interest is in printed books and print series bound like books, we also consider selected manuscripts since meaningful alterations made to incunabula and early printed books often followed the patterns such changes took in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century codices. Throughout Customised Books the emphasis falls on the hermeneutic functions of the modifications made by makers and users to their manuscripts and books. Contributors: B. Boler Hunter, T. Cummins, A. Dlabačova, K.A.E. Enenkel, C.D. Fletcher, P.F. Gehl, P. Germano Leal, J. Kiliańczyk-Zięba, J. Koguciuk, A. van Leerdam, S. Leitch, S. McKeown, W.S. Melion, K. Michael, S. Midanik, B. Purkaple, J. Rosenholtz-Witt, B.L. Rothstein, M.R. Wade, and G. Warnar.

Explores a new approach to the history of writing, and a guide to writing in the history of Russia.

In 2006, 500 years after his death, the Royal Library of Belgium organised an exhibition revealing treasures from the era of Philip the Fair (1478-1506), last duke of Burgundy. This volume reunites most of the papers delivered at a conference held during the exhibition, increased with two new articles. Ten specialists from Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States discuss the book market and its place in society in this transitional period when manuscripts and printed books were produced and used next to one another. The contributions are organised in pairs around five topics, whereby in each case one author treats manuscripts and the other printed books: Philip the Fair and his books, art in books, music in books, politics in books, the book market. Contributions by: Renaud Adam, Jean-Marie Cauchies, Lieve De Kesel, Samuel Mareel, Zoe Saunders, Susie Speakman Sutch, Herman Pleij, Jan Van der Stock, Rob Wegman, and Hanno Wijsman.

This open access volume focuses on the cultural background of the pivotal transformations of scientific knowledge in the early modern period. It investigates the rich edition history of Johannes de Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera, by far the most widely disseminated textbook on geocentric cosmology, from the unique standpoint of the many printers, publishers, and booksellers who steered this text from manuscript to print culture, and in doing so transformed it into an established platform of scientific learning. The corpus, constituted of 359 different editions featuring Sacrobosco’s treatise on cosmology and astronomy printed between 1472 and 1650, represents the scientific European shared knowledge concerned with the cosmological worldview of the early modern period until far after the publication of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. The contributions to this volume show how the academic book trade influenced the process of homogenization of scientific knowledge. They also describe the material infrastructure through which such knowledge was disseminated, and thus define the premises for the foundation of modern scientific communities.

In this ingenious study, Kathryn Rudy takes the reader on a journey to trace the birth, life and afterlife of a Netherlandish book of hours made in 1500. Image, Knife, and Gluepot painstakingly reconstructs the process by which this manuscript was created and discusses its significance as a text at the forefront of fifteenth-century book production, when the invention of mechanically-produced images led to the creation of new multimedia objects. Rudy then travels to the nineteenth century to examine the phenomenon of manuscript books being pillaged for their prints and drawings: she has diligently tracked down the dismembered parts of this book of hours for the first time. Image, Knife, and Gluepot also documents Rudy’s twenty-first-century research process, as she hunts through archives while grappling with the logistics and occasionally the limits of academic research. This is a timely volume, focusing on questions of materiality at the forefront of medieval and literary studies. Beautifully illustrated throughout, its use of original material and its striking interdisciplinary approach, combining book and art history, make it a significant academic achievement. Image, Knife, and Gluepot is a valuable text for any scholar in the fields of medieval studies, the history of early books and publishing, cultural history or material culture. Written in Rudy’s inimitable style, it will also be rewarding for any student enrolled in a course on manuscript production, as well as non-specialists interested in the afterlives of manuscripts and prints. The Royal Society of Edinburgh has generously contributed to this Open Access publication. Due to the number and quality of the images in this book, we have provided the option of a more expensive hardback edition, printed on the best quality paper available, in order to present the images as clearly and beautifully as possible. We hope this range of options — the freely available PDF, HTML and XML editions; the economically priced EPUB, MOBI and paperback editions; and the more expensively printed hardback — will satisfy everyone. Furthermore the HTML edition allows readers to magnify the images of the manuscripts displayed in the book.