13: The Print Revolution

What changes with print?

  • the look of a book: typeface, paratext
  • spread of knowledge and information
  • the book business
    • Printers, authors, illustrators
  • Legal issues:
    • Privilege
    • Index of Forbidden Books and other controls on knowledge
  • Development of markets

Rise and spread of print
Early printing: wood blocks
Paper Playing cards Religious prints

(Metropolitan Museum of Art. Burgundy, ca 1475-80)

EX: Biblia Pauperum
Movable Type: Johannes Gutenberg (Mainz) ca. 1440
1550 ca first press
1555 Bible

 

bible

Gutenberg Bible. Copy at the Library of Congress

press

Replica of Gutenberg press, Featherbed Alley, Bermuda

Spread of printing:

Italy:

  • Subiaco: Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz
  • Latin Grammar
  • Cicero, De oratore;
  • Lactantius; St Augustine
  • 1467 S & P move to Rome

1469 printing in Venice. Venice becomes printing center

  • urban literacy (demand)
  • authors, editors (supply)
  • distribution networks

Process of printing:

stick

copy stick and type

 type

Garamond type ligature

alphabet; punch; matrix—letters cast

Letter cases (upper-lower):

copy text; copy stick

print runs: by 1500, ca 1000

investment    Sales

Printer’s bookshops

Itinerants             other shops             Book fairs (ex: Frankfurt)

Control of property?
privilege, begun by 1480s
Fonts and typefaces: Gothic, Roman

Aldus Manutius (1449-1515)

  • humanist ed with Guarino, friend of Pico
  • former student Alberto Pio (prince of Carpi) offers financial backing
  • 1490: Venice. Cretan scholars
manuzio Aldus Manutius, Grammar

Politics Greek

Aristotle, Politics

dante

Dante, Commedia. Venice: Aldus, 1502.

Italic type

Robert Estienne and Estienne Press

  • Robert 1503-1559
  • Bible edition   (1527-28)
  • 1531:Latin dictionary
  • connections with King
  • Royal privilege
  • King’s printer for Hebrew, Latin works 1539,  Greek 1540
  • official typeface: 1541  Claude Garamond

Plantinbibel

Thesaurus linguae sanctae. Paris: Stephanus, 1548

Thesaurus linguae sanctae | Penn Libraries

Christophe Plantin (1520-89)

Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp

Controls on new business

Privilege

England: Stationers Company (founded 1403) 1557 exclusive right to print in England 1586 print in London only except Oxford, Cambridge (1 press each)

1559: Roman Index of Forbidden Books

Market segmentation

  • Natural Philosophy, medicine
  • Ephemera
  • Legal notices
  • Music (double printing)

Ave Maria from Harmonice Musices Odhecaton. Venice: Ottaviano Petrucci, 1501.