Richard Kirwan and Sophie Mullins (eds), Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World (Ditcham)

Richard Kirwan and Sophie Mullins (eds)

Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World

(Brill, 2015) 414 pp.  $188.00

Early Modern Books

The world of early modern printing was a notably diverse milieu- in some ways as diverse as contemporary publishing, with major printing houses in a small number of key centres like Paris, Venice or Antwerp coexisting with small presses scattered across Europe.   Printers might seek to specialise in niche markets like music or even non-Latin typeface work (Greek, various forms of Cyrillic, even Hebrew or Arabic) or produce “print to order” material sponsored by a patron to keep their presses employed.   The nineteen essays in the present book look at a wide variety of genres and approaches to publishing across early modern Europe- though Nikolaus Weichselbaumer’s piece on the different ways in which the pecia system for manuscript copying of school texts was organised and regulated in different medieval universities does seem a bit out of place.

It has to be said that the concept of a “specialist market” is never entirely defined and is taken to cover a range of different situations.  These include the creation of new markets like news publishing or studies of faraway places (Isabella Matauschek examines the ways in which the De Bry family enterprise both created and sought to meet interest in European encounters with Asia and the Americas though the publishing of travellers’ tales in several European languages as well as practical items like glossaries of Malay terms), focused efforts to supply established markets with something new and superior (Kate de Ryker explores the collaboration between the London printer John Wolfe and the Italian emigre Giacomo Castelvetro in producing editions of Pietro Aretino to humanist standards- and its ultimate failure to shift perceptions of Aretino as a pornographer rather than a literary stylist), early versions of “print on demand” and “not for profit” sponsored editions.

The categories are however hardly watertight.  The substantial foreign language output of Dutch presses between 1500 and 1800 (initially in Latin, then predominantly in French) analysed by Remi and Marie-Alice Mathis fits poorly into the “print on demand” category to which it is assigned while David McKitterick’s examination of how Adam Newton, tutor to Prince Henry Stewart, sought to build up a library for his charge (and contrived to hang on to quite a few of the books after the latter’s death) says as much about how bequests of existing books could shape a library as about publishing practice.  While the Rusyn-language catechism produced by the Jesuit press at Trnava in 1698 studied by Paul Shore clearly falls into the “not for profit” category (and incidentally challenges assumptions about Jesuit linguistic skills- in the eastern Habsburg lands the Jesuits seem to have made no effort to learn local Slavonic languages and relied on Eastern-rite Catholics to produce devotional material), the various presses which sold books into the Ottoman Empire studied by Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik were much more varied in their focus.  While some were produced with Protestant evangelism in mind, others (especially items produced in Arabic by a Rome-based press under Medici sponsorship) were essentially commercial products.

Some contributions challenge conventional assumptions.   Amelie Roper demonstrates that music and song publishing did not always rely on the possession of specialist type by examining broadsheets produced by Augsburg presses in the sixteenth century which make it clear that song texts both secular and spiritual could come with indications of what existing well known tune they might be sung to.   For genuine music specialists, however, aristocratic sponsorship could be problematic as demonstrated by Huub van der Linden’s detailed examination of the fate of Giuseppe Silvani’s Bolognese print shop.  This ran into problems when it entered the music business, sponsored by Pirro Capacelli Albergati, nobleman and amateur composer.   While Albergati had a legitimate complaint that Silvani’s editions were of less than stellar quality, Silvani in turn struggled to sell them since Albergati was apt to hand out free copies on request, saturating the limited market.

Other contributions tell intriguing stories, like Bjorn Okholm Skaarup’s account of how Juan Valverde de Amusco’s quasi-plagiarism of Vesalius’ anatomical works flopped in its intended Spanish market but became a bestseller elsewhere (including even Tokugawa Japan), filling a niche for a cheaper and simpler exposition of the latest developments in anatomical knowledge.

Only one item is directly relevant to De Re Militari readers.   Nina Lamal examines the publishing history of a number of military treatises authored by Italian officers in the Spanish Army of Flanders and initially published in Antwerp in the years around 1610.  These were printed in Italian and seem to have targeted a European reading public (not always made up of professional soldiers- Peter Paul Rubens possessed a couple of them) though they were rapidly picked up by other publishers and translated into French and German.   Venetian and Milanese editions followed.     Clearly these works were publishing successes, though it is frustratingly hard to tell who (Rubens apart) was actually reading them, let alone what influence they may have had on wider military affairs.

A second item of indirect relevance, and perhaps the highlight of the collection, is Andrew Pettegree’s lively examination of the work of Abraham Verhoeven, whom he casts as the ancestor of tabloid journalism.   Verhoeven’s innovation was to combine the partisan appeal of the occasional news pamphlet with the regular publication schedule of newsletters, spiced up with some recognisably modern news values (putting the big news items first, headlines, illustrations, even cross-selling of other products from his print shop).   Warfare dominated his coverage as he trumpeted Imperial victories through the 1620’s.   In the end, however, his venture failed.  Sustaining a frantic printing schedule began to wear out his type and woodcuts, he was a poor financial manager at feud with his wife’s family, and the war had turned against the Empire by the time he died in poverty in the mid 1630’s.

While individual contributions are of considerable interest, it must be said that this is a rather random collection of studies which one suspects few other than reviewers or hard core specialists in the history of publishing will read from cover to cover.

Brian G H Ditcham
Independent Scholar

This entry was posted in BookReview. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.