The Book in the Renaissance

by Andrew Pettegree

The dawn of print was a major turning point in the early modern world. It rescued ancient learning from obscurity, transformed knowledge of the natural and physical world, and brought the thrill of book ownership to the masses. But, as Andrew Pettegree reveals in this work of great historical merit, the story of the post-Gutenberg world was rather more complicated than we have often come to believe. The Book in the Renaissance reconstructs the first 150 years of the world of print, exploring the complex web of religious, economic, and cultural concerns surrounding the printed word. From its very beginnings, the printed book had to straddle financial and religious imperatives, as well as the very different requirements and constraints of the many countries who embraced it, and, as Pettegree argues, the process was far from a runaway success. More than ideas, the success or failure of books depended upon patrons and markets, precarious strategies and the thwarting of piracy, and the ebb and flow of popular demand. Owing to his state-of-the-art and highly detailed research, Pettegree crafts an authoritative, lucid, and truly pioneering work of cultural history about a major development in the evolution of European society.

Genres: History, Books About Books, Nonfiction, Renaissance, Microhistory, Academic, Art

420 pages, Hardcover

First published June 9, 2010

About the author

I began my career working on aspects of the European Reformation. My first book was a study of religious refugee communities in the sixteenth century, and since then I have published on the Dutch Revolt, and on the Reformation in Germany, France and England, as well as a general survey history of the sixteenth century. In the last years the focus of my research has shifted towards an interest in the history of communication, and especially the history of the book. I run a research group that in 2011 completed a survey of all books published before1601: the Universal Short Title Catalogue. This work continues with work to incorporate new discoveries and continue the survey into the seventeenth century.

In 2010 I published an award-winning study of The Book in the Renaissance, and in 2014 The Invention of News: a study of the birth of a commercial culture of news publication in the four centuries between 1400 and 1800. I return to the Reformation for a study of Luther’s media strategy, published in 2015 by Penguin as Brand Luther, 1517, Printing and the Making of the Reformation. I am now engaged in a study of the book world of the seventeenth century Dutch Republic, to be published in 2019 as Trading Books in the Age of Rembrandt.

I am the lead editor of two monograph series: the St Andrews Studies in Reformation History, and The Library of the Written Word. In 2012-2015 I served a three year term as Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society.

I welcome enquiries from potential postgraduate students working on any aspect of the Reformation or Book History.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was right up my alley, but since I don't expect to persuade many friends to read it, I'll discuss some highlights. Pettegree shows how the fledgling print industry grew into a publishing industry and how the availability of quickly printed and distributed documents steered the religious and political conflicts of the 16th century. (And, equally, how those conflicts fueled the printing industry.) Before moveable-type printing was invented, the mechanism by which books were produced was simply for someone to request that a book be copied by hand; there were no questions of supply and demand or distribution because the customer was known. The larger print runs of printed books required that printers produce texts "on spec" and then find buyers. Pettegree runs through many examples of different kinds of documents that were attempted by early printers and discusses the regional variations in style and distribution strongholds that developed. Then he turns his attention to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and the importance of print in war, arts, and science.

I heard about this book from an interview with Pettegree in which he discusses the surprising variety of Renaissance publishing--a large percentage of items exist in only one copy. He asserts that Renaissance printing was much more miscellaneous than we might picture, but I actually didn't find this point very surprising since I studied Flugblätter and indulgences in college. What I did admire was how he used the research resources of today to pull together all the evidence and provide a broad, data-based picture of an emerging industry in all its regional variations, experiments, failures, and now-familiar innovations.

[Jo Walton]

Valuable and enjoyable, covering a wide period in both time and place and doing so comprehensively and entertainingly. If you're interested in books as physical objects, this is terrific.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

This overview of the first century and half of printing in Europe took a while to grab my interest. Pettegree begins with the earliest printing activity (which brought up one of my favorite library school vocabulary words, incunabula) and, focuses at first on the business and of early book printing and distribution. He follows trends of printing centers and through studies of union lists and catalogs of early materials, traces which cities and presses had more influence at various times. I'd never really thought about how early printing, the business of book selling, and literacy could all be so intertwined.

