Inspiring debate since the early days of its publication, Elizabeth L. Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (1979) has exercised its own force as an agent of change in the world of scholarship. Its path-breaking agenda has played a central role in shaping the study of print culture and book history - fields of inquiry that rank among the most exciting and vital areas of scholarly endeavor in recent years. Joining together leading voices in the field of print scholarship, this collection of twenty essays affirms the catalytic properties of Eisenstein's study as a stimulus to further inquiry across geographic, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries. From early modern marginalia to the use of architectural title pages in Renaissance books, from the press in Spanish colonial America to print in the Islamic world, from the role of the printed word in nation-building to changing histories of reading in the electronic age, this book addresses the legacy of Eisenstein's work in print culture studies today as it suggests future directions for the field. In addition to a conversation with Elizabeth L. Tony Ballantyne, Vivek Bhandari, Ann Blair, Barbara A. Brannon, Roger Chartier, Kai-wing Chow, James A. Dewar, Robert A. Gross, David Scott Kastan, Harold Love, Paula McDowell, Jane McRae, Jean-Dominique Mellot, Antonio Rodriguez-Buckingham, Geoffrey Roper, William H. Sherman, Peter Stallybrass, H. Arthur Williamson, and Calhoun Winton.
Five Hundred Years of Printing is essential reading for the book collector, the cultural historian, the professional publisher and book designer, and teachers and students of typography, graphic design and communications studies. It immediately became established as a standard work on its publication as a Pelican in 1955 and saw two new editions within twenty years.
Introduction: The Printing Press as an Agent of Power / Helmer Helmers, Nina Lamal and Jamie Cumby -- Part 1: Governing through Print -- Policing in Print: Social Control in Spanish and Borromean Milan (1535-1584) / Rachel Midura -- On Printing and Decision-Making: The Management of Information by the City Powers of Lyon (ca. 1550-ca. 1580) / Gautier Mingous -- Printing for Central Authorities in the Early Modern Low Countries (15th-17th Centuries) / Renaud Adam -- Rural Officials Discover the Printing Press in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy / Andreas Golob -- Part 2: Printing for Government -- Printing for the Reformation: The Canonical Documents of the Edwardian Church of England, 1547-1553 / Celyn Richards -- Newspapers and Authorities in Seventeenth-Century Germany / Jan Hillgärtner -- The Politics of Print in the Dutch Golden Age: The Ommelander Troubles (c. 1630-1680) / Arthur der Weduwen -- Part 3: Patronage and Prestige -- The Rise of the Stampatore Camerale: Printers and Power in Early Sixteenth-Century Rome / Paolo Sachet -- State and Church Sponsored Printing by Jan Januszowski and His Drukarnia Łazarzowa (Officina Lazari) in Krakow / Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba -- Ferdinando de'Medici and the Typographia Medicea / Caren Reimann -- Royal Patronage of Illicit Print: Catherine of Braganza and Catholic Books in Late Seventeenth-Century London / Chelsea Reutcke -- Part 4: Power of Persuasion -- The Papacy, Power, and Print: The Publication of Papal Decrees in the First Fifty Years of Printing / Margaret Meserve -- The Power of the Image: The Visual Prints of Frans Hogenberg / Ramon Voges -- Collecting 'Toute l'Angleterre': English Books, Soft Power and Spanish Diplomacy at the Casa del Sol (1613-1622) / Ernesto Oyarbide -- Prohibition as Propaganda Technique: The Case of the Pamphlet Lacouronne usurpee et le prince supposé (1688) / Rindert Jagersma -- Part 5: Relgious Authority -- Illustrating Authority: The Creation and Reception of an English Protestant Iconography / Nora Epstein -- Between Ego Documents and Anti-Catholic Propaganda: Printed Revocation Sermons in Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Germany / Martin Christ -- Learned Servants: Dutch Ministers, Their Books and the Struggle for a Reformed Republic in the Dutch Golden Age / Forrest C. Strickland.
In 1450, all Europe's books were handcopied and amounted to only a few thousand. By 1500 they were printed, and numbered in their millions. The invention of one man - Johann Gutenberg - had caused a revolution. Printing by movable type was a discovery waiting to happen. Born in 1400 in Mainz, Germany, Gutenberg struggled against a background of plague and religious upheaval to bring his remarkable invention to light. His story is full of paradox: his ambition was to reunite all Christendom, but his invention shattered it; he aimed to make a fortune, but was cruelly denied the fruits of his life's work. Yet history remembers him as a visionary; his discovery marks the beginning of the modern world.
In The Nature of the Book, a tour de force of cultural history, Adrian Johns constructs an entirely original and vivid picture of print culture and its many arenas—commercial, intellectual, political, and individual. "A compelling exposition of how authors, printers, booksellers and readers competed for power over the printed page. . . . The richness of Mr. Johns's book lies in the splendid detail he has collected to describe the world of books in the first two centuries after the printing press arrived in England."—Alberto Manguel, Washington Times "[A] mammoth and stimulating account of the place of print in the history of knowledge. . . . Johns has written a tremendously learned primer."—D. Graham Burnett, New Republic "A detailed, engrossing, and genuinely eye-opening account of the formative stages of the print culture. . . . This is scholarship at its best."—Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor "The most lucid and persuasive account of the new kind of knowledge produced by print. . . . A work to rank alongside McLuhan."—John Sutherland, The Independent "Entertainingly written. . . . The most comprehensive account available . . . well documented and engaging."—Ian Maclean, Times Literary Supplement
DIVLong before the invention of printing, let alone the availability of a daily newspaper, people desired to be informed. In the pre-industrial era news was gathered and shared through conversation and gossip, civic ceremony, celebration, sermons, and proclamations. The age of print brought pamphlets, edicts, ballads, journals, and the first news-sheets, expanding the news community from local to worldwide. This groundbreaking book tracks the history of news in ten countries over the course of four centuries. It evaluates the unexpected variety of ways in which information was transmitted in the premodern world as well as the impact of expanding news media on contemporary events and the lives of an ever-more-informed public. Andrew Pettegree investigates who controlled the news and who reported it; the use of news as a tool of political protest and religious reform; issues of privacy and titillation; the persistent need for news to be current and journalists trustworthy; and people’s changed sense of themselves as they experienced newly opened windows on the world. By the close of the eighteenth century, Pettegree concludes, transmission of news had become so efficient and widespread that European citizens—now aware of wars, revolutions, crime, disasters, scandals, and other events—were poised to emerge as actors in the great events unfolding around them./div
Eighteenth-century French readers who wanted to keep up with political and literary trends, had to rely on books and journals imported from abroad. French writers, such as Voltaire and Rousseau, also depended on foreign firms to get their works in print. Grub Street Abroad demonstrates the importance of extraterritorial publishing for the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. By placing the periphery at the center of the stage, it highlights neglected cosmopolitan aspects of an emergent "public sphere" and points to forces which undercut Bourbon claims of cultural hegemony. Firms serving French markets from abroad are viewed as part of a far-flung communications network which, although sensitive to diplomatic pressures from diverse courts, still comprised a relatively autonomous, independent field of operations. Topics covered include the publishing and editing of francophone journals and clandestine manuscripts; the emergence of the book review and the editorial board; the reliance of the philosophes upon foreign firms; and the cosmopolitan outlook of so-called "Grub Street hacks."