Studies in the History of Printing – serie

The work of G. D. Hobson on the history of bookbinding, in particular English medieval and Renaissance bindings, is well known. His studies on Romanesque English bookbinding marked a pioneer effort to trace the development of the art of binding in early medieval England, and remain the fundamental introduction to the subject. Similarly, his celebrated study of blind-stamped panels in the English Renaissance book-trade has become a classic. The author's interests also extended to French bindings, and his work on Parisian bookbinding in the first quarter of the sixteenth century is of great importance; it is reprinted here with a number of his other studies on Grolier bindings. The collection of these articles in one volume, with an introduction by A.R.A. Hobson, represents not only a valuable introduction to the work of one of the major authorities on English bookbinding, but also a compendium of some of the most outstanding contributions to the subject.

The division of the Caribbean islands between the major European powers resulted in the growth of a number of regional presses, providing the colonists with the reading matter they would have expected from their countries of origin. The differing attitudes of the colonial powers towards the press is evident both in the date when printing was first introduced in the colonies, and the number and type of works subsequently issued. Over the last twenty years Professor Cave's research has done much to clarify the development of printing in the West Indies. This volume brings together for the first time his work on the subject, with the addition of seven papers which have previously not been generally available. The author is principally concerned with printing in the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean, in particular with Jamaica, but there are also articles on printing in the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, the Dutch West Indies, Grenada and Trinidad. The parallels with early printing in the North American colonies are particularly important. Professor Cave has contributed an introduction and additional notes which draw attention to fresh material subsequently discovered. There is an index and bibliography.

This volume brings together John Oates' studies on English printing, and the collection at Cambridge University Library, to which he devoted his career. It contains fifteen studies on English printing between the filteenth and the eighteenth centuries, and eleven studies on the collection of Cambridge University Library. Three further studies reflect his interest in Sterne, which began as a hobby, and on whom he formed a collection of international repute. The publication of these papers in collected form provides a fitting memorial to a lifetime's work on English printing, and a career as one of the great scholar-librarians of modem times in England. There is a preface by Dennis Rhodes, who has also contributed a bibliography of John Oates' publications.

This volume brings together five studies on the booktrade in France and America during the revolutionary period at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The papers encompass three major aspects of the subject: publishing, printing and bookselling. While little is known about the bookmen selected, their contributions to the book trade and the history of printing were highly significant. Nancrede was responsible for many firsts in American cultural history; Stone started a long-lasting press that printed many important Americana; Dufief sold many great libraries and was Jefferson's book agent. This work is based throughout on original research and two of the papers appear here for the first time.

The eighteen studies reprinted in this volume have appeared in leading British and European bibliographical journals during the last thirty years. This period of time is exactly that in which Anglo-Saxon techniques in analytical bibliography have been taken up in Europe and merged there with the more historically and sociologically based ones of the French "Annales" school to produce the new "Histoire du Livre" or "history of the book" approach to cultural history which is so much to the fore today. These essays by Giles Barber, who has been a constant intermediary in this evolution, are both something of a witness to this, and, at the same time, a factual contribution to the history of the European booktrade in the past three hundred years. They cover both of the basic sides of the trade: book production, meaning printing and binding, and bookselling, meaning both publishing and bookselling, trades which were only then beginning to separate the one from the other. In a trade vital in the history of ideas, the period covered, from 1720 to 1830, sees the end of the domination of the Dutch, the defeat of the colonial aspirations of the French, and the world-wide spread of the English language. A general rise in the reading habit led to new marketing, to new conceptions of authors' rights, and to technical innovations, all of which were to force a radical reorganization of the trade in the next century.

This selection of 57 studies by Dr. D. E. Rhodes focuses on the history of printing in Italy from the earliest printers of the 15th century to the flourishing of regional presses in the 16th and 17th centuries. The author is a leading authority on early printed books, and the present volume brings together for the first time a number of important articles on early printing in Venice, Rome, Mantua and Milan, and also covers the presses of Southern Italy, and the smaller Italian towns. The articles have been up-dated where necessary, with the addition of bibliographical notes and an index. There is a preface by George Painter.

This second volume of Dr. Rhodes' Studies covers the wider field of early printing in Western Europe outside of Italy. The spread of printing in England receives considerable attention, especially in the case of the London and Oxford presses. There are separate sections on printing in France, Germany, Spain and the Low Countries over this period. Of particular importance is the final series of articles on early collectors of printed books in Western Europe, which deals equally with the collectors and their libraries, including, in this case, the Italian collections.

The work of George D. Painter on incunabula and early printing needs no introduction. Ranging from Gutenberg and Caxton to the first printing in France and Spain, the author has done much to illuminate the tangled history of the earliest editions of some of the rarest and most attractive books in European printing. The articles reprinted here feature a number of studies which have become classics in their field. The author’s investigation of Gutenberg’s early work represents a major contribution to the age-old controversy surrounding the invention of printing. Similarly, his studies on Caxton have helped to clarify the date and development of the work of England’s first printer. Also included is his celebrated essay on the most outstanding illustrated book from the fifteenth century, Aldus Manutius’ edition of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili There is a preface by Dennis E. Rhodes.