Incunabula in transit : : people and trade / / by Lotte Hellinga.

• Superior document: The Handpress World ; Volume 47
• VerfasserIn: Hellinga, Lotte,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands ;, Boston, Massachusetts : : Brill,, 2018.; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Library of the written word ; Volume 62.; Library of the written word. Handpress world ; Volume 47.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (544 pages) :; color illustrations.
• Notes: Includes index.

Almost half a million books printed in the fifteenth century survive in collections worldwide. In Incunabula in Transit Lotte Hellinga explores how and where they were first disseminated. Propelled by the novel need to market hundreds of books, early printers formed networks with colleagues, engaged agents and traded Latin books over long distances. They adapted presentation to suit the taste of distinct readerships, local and remote. Publishing in vernacular languages required typographical innovations, as the chapter on William Caxton’s Flanders enterprise demonstrates. Eighteenth-century collectors dislodged books from institutions where they had rested since the sales drives of early printers. Erudite and entertaining, Hellinga’s evidence-based approach, linked to historical context, deepens understanding of the trade in early printed books.

Table of Contents

Front Matter -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Book Auctions in the Fifteenth Century -- Advertising and Selling Books in the Fifteenth Century -- Nicolas Jenson, Peter Schoeffer and the Development of Printing Types -- Peter Schoeffer: Publisher and Bookseller -- The Mainz Catholicon 1460–1470: An Experiment in Book Production and the Book Trade -- Fragments Found in Bindings: The Complexity of Evidence for the Earliest Dutch Typography -- Prelates in Print -- William Caxton, Colard Mansion and the Printer in Type 1 -- Wynkyn de Worde’s Native Land -- Aesopus Moralisatus, Antwerp, 1488 in England -- An Early Eighteenth-century Sale of Mainz Incunabula by the Frankfurt Dominicans by Margaret Nickson) -- A Caxton Tract-volume from Thomas Rawlinson’s Library by Margaret Nickson) -- Buying Incunabula in Venice and Milan: The Bibliotheca Smithiana.