Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books: Circa 1450-1520.

This volume consists of a collection of papers first presented at a 1987 conference entitled: "From scribal culture to print culture." Two new essays (on Venetian illuminators and block books) have been added, as well as an editorial preface. There we learn that the original conference title has been replaced because the editor wants to sidestep issues of continuity and discontinuity and focus instead on the currently fashionable topic of "the function of the book... in society" (3).

The essays have been grouped under three headings: Printers, Authors and Artists, and Readers. In part 1, Sheila Edmunds questions previous estimates of the number of scribes who became printers and underscores the indeterminate character of fifteenth-century occupational nomenclature. She notes that some early printers are listed as scribes on tax rolls and that some scribes were said to have "gone into printing" when they merely served printers in ancillary roles. Martha Tedeschi illustrates the instability of the industry by describing the shortlived career of Lienhart Holle, an Ulm printer who worked from 1482-83. The description of Holle's output is useful, the speculations concerning his failure less so. His deluxe edition of Ptolemy's Cosmographia is said to be both outdated and not marketable; yet it was later reissued by another Ulm printer (56). His case is described as "typical" (43); his output, as "not typical" (67). The editor's essay on the Paris publisher, Guy Marchant, attempts to show that Marchant's output was aimed less at "popular" than at "elite" and/or "scholarly" purchasers. It provides a helpful checklist, but few of the pitfalls entailed in trying identify diverse markets are avoided. The rector and librarian of the Sorbonne are confused with the three German printers they employed (70). Annoying anachronisms intrude (see references to a college "campus," Barnes and Noble, Brentano's). Josse Clichetove is given his Latin name; Lefevre d'Etaples (misspelled without an "s") is not.

Part 2 starts with Cynthia Brown's well illustrated account of how the advent of printing affected representations of French authors. In one striking case, the author is shown to have changed positions with the royal patron; in another, the printer himself has come to the fore. Eberhard Konig summarizes his previous work on early Mainz Bibles. The earliest editions responded to the demand for printed Bibles on the part of reformed monasteries in German speaking lands; a later, more widespread, distribution of the 48-Line Bible of 1462 is shown by the diverse styles of illumination registered on extant copies. In contrast to Konig's illuminators who worked far from Mainz, Lillian Armstrong's Venetian miniaturists worked in "close proximity" to Venetian printing shops. Printing led to the devising of methods for speeding up the output of illuminators and to their decorating books even before they were sold. The inadequate reproductions which accompany Armstrong's essay are still good enough to reveal the magnificent craftsmanship which was replaced after twenty years by the use of the woodcut.

Part 3, ostensibly on readers, contains essays which address a variety of issues. Lotte Hellinga's account of the importation into Britain of books printed on the continent provides data on the changing patterns of exports from diverse European lands and on the diverse British markets for Latin and vernacular works. Paul Saenger and Michael Heinlen set forth rules for cataloguing copyspecific features of early printed books. They treat some of these features as clues to fifteenth-century reading practices and also point to several changes wrought by printing before the century's end, including the assumption by printers of editorial control. Michael Camille considers the replacement of illumination by woodcuts in a series of illustrations of an allegorical text. He argues that the presumably "crude" woodcuts were more faithful to the didactic intentions of the allegorist than were the skillfully rendered miniatures. Tobias Nellhouse speculates about the purposes served by blockbooks, such as the Biblia pauperum. He concludes that they were designed, with the arts of memory in mind, as guides to devotional exercises.

Almost every essay in this collection contains some new and useful finding. Despite the replacement of the original title, the focus of the papers remains unchanged. In my opinion, this is just as well. There are already a great many "book and society" studies. But there are few collections, such as this one, which enlist the talents of experts to demonstrate, in fine grained detail, the complexity and variety of changes entailed in the shift from script to print. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN (EMERITA)