Abstract
The introduction advocates a dynamic and interconnected approach to the life cycle of books in early modern Europe. By enriching the existing ‘Darnton model’, the authors contribute to debate on the theoretical and methodological foundations of the history of the book. The editors argue for study of the interplay between three distinct dimensions of early modern book culture: the actions and motives of its participants (sociality); the nature of used and produced spaces (spatiality); and the physical characteristics of printed matter and the infrastructure of the print industry (materiality). In this way, it is suggested, a more dynamic understanding of the early modern book world will emerge. The authors assess the theoretical and methodological value of the concepts of materiality, sociality and spatiality for current book historical research.
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Notes
- 1.
R. Darnton, ‘What is the history of books’, Daedalus, 111.3 (1982), 65–83.
- 2.
See for example: Th. Adams and N. Barker, ‘A new model for the study of the book’, in A Potencie of Life. Books in Society, ed. N. Barker (London, 1993), 5–43.
- 3.
This volume is a follow-up to a conference that took place in 2014 at Friedenstein Palace in Gotha, Germany and was sponsored by the German Research Association (DFG), Erfurt University, Utrecht University, Dr. phil. Fritz Wiedemann Stiftung, and the Freundeskreis der Forschungsbibliothek Gotha.
- 4.
The main section of the Companion to the History of the Book, ed. S. Eliot and J. Rose (Malden, MA, 2007), 63–417, for instance, is entitled ‘The History of the Material Text’.
- 5.
D.F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (Cambridge, 1986). See on the discussion and impact of McKenzie’s work: Making Meaning. ‘Printers of the Mind’ and Other Essays, ed. P.D. McDonald and M.F. Suarez (Amherst, MA, 2002).
- 6.
R. Chartier, Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia, 1995).
- 7.
See for example this selective list of influential studies: The Culture of Print. Power and Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. R. Chartier (Princeton, 1989); H. Love, Scribal Publications in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1993); A. Johns, The Nature of the Book. Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, 1998); D. McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830 (Cambridge, 2003); P. Davison, The Book Encompassed (Cambridge, 1992); A Potencie of Life. Books in Society, ed. N. Barker (London, 1993).
- 8.
See on this point especially the current research on ‘Geheimbuchhandel’: Geheimliteratur und Geheimbuchhandel in Europa im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Ch. Haug, F. Mayer, and W. Schröder (Wiesbaden, 2011); J. Freedman, Books Without Borders in Enlightenment Europe. French Cosmopolitanism and German Literary Markets (Philadelphia, 2012).
- 9.
See for the French tradition especially the four volumes of the Histoire de l’Edition Française edited by H.-J. Martin and R. Chartier (Paris, 1982–1986) and for the German tradition (among others) R. Engelsing, Der Bürger als Leser. Lesergeschichte in Deutschland 1500–1800 (Stuttgart, 1974); R. Schenda, Volk ohne Buch. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der populären Lesestoffe 1770–1910 (Frankfurt/Main, 1970).
- 10.
See on this topic in general, Das Mediensystem im Alten Reich der Frühen Neuzeit (1600–1750), ed. J. Arndt and E.-B. Körber (Göttingen, 2010). See further on the aspect of media recycling Consuming News. Newspapers and Print Culture in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), ed. G. Scholz Williams and W. Layher (Amsterdam, 2008); D. Bellingradt, ‘The early modern city as a resonating box: media, the public sphere and the urban space of the Holy Roman Empire, Cologne and Hamburg c. 1700’, Journal of Early Modern History, 16.3 (2012), 201–240.
- 11.
D.F. McKenzie, ‘Printers of the mind. Some notes on bibliographical theories and printing-house practices’, Studies in Bibliography, 22 (1969), 1–75; Johns, The Nature of the Book.
- 12.
Not Dead Things. The Dissemination of Popular Print in England and Wales, Italy, and the Low Countries, 1500–1820, ed. R. Harms, J. Raymond, and J. Salman (Leiden, 2013); J. Salman, Pedlars and the Popular Press. Itinerant Distribution Networks in England and the Netherlands 1600–1850 (Leiden, 2014); Colportage et lecture populaire. Imprimés de large circulation en Europe XVI–XIXe siècles, ed. R. Chartier and H.-J. Lüsebrink (Paris, 1996).
- 13.
See R. Wittmann, ‘Was there a reading revolution at the end of the eighteenth century?’, in A History of Reading in the West, ed. G. Cavallo and R. Chartier (Cambridge, 1999), 284–312; J. Kloek, ‘Reconsidering the reading revolution: the thesis of the “reading revolution” and a Dutch bookseller’s clientele around 1800’, Poetics, 26 (1998/99), 289–307; Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print; The History of Reading, ed. W.R. Owens and S. Towheed, 3 vols. (Basingstoke, 2011).
- 14.
Chartier, The Culture of Print; L. Price, ‘Reading: the state of the discipline’, Book History, 7 (2004), 303–320.
- 15.
M. Ogborn and C.W.J. Withers, ‘Book Geography, Book History’, in Geographies of the Book, ed. M. Ogborn and C.W.J. Withers (Farnham, 2013), 1–25; I.M. Keighren, ‘Geographies of the book. Review and prospect’, Geography Compass, 7.11 (2013), 745–758.
- 16.
Johns, The Nature of the Book, esp. 581–585.
- 17.
Johns, The Nature of the Book, 59.
- 18.
Johns, The Nature of the Book, 75.
- 19.
See for example D.N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place. Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago, 2003); I. Maclean, Learning and the Market Place. Essays in the History of the Early Modern Book (Leiden, 2009).
- 20.
S. Colclough, Consuming Texts: Readers and Reading Communities, 1695–1870 (Basingstoke, 2007); The History of Reading; W.H. Sherman, John Dee. The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst, 1995).
- 21.
J.A. Secord, ‘Knowledge in transit’, Isis, 95.4 (2004), 654–672; idem., Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’ (Chicago, 2000). See on the theoretical backgrounds of ‘geographies of reading’ the work of David Livingstone, for example his Putting Science in Its Place.
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Bellingradt, D., Salman, J. (2017). Books and Book History in Motion: Materiality, Sociality and Spatiality. In: Bellingradt, D., Nelles, P., Salman, J. (eds) Books in Motion in Early Modern Europe. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53366-7_1
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