"Publishers play an indisputably important part in book history, but cover such wide areas of activity that they are rarely given a formal definition. This volume seeks to place the publisher at the heart of the early modern book trade. It examines theiridentities and careers, the business strategies they adopted for survival, their involvement in the professional, religious, political, and economic conditions in which they found themselves, and the constraints under which they had to operate. By presenting more than twenty case studies on individual and groups of publishers active in Sweden, Prussia, Switzerland, France, Italy, England, Ireland, Germany and the Low Countries, this volume makes a major contribution to the study of an elusive but essential figure in the history of the early modern book"-- Provided by publisher.
Publishers play an indisputably important part in book history, but cover such wide areas of activity that they are rarely given a formal definition. This volume seeks to place the publisher at the heart of the early modern book trade through a series of complementary and wide-ranging case studies.
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
1 Introduction: Early Modern Publishers
Ian Maclean
Part 1: Authors, Translators, Patrons and Institutions as Publishers
2 King, Bishop, Professor and Postmaster: The Early Modern Swedish Publisher
Arthur der Weduwen and Barnaby Cullen
3 Olaus Magnus as Publisher: An Exiled Swedish Archbishop in Rome
Vigdis Andrea Baugstø Evang
4 Strategies of Paratexts: Polish-Speaking Königsberg Publishers
(c.15401575) Communicating with Their Readers
Wojciech Kordyzon
5 An Institutional Collective Publisher? Genevas Company of Pastors
Exploiting Printing (c.1620c.1685)
Hadrien Dami
6 Publishing Books by Subscription: The Contribution to Its Development by
Authors, the Universities and Booksellers in Seventeenth-Century England
John A. Sibbald
Part 2: Publishers and Commercial Strategies
7 Publishing an Early Modern Best Seller: Jean du Pre and the French Vitae
patrum (14861487)
Matteo Colombo
8 Necessary and Useful Things: Hernando Colón, the Bindoni Family and the
Production of Popular Books in Sixteenth-Century Venice
Natale Vacalebre
Part 3: Confessional Identities, Economic Considerations
9 Blawius paratissimus est excudere Niciana omnia
Gian Vittorio Rossis Pinacotheca and the Collaborative Navigation of the
Interconfessional Early Modern Book Trade
Jennifer K. Nelson
10 Popish Books and Popish Knacks: The Evolving Publishing Career of James
Thompson, 16501678
Chelsea Reutcke
11 For Economic Profit or the Jansenist Cause?
How Eugène-Henri Fricx and Arnauld de Brigode Managed Their Publishing Roles
during the Jansenist Controversy (16801703)
Dieter Cammaerts
12 The Protestant Merchants Who Kept Catholic Publishing Alive: Publishing
and Distribution Strategy at the Officina Plantiniana
Elise Watson
13 I Am Not AfraidI Have a Printing Press at My Disposal: Aspects of
Hebrew Printing and Publishing in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam
Heide Warncke
Part 4: Political Identities, Economic Considerations
14 Thomas Basset, Publisher of Locke and Hobbes: A Life and Death on Fleet
Street
Geoff Kemp
15 Champions of The Great English Third Estate? The Evolving Output of
English Trade Publishers, 16801700
Basil Bowdler
16 Politics behind Publishing: The Publication of French Revolutionary Books
for the Dublin Market, 17891794
Maria Zukovs
Part 5: Rivalries and Controversy
17 A Bitter Rivalry: Parrino, Bulifon and the Race to Publish a History of
Naples
Laura Incollingo
18 Johann Hermann Widerhold (16351683), International Publishing Rivalries
and the Limits of the Genevan Book Trade in the Late Seventeenth Century
Zachary Brookman
19 Negotiating Practice and Identity through Nachdruck: Publishers and
Unauthorised Print in the German Print World (17651835)
Isabelle Riepe
Part 6: Profiles of the English Publisher, 15801750
20 The Poor versus the Patents: Contextualising John Danters Reputation
through the Lens of the Patent-Less Poor
Michelle Michel
21 Behold, a White Horse in St Pauls Churchyard: Arthur Johnson and the
Distribution of Literature in Early Seventeenth-Century London
Andreas P. Bassett
22 Women Stationers at the Temple
Uncovering the Presence of Women in the Book Trade at the Honourable
Societies of the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple
Barnaby Bryan and Renae Satterley
23 The English Provincial Publisher, 16951750: Beyond the Local Newspaper
James McCall
Afterword: O, Where Are the Early Modern Publishers for Today?
Jeff Jarvis
Index
Barnaby Cullen, PhD (2024, University of St Andrews) is a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant with the COMLAWEU project at the University of St Andrews. He specialises in the history of print and politics of early modern Scandinavia and the Baltic.
Ian Maclean FBA holds Emeritus and Honorary Professorships at Oxford and St Andrews. His most recent publications are Episodes in the Life of the Early Modern Learned Book (Brill, 2020) and [ ed. with Dmitri Levitin] Classical Reception in Early Modern Europe: Comparative Perspectives (Brill, 2021).
Arthur der Weduwen is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director and Project Manager of the Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC). He specialises in the history of communication, printing and the book trade, early modern politics, and the history of the Netherlands. He is the author or editor of a dozen books in these fields.
