This edited volume explores the development of the European book world between 1650 and 1750, concentrating on changes in publishing strategies, practices of censorship, the circulation of second-hand books and the building of libraries. Its essays discuss this critical, but much neglected period of print history through case studies from Spain, Italy, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Britain and the Netherlands.
Ranging from the posthumous publication of Galileo to the regulation of the book auction market, this volume demonstrates that the century between 1650 and 1750 was a transformative period for the history of the printed book.
Ann-Marie Hansen, PhD (McGill University), is Project Manager of ‘Unlocking the Fagel Collection’ at the Library of Trinity College Dublin. She has published on eighteenth-century editorial and publishing culture, evidence of early modern reading, and heritage book collections and their documentation.
Arthur der Weduwen is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue project. He specialises in the history of communication, printing and the book trade, early modern politics, and the history of the Netherlands. He is the author of six monographs and several edited volumes in these fields.
Preface List of Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors
PART 1: Publishing Strategies
1 Practitioners, Pills and the Press: Publishing Strategies in the Dutch Medical Market (c.1660–c.1770) Jeroen Salman
2 School Books, Public Education and the State of Literacy in Early Modern Catalonia Xevi Camprubí
3 The Cometary Apparition of 1743/44: Periodical Journals in the Holy Roman Empire and Their Communicative Role Doris Gruber
Part 2: Censorship and Evasion
4 A Peculiar Case of Entrepreneurial Bravery: The First Edition of Galileo Galilei’s Collected Works in the Context of Mid-seventeenth-century Publishing and Censorship Leonardo Anatrini
5 Persecuted in the Spanish Colonies: Inquisitorial Censorship and the Circulation of Medical and Scientific Books in New Spain and New Granada Alberto José Campillo Pardo and Idalia García
6 The Troubles of a Protestant Bookseller in a Catholic Market: The Nuremberg Bookseller Johann Friedrich Rüdiger (1686–1751) and the Prague Book Trade Mona Garloff
7 Disclosing False Imprints: a New Look at Eighteenth-Century French Printed Production Dominique Varry
Part 3: Auctions, Collectors and Catalogues
8 Early Modern English Parish Libraries: Collecting and Collections in the Francis Trigge Chained Library and the Gorton Chest Parish Library Jessica G. Purdy
9 ‘Libri Anglici’: English Books in Danish and Dutch Library Collections, c.1650–1720 Hanna de Lange
10 The Government at Auction: Urban Policy and the Market for Books in Eighteenth-Century Lübeck Philippe Bernhard Schmid
11 Philosophie or Commerce? Classification Systems in Eighteenth-Century French Private Library Catalogues Helwi Blom
12 Sir Hans Sloane’s Collection of Books and Manuscripts: an Enlightenment Library? Alexandra Ortolja-Baird
Index
All scholars and students interested in the history of the book trade, censorship, and book collecting. Keywords: printing, censorship, libraries, advertising, auctions, book classification, Enlightenment, bookselling, booksellers, printers.