Rather than focusing on the large, Latin folios produced by famous authors and publishers that are likely to be known through their preservation in personal collections and libraries today, Pettegree draws our attention to news sheets, stock lists, catalogs, almanacs and other ephemera that have a lot to tell us about interests and activity in the 16th century. Although the early parts of the book made for dry reading to me personally, the later chapters focusing on early printing examples in the areas of geography and medicine, and his chapter on the inclusion of printed works in early libraries, really held my interest.

[ambyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhaustive (and exhausting) economic history of print. If you need to know about the production, circulation, and use of books in the European Renaissance, this is absolutely the title for you. If you are looking for a little light history reading to entertain and enlighten you . . . you probably want to look elsewhere. Pettegree is an excellent researcher but very, very dry.

This worked for me because I was listening to it on audio while doing things in the kitchen, where it was helpful to have a book that straddled the boundary between "interesting" and "not so engrossing that I'm not perfectly willing to hit pause at any point." If I'd been keeping a print copy by my bedside table, I'm pretty sure it would still be there gathering dust. And that's a shame, because there is a lot of neat information here, particularly for those (like me) that somehow missed European history entirely in school and previously had no background on minor events like the Reformation. This provided a useful contextual framework for a history of Europe's religious schisms, though I don't really think that was Pettegree's main intent.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book addresses the following situation - that Gutenberg and the first printers had a new technology for producing mass quantities of books but did not have a market that wanted the books. Existing readers already had books, while others did not know what they wanted, if they even could read. How did the first printers and booksellers build the market for printed books? It is a well-researched and very credible account that matches up well to current accounts of new businesses and growing entrepreneurial industries. The difference in this book is that industry growth is happening 500 years ago in the middle of wars, plagues, religious conflicts and repressions, and world exploration. I liked the book so much that I ordered the hard cover edition to go with my kindle edition. It is one of the most startling and memorable books that I have read in years.

[Jenny Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Possibly an important contribution to scholarly knowledge, but deadly dull. The author's prose style reminds me of how I was taught to write essays in high school. He tells us what he's going to tell us at the start of each chapter, tells it, and then tells us what he's told us. The topic never comes alive under his hand, but the text is mostly a list of dozens (hundreds?) of printers, each with a few paragraphs describing what they printed, one after the other.

Recommended for scholars concentrating on the renaissance and general readers who have trouble sleeping.

[Janet Flora Corso · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm such a wordnerd this is one of the most exciting books i have read in a while. It has all of the usual drama taht Ren histories have and all sorts of fascinating facts and anecdotes about the birth of print and the growth of publishing. Awesome.

[Vicky P · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone with a solid foundation of knowledge about books in the incunable period and into the next century, I was able to see at the end of this book that a tremendous amount of research had gone into it, and where its contents were enough and where they were lacking.

To clarify, I found this to be an excellent book. Especially for those who aren't as familiar with books at the dawn of the age of print. This is an excellent primer for that time period. The prose was clear and the content was laid out, for the most part, in such a way that was easily to follow. That being said, this is definitely an overview work. This does not diminish the quality, but if one is looking for a Hot Take on incunabula and the humanists, one might look elsewhere. And in fact, there were a couple of moments when Pettegree mentions something that I had not heard of or considered before, and I genuinely wished he had continued and dug deeper into those facts. However, this was already an ambitious work without tying it up and lengthening it further with new, untested theories.

I genuinely enjoyed this book and it sparked fascinating discussion in my graduate history course, so I would definitely recommend it, despite its slight (very slight) shortcomings.

[Paul Dijstelberge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simply the best in a specialist field.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating subject but very heavy going for me. Took forever to finish. Still, I wouldn't mind adding a copy to my books about books collection.

[Jwt Jan50 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manna for the book worm. Recommend you read it in parallel with Kurlansky's Paper or Brunelleschi's Dome. Enjoy.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a very useful book relating to book history and the development of the book, but my personal feelings about the author prevents me from giving it five stars.

