Incunabula of the Low Countries (ILC) is a census of fifteenth-century books printed in the area of the present-day Netherlands and Belgium. It lists 2,229 editions in more than 14,300 copies preserved in hundreds of libraries, museums, and archives all over the world, but mainly in Europe and the USA. The entries for this census have been derived from the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC), the database of incunabula compiled at the British Library. They combine research on Low Countries incunabula carried out by Gerard van Thienen, curator at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, with data assembled by ISTC form other sources. ISTC entries were further edited, indexed and prepared for publication by John Goldfinch at the British Library. Campbell's Annales of 1874, the first bibliography of incunabula printed in the Low Countries with 1794 entries, was followed by a number of supplements of increasing complexity, the most extensive being published by M.E. Kronenberg in 1956. All the former additions and emendations, together with additions not otherwise listed before are now brought together and included in one sequence in ILC.

'The Open Access publishing costs of this volume were covered by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Veni-project “Leaving a Lasting Impression. The Impact of Incunabula on Late Medieval Spirituality, Religious Practice and Visual Culture in the Low Countries” (grant number 275-30-036).' This volume explores various approaches to study vernacular books and reading practices across Europe in the 15th-16th centuries. Through a shared focus on the material book as an interface between producers and users, the contributors investigate how book producers conceived of their target audiences and how these vernacular books were designed and used. Three sections highlight connections between vernacularity and materiality from distinct perspectives: real and imagined readers, mobility of texts and images, and intermediality. The volume brings contributions on different regions, languages, and book types into dialogue. Contributors include Heather Bamford, Tillmann Taape, Stefan Matter, Suzan Folkerts, Karolina Mroziewicz, Martha W. Driver, Alexa Sand, Elisabeth de Bruijn, Katell Lavéant, Margriet Hoogvliet, and Walter S. Melion.

'To err is human'. As a material and mechanical process, early printing made no exception to this general rule. Against the conventional wisdom of a technological triumph spreading freedom and knowledge, the history of the book is largely a story of errors and adjustments. Various mistakes normally crept in while texts were transferred from manuscript to printing formes and different emendation strategies were adopted when errors were spotted. In this regard, the 'Gutenberg galaxy' provides an unrivalled example of how scholars, publishers, authors and readers reacted to failure: they increasingly aimed at impeccability in both style and content, developed time and money-efficient ways to cope with mistakes, and ultimately came to link formal accuracy with authoritative and reliable information. Most of these features shaped the publishing industry until the present day, in spite of mounting issues related to false news and approximation in the digital age. Early modern misprinting, however, has so far received only passing mentions in scholarship and has never been treated together with proofreading in a complementary fashion. Correction benefited from a somewhat higher degree of attention, though check procedures in print shops have often been idealised as smooth and consistent. Furthermore, the emphasis has fallen on the people involved and their intervention in the linguistic and stylistic domains, rather than on their methodologies for dealing with typographical and textual mistakes. This book seeks to fill this gap in literature, providing the first comprehensive and interdisciplinary guide into the complex relationship between textual production in print, technical and human faults and more or less successful attempts at emendation. The 24 carefully selected contributors present new evidence on what we can learn from misprints in relation to publishers' practices, printing and pre-publication procedures, and editorial strategies between 1450 and 1650. They focus on texts, images and the layout of incunabula, sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century books issued throughout Europe, stretching from the output of humanist printers to wide-ranging vernacular publications.

The essays in this volume are concerned with early printed narrative texts in Western Europe. The aim of this book is to consider to what extent the shift from hand-written to printed books left its mark on narrative literature in a number of vernacular languages. Did the advent of printing bring about changes in the corpus of narrative texts when compared with the corpus extant in manuscript copies? Did narrative texts that already existed in manuscript form undergo significant modifications when they began to be printed? How did this crucial media development affect the nature of these narratives? Which strategies did early printers develop to make their texts commercially attractive? Which social classes were the target audiences for their editions? Around half of the articles focus on developments in the history of early printed narrative texts, others discuss publication strategies. This book provides an impetus for cross-linguistic research. It invites scholars from various disciplines to get involved in an international conversation about fifteenth- and sixteenth-century narrative literature.

After Gutenberg’s Bible had appeared in print in 1455, other early printers found different ways to solve problems set by the new technique. Survival of printer’s copy or proofs permits rare views of compositors and printers manipulating a text before it emerged in its new form. Versions were corrected to be fit for purpose, and might be adapted for a much enlarged readership, especially if the language was vernacular. The printing press itself required careful measuring and fitting of texts. In twelve case-studies Lotte Hellinga explores what is revealed in printer’s copy and proofs used in diverse printing houses, covering the period from 1459 to the 1490s, and ranging from Rome and Venice to Mainz and Westminster. See also the companion volume by the same author, Incunabula in Transit (Brill, 2017).

This book traces a revolution in values that transformed nineteenth-century attitudes to second-hand books, bibliography and collecting.

The late Middle Ages provide us with a fascinating religious landscape. The quest for new religious ideals and intense spirituality can be observed in movements such as the Modern Devotion and the Franciscan Observance, marking the late fourteenth and fifteenth century with new institutional dynamics and the formation of a variety of religious communities. The dissemination of these new religious ideas and ideals profited from the advent of the printing press. It is these subjects that Koen Goudriaan, professor of Medieval History at VU University Amsterdam, has studied for decades. This volume, edited by Anna Dlabačová and Ad Tervoort, presents a collection of eleven of his best essays. It focuses on three themes: the institutional parameters of late medieval religious movements, the cult of remembrance, and the interaction between religious movements and the early printing press. Together, these essays provide a representative sample of Goudriaan’s substantial contribution to scholarship on late medieval history.