International Exchange in the Early Modern Book World presents new research on several aspects of the movement and exchange of books between countries, languages and confessions. It considers elements of the international book trade, the circulation and collection of texts, the practice of translation and the diffusion and exchange of technical and cultural knowledge. Commercial and logistical aspects of the early modern book trade are considered, as are the relationships between local markets and the internationally-minded firms which sought to meet their expectations. The barriers to the movement of books across borders – political, linguistic, confessional, cultural – are explored, as are the means by which these barriers were surmounted.
Matthew McLean teaches early modern history at the University of St Andrews. His research is centred upon the Reformation and on learned culture and humanist networks in the sixteenth century. He has published on The Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster: Describing the World in the Reformation (Ashgate, 2007) and articles on the scholarly communities, networks and rivalries of Reformation Basel and Zurich. He has also edited, with Bruce Gordon, Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books, Scholars and their Readers in the Sixteenth Century (Brill, 2012).
Sara Barker is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Leeds. Her publications include Protestantism, Poetry and Protest: The Vernacular Writings of Antoine de Chandieu (c.1534-1591) (Ashgate, 2009) and articles on news and translation in early modern Europe. With Brenda M. Hosington, she co-edited Renaissance Cultural Crossroads: Translation, Print and Culture in Britain, 1473-1640 (Brill, 2013). Her current research focuses on the circulation of news in western Europe in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
“The incredibly rich and varied contributions in this volume reflect the current vibrancy of book history and underline how international the book world was in the first age of print, in terms of its agents and actors, authors and readers.”
Alexander Samson, University College London. In: Publishing History, Vol. 80 (2019), pp. 107-112.
Notes on Contributors
Preface
PART ONE
The International Book Trade: Business without Borders
1. Sales Channels for Bestsellers in Sixteenth-Century Europe
Valentina Sebastiani
2. International Publishing and Local Needs: the Breviaries and Missals Printed by Plantin for the Spanish Crown
Benito Rial Costas
3. Centre and Periphery? Relations between Frankfurt and Bologna in the Transnational Book Trade of the 1600s
Caroline Duroselle-Melish
4. Selling Books in the Italian Renaissance. The Correspondence of Giovanni Bartolomeo Gabiano (1522)
Angela Nuovo
5. Plantin and the French Book Market
Malcolm Walsby
PART TWO
Cultural Transmissions and Political Exchange
6. Books as a Means of Transcultural Exchange between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans
Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik
7. ‘This Book Hath Been Often Call’d For’: Translations of Italian Works on the Dutch Revolt and the European Book Market
Nina Lamal
8. The Pike and the Printing Press: Military Handbooks and the Gentrification of the Early-Modern Military Revolution
Mark R. Geldof
PART THREE
Libraries, Collections, Ownership
9. How to Build a Library across Early-Modern Europe: the Network of Claude Expilly
Shanti Graheli
10. Books without Borders. The Presence of the European Printing Press in the Italian Religious Libraries at the End of the Sixteenth Century
Giovanna Granata
11. Angelica’s Book: the Power of Reading in Late Renaissance Florence
Brendan Dooley
PART FOUR
Moving Music and Translating Tongues: Literature and Music between Countries
12. Confessional Networks, Cultural Exchange and the Printed Music of Jerome Commelin (ca.1550–1597)
Matthew Laube
13. Sellers and Buyers of Italian Music around 1700: the Silvani Firm and G.B. Bassani’s Music in Italy and Central Europe
Huub van der Linden
15. «Catullum Numquam Antea Lectum […] Lego»: a Short Analysis of Catullus’ Fortune in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Alina Laura de Luca
16. Intertraffic: Transnational Literatures and Languages in Late Renaissance England and Europe
Warren Boutcher
Index
All interested in the international book trade, the circulation and collection of texts, the practice of translation and the diffusion and exchange of technical and cultural knowledge in early modern Europe.