Centre and Periphery in the European Book World

Abstract

The rapid spread of print in the fifteenth century masks considerable difficulties that faced the industry in adapting to the new disciplines of mass production. Many early print shops were short-lived. Within two generations production of printed books was concentrated in a comparatively small number of major centres of production. This paper explores the implications of these developments for our understanding of the ‘print revolution’. It considers in particular the contrasting fortunes of three major markets: France, one of the largest centres of production; the Netherlands, a major hub of international trade; and England, which lay towards the periphery of the European book world.

posibilidades del Análisis de Redes Sociales (ARS) aplicado a la Historia del Libro

“…23 Desde muy pronto la industria del libro impreso en Europa se organizó en base a una jerarquía en la que buena parte de la producción se concentraba en unas pocas ciudades, como Venecia, Amberes o Lyon, desde las que se distribuía al resto del continente. 24 La producción de estas grandes capitales de la imprenta estaba muy orientada hacia la exportación. Esto se complementaba con la existencia de impresores en centros menores cuya producción tenía como destino una clientela fundamentalmente local.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

“…Print culture continues to attract considerable scholarly attention. The flourishing of Europe's book trade from the mid‐fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth is synthesized by Pettegree, using important bibliographical data for continental Europe, only now becoming available. Broadly speaking, the growth of a ‘wonderful diversity of production’ of print depended on a drastic economic restructuring of the industry around 1500 in response to a major crisis.…”

Introduction

“…By looking at networks of print distribution through the lens of a relationship between the centre and periphery, Andrew Pettegree foregrounded an important dynamic in the early modern book trade. 9 Trade routes established to facilitate manuscript production were developed by printers, cementing networks of dissemination that crossed Europe, while printing itself was often centred in a few major towns. Those towns or cities were also central to the intellectual life of early modern Europe, with close connections between the writers and the presses that published their works.…”

“…Those towns or cities were also central to the intellectual life of early modern Europe, with close connections between the writers and the presses that published their works. 10 Contemporaries recognised this, and some used it to their advantage: as Drew Thomas demonstrates in this volume, printers in sixteenth-century Augsburg used false imprints when they printed Lutheran material, claiming they were printed in Wittenberg.…”