Once considered the golden age of French printmaking, Louis XIV’s reign saw Paris become a powerhouse of print production. During this time, the king aimed to make fine and decorative arts into signs of French taste and skill and, by extension, into markers of his imperialist glory. Prints were ideal for achieving these goals; reproducible and transportable, they fueled the sophisticated propaganda machine circulating images of Louis as both a man of war and a man of culture. This richly illustrated catalogue features more than one hundred prints from the Getty Research Institute and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, whose print collection Louis XIV established in 1667. An esteemed international group of contributors investigates the ways that cultural policies affected printmaking; explains what constitutes a print; describes how one became a printmaker; studies how prints were collected; and considers their reception in the ensuing centuries. A Kingdom of Images is published to coincide with an exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute from June 18 through September 6, 2015, and at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris from November 2, 2015, through January 31, 2016.

This study comprises the proceedings of a conference held in St Andrews in 1999 which gathered some of the most distinguished historians of the French book. It presents the 16th-century book in a new context and provides the first comprehensive view of this absorbing field. Four major themes are reflected here: the relationship between the manuscript tradition and the printed book; an exploration of the variety of genres that emerged in the 16th century and how they were used; a look at publishing and book-selling strategies and networks, and the ways in which the authorities tried to control these; and a discussion of the way in which confessional literature diverged and converged. The range of specialist knowledge embedded in this study will ensure its appeal to specialists in French history, scholars of the book and of 16th-century French literature, and historians of religion.

Issues for 1941-44 include the Report of the 23rd-26th annual meeting of the Franciscan Educational Conference.

A series of linked studies of European print culture of the sixteenth century, focusing particularly on France and the regional, provincial experience of print.