Andrew Pettegree’s The Book in the Renaissance was today announced as one of the New York Times’ 100 notable books of the year 2010.

This prestigious annual list comprised 50 works of fiction and 50 non-fiction titles, and Pettegree’s work is one of only a handful of historical titles to make the list. It is also the only book published by a university press.

The Book in the Renaissance offers a revisionist history of book culture in the first 150 years after the invention of print. As with the modern media transformation of the digital age, bold predictions of what the new technology of print would bring to the conservative book culture of the manuscript age proved wide of the mark.

Access the full New York Times list.

The original New York Times Review, by former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky.

The process of technological change is at the heart of the story told in Andrew Pettegree’s The Book in the Renaissance.  In a podcast for the series Beyond the Book, Andrew Pettegree discusses with Christopher Kenneally the uncertain future that faced the new technology after Gutenberg unveiled his new invention.

The difficulties that faced the first printers in creating a commercial model for the new printed books inevitably invite comparison with modern technological change.  Pettegree explores these issues in interviews with the Boston Globe and The Atlantic.  With print, as with the present digital revolution, technological fascination helped energise the first wave of innovation: but it proved far harder to develop a commercial model to exploit the new media, and many went bankrupt in the process.

The Book in the Renaissance is published by Yale University Press.

Listen to the podcast (the transcript is available here)

Read the Boston Globe interview

Read the Atlantic interview

Read the New York Times Review

Colloquium in the Museum Plantin Moretus, 2-5 pm.

The next volumes in the USTC catalogue series Netherlandish Books, will be launched at a reception in the Museum Plantin Moretus on Monday 15 November.

NB. Netherlandish Books.  Books published in the Low Countries and in Dutch abroad before 1601, edited by Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby, is a two volume short title catalogue that draws together information on all editions published in the fifteenth and sixteenth century Low Countries: a total of over 32,000 separate printings.  This research establishes the 16^th century Low Countries as one of the principal production centres of high quality publishing, destined both for the highly literate local population and for export.

The launch event will be preceded by a short scholarly colloquium where the findings of the research project will be explored and explained.  Anyone interested in attending is invited to write directly to Philip John at poj@st-andrews.ac.uk.   Registration is free but places are limited and admission to the colloquium will be by ticket only.

Delegates to the colloquium will also be guests at the subsequent reception and have the opportunity to visit the Museum Plantin Moretus on the following day.

Speakers: Andrew Pettegree (Director, USTC), Malcolm Walsby (Project Manager), Anton van der Lem (University Library, Leiden), Guido Marnef (University of Antwerp).

NB. Netherlandish Books. Books published in the Low Countries and in Dutch abroad before 1601,edited by Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby, will be published by Brill in November 2010.

Documenting the early modern book world: inventories and catalogues in manuscript and print

The Third St Andrews Book Group Conference, 7-9 July 2011

Call for papers

It has become customary in documenting the world of early printed books to rely primarily on surveys of survivors: that is, books that have weathered the buffeting of history to reach the comparative safety of modern library collections.  Most national bibliographical catalogues are aggregates of the holdings of library catalogues; faute de mieux these are taken to offer a reasonable account of the original output.

But the urge to list, catalogue and advertise the wealth of the new printed book culture was just as strong in the first age of books.  Printers made lists of their available stock; owners proudly catalogued their libraries; assessors inventoried collections and stock as part of the settlement of estates, or legal proceedings.  In an age of religious discord, censorship required the publication of lists of forbidden books (though at the risk of advertising their contents); book-sellers’ shelves, private and public libraries were examined for forbidden material.

These various classes of lists contain indispensable material on various aspects of the 16^th century book trade: on cost, retail pricing, second hand values, binding and library practice.  They allow the reconstruction of lost or dispersed libraries.  They also document many thousands of titles and editions that have now disappeared altogether.

The third St Andrews book history conference will engage a wide-ranging discussion and analysis of contemporary book lists, manuscript or printed.  Participants, who will be invited to pre-circulate the lists in question, are asked to propose contributions to Natasha Constantinidou (nac21@st-andrews.ac.uk) by 30 November 2010.

The papers presented at this conference will form the basis for a volume in the Brill book history series, The Library of the Written Word.

The next volumes in the USTC short-title catalogues series have now gone to press.

