Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World, edited by Richard Kirwan and Sophie Mullins, investigates an underexplored yet important facet of early modern book production. Bringing together 19 detailed case studies, this volume considers and reconstructs the characteristics of specialist book production in the early modern period. In particular it explores the motives that led to specialisation ranging from the desire for profit on the part of risk-taking, entrepreneurial individuals or family firms to the more propagandist or missionising aims of corporate groups who subsidised production, often without regard for profit. The book also explores the economic and personal pressures and perils that accompanied specialist production, which was often a risk-laden enterprise that could end in financial and social ruin.
Richard Kirwan (Ph.D., 2007, Trinity College Dublin) is Lecturer in History at the University of Limerick. His research explores the social and cultural history of early modern universities. His publications include the monograph
Empowerment and Representation at the University in Early Modern Germany. Helmstedt and Würzburg, 1576–1634 (Harrassowitz, 2009) and an edited volume
Scholarly Self-Fashioning and Community in the Early Modern University (Ashgate, 2013).
Sophie Mullins (Ph.D., 2013, University of St Andrews) is the Business Development Executive in the Knowledge Transfer Centre at the University of St Andrews.
“In addition to illustrations and tables, the volume contains an index of mostly proper names. Altogether, it opens up various neglected strands of early printing history and should be read by anyone interested not merely in the early modern world of print, but also in book history and periodical studies more generally, as well as musicology.”
Philipp Reisner, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. In:
Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 48, No. 2 (2017), pp. 507-508.
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: The Risks, Rewards and Perils of Specialisation 1
Richard Kirwan
Part 1. High Risk Speculation: The Cultivation of New Markets and Tastes
1 Tabloid Values: On the Trail of Europe’s First News Hound
Andrew Pettegree
2 The Changing Landscape of the Competitive Nuremberg Print Trade: The Rise and Fall of Paulus Fürst (1608–1666)
John Roger Paas
3 Networks of Printers and the Dissemination of News: The Case of Milan in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Massimo Petta
4 New Books for a New Reading Public: Frankfurt “Melusine” Editions from the Press of Gülfferich, Han and Heirs
Ursula Rautenberg
5 Exotic Knowledge as Commodity: De Bry’s
Historia Indiae Orientalis Isabella Matauschek
6 The Unexpected Success of a Spanish Anatomy Book: Juan Valverde de Amusco’s
Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano (Rome, 1556), and its Many Later Editions
Bjørn Okholm Skaarup
Part 2. Demand and Supply: The Satisfaction of Existing Appetites
7 Poetic Gymnasium and Bibliographical Maze: Publishing Petrarch in Renaissance Venice
Neil Harris
8 Poor Man’s Music? The Production of Song Pamphlets and Broadsheets in Sixteenth-Century Augsburg
Amelie Roper
9 Printed Polyphonic Choirbooks for the Spanish Market
Iain Fenlon
10 Publishing Military Books in the Low Countries and in Italy in the Early Seventeenth Century
Nina Lamal
11 The Italian Job: John Wolfe, Giacomo Castelvetro and Printing Pietro Aretino
Kate De Rycker
12 Early Printed Book Sale Catalogues from Seville: The Extension of the European Book Market into Mexico (1680–1689)
Pedro Rueda Ramírez and Lluís Agustí Ruiz
Part 3. ‘Print On-Demand’: Reader-led Specialisation
13 Printers of the Greek Classics and Market Distribution in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of France and the Low Countries
Natasha Constantinidou
14 Books in Foreign Languages: Publishing in the Netherlands, 1500–1800
Rémi Mathis and Marie-Alice Mathis
15 Tutor to Prince Henry: Adam Newton and an International Court in the Making
David McKitterick
16 “Quod Exemplaria vera habeant et correcta”: Concerning the Distribution and Purpose of the Pecia System
Nikolaus Weichselbaumer
17 Profit, Patronage and the Cultural Politics of Music Printing in Eighteenth-Century Italy: The Family and Finances of Giuseppe
Antonio Silvani
Huub van der Linden
Part 4. ‘Not For Profit’ Publication: Subsidised Specialisation
18 A Unique Seventeenth Century Rusyn Catechism and the Jesuit Connection
Paul Shore
19 European Books for the Ottoman Market
Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik
Index
All interested in the history of the book, particularly in the early modern period.