[Elizabeth Biehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

OP

[Drew Patrick Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review from the PFS Book Club...

What I Liked: The main strength of this book is that it's a scholarly book that's still easy to read. There was never a moment in this book where I simply couldn't understand. As someone who knows only a small amount about the Renaissance, I'd say that's a pretty large accomplishment.

Pettegree's style is straight-forward and simple, examining each area of publishing in individual chapters, while sometimes trying to link them together. The best parts of the book are when he actually goes on tangents covering the lesser known aspects of publishing, like the first attempts at printing music with staves and notes, or on little histories about the bit players in the larger publishing or European worlds. He manages to paint a picture of not only the publishing world but of the majority of Renaissance Europe without losing his main focus.

What I Didn't Like: Pettegree covers so many topics that he doesn't really have a unifying principle in the book beyond "This is about publishing. In the Renaissance." I just feel like there's no central argument in the book, besides hints that publishing was (and is) much more driven by profit (rather than art) then scholars have previously suggested. While this is a fine argument, it doesn't always come through, and the book therefore suffers a lack of wholeness.

The other major issue with the book was that I simply wanted Pettegree to make some comments on how publishing then connects to publishing today. Because, frankly, it has barely changed since its inception. Sure, major publishers don't publish broadsheets, but seriously, the major principles for publishing a book simply have not changed in the centuries since then. It's so amazing the sheer amount of similarities that could have been drawn that I just wish Pettegree would have done it. Sadly, that's not what historians do, so that's more of a genre issue than Pettegree's fault, really.

Last Thought: An excellent and thought-provoking take on the beginning of publishing that's easy to read for even non-scholars.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The printed book, Mr. Pettegree tells us, is a product not just of invention - Mr. Gutenberg's - but also of capitalism and of religious revolution. The printed book had to survive in the marketplace, and eventually it did. Would it have done so without the Reformation and then the Counter-Reformation? Certainly, it would have, but at how much of a slower pace? So much slower that the Renaissance, and all the good that came with it, happened a century or two later? How much different, then, would the world look today?

These are questions I wish Mr. Pettegree devoted more time to. True, he would have been speculating to some degree, but to me the most interesting history is written by authors who, based on solid evidence, offer theories about the causes and effects of events that become history.

Today we are in the dawn of a new publishing revolution: ebooks. Will ebooks - which many readers are reluctant to accept - affect the course of history? If so, how will they? Mr. Pettegree gives us some insight, but, in my opinion, he doesn't go far enough in drawing the parallels between printed and electronic books, and also between the Fifteenth and Twenty-first Centuries.

Finally, The Book in the Renaissance is easy-to-read history. Mr. Pettegree writes and organizes his material very well.

I highly recommend this book.

[Hall's Bookshop · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the tip of the vast iceburg of research undertaken in the decades-long quest to create a Universal Short Title Catalogue for incunabula and early printed books. What could have been an vast, unwieldy academic tome has actually been written in a concise clear fashion, and with great discipline. Each thematic chapter is divided into a series of bite-size sections which prevent over-rambling anecdotes, while also allowing for the broadest of views within a very tightly argued narrative. Using the data he gathered during his research, Pettegree reveals for the first time a number of important statistics for the early book trade, though he considers his main contribution to be the discovery of the previously unappreciated importance of cheap pamphlets, posters and song sheets to the success of early printers. With his excellent grasp of the whole history of this period, Pettegree has managed to produce a history of the early printed book which also serves as an excellent history of the Renaissance itself. Highly recommended.

JM

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pettegree has written a very readable history of printing and the pan-European book trade in the Renaissance. Strictly speaking, nothing here is new but it's helpful to have all this information collected in one place with related references.

It's not a history of the book as such so if that's what you're looking for something like A Companion to the History of the Book might be better. This takes us through the rediscovery of classical (mostly Latin) manuscripts by the early humanists such as Petrarch and Salutati, the development of the great Renaissance libraries under aristocratic and royal patrons, and the impact of the printing press. It inevitably concentrates a lot on Renaissance Italy and especially Venice as the centre of the printing `industry', though it does look at what is happening in the Low Countries, England etc. as well.

