Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy

Rating:
Summary: A good overview at last
Review: One of the problems for the interested outsider in any field is getting an overview of the field. It is very easy to find studies of individual printers, or studies of particular locales, yet the broader picture is hard to see. Also, to be useful, such a study must be well footnoted and referenced to allow for further reading. This book by Brian Richardson is an absolute *gem* on all these counts.

He takes as his subject the beginnings of printing in Italy, but he wisely looks at how manuscripts were produced and used as well, and discusses the changeover. This is not done sketchily, but in detail, and is well-referenced as usual. Prices for books are discussed, and annual incomes too (so we can get some idea of value). The analysis of the data is concise but very detailed, yet the detail never overwhelms the reader. He discusses the manufacture of books, and the pagination and foliation systems, briefly yet incredibly clearly.

The book is only some 200 pages. It felt like 800 pages of good material, but it did not drag at all. Richardson has truly mastered his massive array of material, and every sentence is clear and informative, and often deeply interesting. For instance, that the price of the cheapest manuscript on paper would be around 3-4 ducats, when a man could live on 15 a year, and a middle-class family be normally on 40-50, is very useful to know. Of course you could pay anything you liked for an MS, from that upward. Vellum MSS were 4-5 times more expensive for the same text. And the arrival of print caused the print to drop by 80% or more. These details, always well footnoted to the primary sources - correspondence of printers, usually - are among the meat of Richardson's book, and mean that it will always have value.

Problems? Few are apparent. This is a book to take slowly, and to annotate in the margins. The index of people is not as complete as it should be - I remembered seeing a reference to Tristano Chalco, but his name is not in the index. Other than that I could find no fault whatever with the book.

Anyone interested in the manuscripts and printed editions of the 15th and 16th centuries *must* buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: A good overview at last
Review: One of the problems for the interested outsider in any field is getting an overview of the field. It is very easy to find studies of individual printers, or studies of particular locales, yet the broader picture is hard to see. Also, to be useful, such a study must be well footnoted and referenced to allow for further reading. This book by Brian Richardson is an absolute *gem* on all these counts.

He takes as his subject the beginnings of printing in Italy, but he wisely looks at how manuscripts were produced and used as well, and discusses the changeover. This is not done sketchily, but in detail, and is well-referenced as usual. Prices for books are discussed, and annual incomes too (so we can get some idea of value). The analysis of the data is concise but very detailed, yet the detail never overwhelms the reader. He discusses the manufacture of books, and the pagination and foliation systems, briefly yet incredibly clearly.

The book is only some 200 pages. It felt like 800 pages of good material, but it did not drag at all. Richardson has truly mastered his massive array of material, and every sentence is clear and informative, and often deeply interesting. For instance, that the price of the cheapest manuscript on paper would be around 3-4 ducats, when a man could live on 15 a year, and a middle-class family be normally on 40-50, is very useful to know. Of course you could pay anything you liked for an MS, from that upward. Vellum MSS were 4-5 times more expensive for the same text. And the arrival of print caused the print to drop by 80% or more. These details, always well footnoted to the primary sources - correspondence of printers, usually - are among the meat of Richardson's book, and mean that it will always have value.

Problems? Few are apparent. This is a book to take slowly, and to annotate in the margins. The index of people is not as complete as it should be - I remembered seeing a reference to Tristano Chalco, but his name is not in the index. Other than that I could find no fault whatever with the book.

Anyone interested in the manuscripts and printed editions of the 15th and 16th centuries *must* buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Informative but dryish study
Review: Richardson leads the reader into some unfamiliar corners of one of history's best-mapped locales, that of Renaissance Italy. We are taken into the printer's workshop, we stand behind the bookseller's counter, we are permitted into literate homes to see what books there are, and where, and how they are read. The examination of the mechanics and statistics of the book trade in its infancy is informative but rather dry. More engaging is the tail-end of the book where we are introduced first to writers, then readers: it is Richardson's examination of how printed books entered and enriched their lives which lifts his book, and which lingers in the reader's mind.