NB. Netherlandish Books will be published in November.  It comprises a complete listing of all boos published in the Low Countries, and in Dutch abroad, before 1601.  This amounts to 32,155 items, with around 125,000 documented located copies.  The copy information is drawn from some 2,800 locations in the Netherlands and Belgium, but also other countries elsewhere in Europe and around the world.

This enhances the known corpus of works published in the Low Countries (previously 24,000) by around 37%.

This milestone of publishing – for both Low Countries bibliography and the USTC – will be celebrated at a launch event at the Museum Plantin Moretus in Antwerp in November.  Further details of this event, and the scholarly colloquium that will accompany it, will be released shortly.

The author, Andrew Pettegree in dialogue with Malcolm Walsby, manager of the Universal Short Title Catalogue project at the University of St Andrews.

Malcolm Walsby: What made you want to write this book?

Andrew Pettegree: It is about forty years since someone tried to write the whole history of the transition to print.  Perhaps because this book – Elizabeth Eisenstein’s Print Revolution – was so successful, it hasn’t been done since.  But we know an enormous amount more about the sixteenth century book world than we did then.  This seemed to be a good time to take stock of all this new knowledge.  There is also the fact that since Eisenstein wrote there has been a further crucial shift in information technology.  With so much interest in the impact of new electronic technologies it seemed a very good moment to take a fresh look at the last great technology shift: the invention of printing.

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At its June graduation the University of St Andrews awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, to Robert Darnton, Professor History and University Librarian at Harvard University.

In his laureation address Professor Andrew Pettegree saluted Professor Darnton for his path-breaking scholarship, his contribution to developing the field of book history, and his role in public policy.

While he was in St Andrews Professor Darnton gave a lecture to an invited audience on ‘A Literary Tour de France, 1778: How Books Were Made for Enlightenment Libraries’.  This is the latest in the series of the King James VI Lectures, given by a distinguished series of invited guests as part of the university’s anniversary celebrations.

Professor Darnton also took the opportunity to visit the St Andrews Book project group, where he heard presentations of the development of the USTC, and shared his experience of managing major collaborative ventures.  These discussions also explored the prospect of future co-operation in the production of digital texts.

The full text of Professor Pettegree’s laureation is available here.

Iberian Books (IB), produced by our partner project based at University College, Dublin, has been launched with a conference held in Dublin.

Iberian Books is the first comprehensive listing of all books published in Spain, Portugal, Mexico and Peru or in Spanish or Portuguese before 1601. Iberian Books offers an analytical short title-catalogue of over 19,000 bibliographically distinct items, with reference to around 100,000 surviving copies in over 1,200 libraries worldwide. By drawing together information from many previously disparate published and online resources, it seeks to provide a single, powerful research resource. Fully-indexed, Iberian Books is an indispensible work of reference for all students and specialists interested in the literature, history and culture of the Iberian Peninsula in the early modern age, as well as historians of the European book world.

Iberian Books is available for purchase from Brill.

Published May 13th 2010

The dawn of print was a major turning point in the early modern world. It rescued ancient learning from obscurity, transformed knowledge of the natural and physical world, and brought the thrill of book ownership to the masses. But, as Andrew Pettegree reveals, the story of the post-Gutenberg world was rather more complicated than we have often come to believe. “The Book in the Renaissance” reconstructs the first 150 years of the world of print, exploring the complex web of religious, economic and cultural concerns surrounding the printed word. From its very beginnings, the printed book had to straddle financial and religious imperatives, as well as the very different requirements and constraints of the many countries who embraced it, and, as Pettegree argues, the process was far from a runaway success. More than ideas, the success or failure of books depended upon patrons and markets, precarious strategies and the thwarting of piracy, and the ebb and flow of popular demand. Pettegree crafts an authoritative, lucid, and truly pioneering work of cultural history about a major development in the evolution of European society.

PRICE: £30.00
ISBN: 030011009X
ISBN-13: 9780300110098
PUB DATE: 13 May 2010
FORMAT: Hardback

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Illustrations: 70 black-&-white illustrations
Number of Pages: 450

Order from Yale University Press
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Read initial reviews for The Book in the Renaissance.

The New York Times
The Independent
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Svenska Dagbladet
PhiloBiblos