So this is an engaging read for both the specialist and the general reader.

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A marvelous lively and lucid study of the impact of the dawn of print upon the history of the book.

Pettegree ably manages to liven up the period with incidents and figures of the period and their illuminating stories. He also seemlessly melds the turbulent history of the time period and the bloody wars, particularly those of a religious nature, often dictated which city would rise or fall as a center of the printing industry.

Particularly harrowing is the chapter about libraries and how the violent destructive nature of man can on a whim destroy centuries of books as well as save books by removing them to other locations.

At times the tone becomes too scholarly, too dry, but luckily these periods are of short duration.

All in all a marvelous introduction the history of the printed book and how it slowly changed owning, reading and the world of and beyond the book itself.

[Catherine Woodman]

O, so first of all, this guy completely ignores 1000 years of Asian history and starts of my writing that the printed book and paper were coming into being in the Renaissance--untrue. So while he is focusing on Europe, he could have at least given a nod to how the Renaissance was Europe's emergence, that the Arab and Asian world got there way ahead of them, then suffered from their isolationist stance while Europe worked hard to catch up. So I started off irritated., but the pedantic style of writing continue throughout. I had trouble getting through the book, though the plates of books was beautiful, and his contextualization of some historical events against the ability to make generally available books was well covered.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful new study that exploits the contemporary information resources of the internet and online cataloguing to demonstrate the trial and error processes at the beginning of printing, the strategies and mechanisms publishers employed for success, and the variety of markets and kinds of books that really were popular. The most significant contribution of this work is the insight that so many of the extant books today are NOT representative of what was read by most (vaguely) literate people in Europe--but rather that which was entertaining, news, devotional/practical were the bread and butter for printers and thus, made up the lionshare of the market.

[Ray Stafford · Rating 1 out of 5]

the man is an idiot. his basic arguments are that visual/oral culture was not important in the furtherance of the reformation because 1) the people couldn't see. he claimed that they were malnourished so they literally couldn't see. despite no evidence to support this theory. 2) the intricate symbolism in the visual representations would be too much for the common people to understand, which is fair to an extent. 3) he said that there was no record that anyone read aloud, which didn't stop him from making claims that almost everyone in the period was blind due to malnourishment though

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a terrific book from which you can learn about a lot more than the history of the book. Pettegree focuses each chapter on an area of Renaissance publishing (and on a corresponding area of culture)--religion, education, politics, entertainment, medicine, science and exploration, etc. His discussion of the struggles of early printers to find a workable business model was interesting.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a matter as arcane as a book about books, this was a surprisingly accessible and entertaining read. Pettegree provides a nice balance of some of the more monumental achievements of the early printed word along with the more mundane, popular printed works spread throughout Europe. I would have liked Pettegree to talk more about printed imagery; a study of the impact of print culture that focuses solely on printed texts only tells half the story.

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave up after a few chapters-- read too much like a textbook, although was concise with lots of sub-headings. Also, didn't like how it discounted other cultures' role in keeping the Greek and Roman knowledge alive in the Middle Ages and their advances in science, etc-- nit picking as not a big part of the story, but still bugged me.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written and well researched, this book, in addition to telling about books in the renaissance, tells much about the reformation and the counter-reformation. The last part of the books talks about what has happened to all those book. Most books from that period survive only in one copy. Something to think about.

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose to read this book for a book review assignment for a History of the Book class. Very interesting how big a part of history the book was in the Renaissance. The author is very knowledgeable and the book is not tough to read.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and incredibly informative in places, this was a great first post-viva read. On topic but broad enough to start the process of learning about the parts of the early-modern that didn't make it into the thesis.

[Sanjay Varma · Rating 2 out of 5]

An important historical topic. Good organization of chapters. Readable prose. We are given names, places, and events, but we are not shown the vivid world as seen through the eyes of a Gutenberg, or a Martin Luther. For this reason, I felt the book was missing something which I'll call "color".

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great to pair up with Geraldine Brooks The People of the Book.....

[!Tæmbuŝu]

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