Gary_Shea t1_j2wxrnr wrote on January 4, 2023 at 3:04 PM

Finished reading: The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the
Dutch Golden Age by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen. A
comprehensive history of the Dutch book trade. Good history with no
appeal to popular fancy, but not dry either. The Yale University Press
copy I have is paperback and and well illustrated with high-quality
colour plates which is unusual in a not large paperback.
Who else here is reading in this strain?

elmonoenano t1_j2xhngn wrote on January 4, 2023 at 5:14 PM

You might dig the Ross King book, Booksellers of Florence. You can hear him talk about it at the Philadelphia Free Library. https://libwww.freelibrary.org/podcast/episode/2003

ideonode t1_j2yc0m4 wrote on January 4, 2023 at 8:19 PM

The Bookshop of the World is on my reading list. Did you read it in hardback, paperback or ebook? I've seen the paperback, and the print is small, but the hardback is quite expensive...

I'd also echo The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King - an excellent narrative history of the twilight of manuscript printing in Renaissance Florence.

I've posted a few posts recently about history books about books / manuscripts. Some recent examples include The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club by de Hamel, and The Lost Gutenberg by Margaret Leslie Davis

Gary_Shea t1_j33bo2x wrote on January 5, 2023 at 7:40 PM

Thanks to both commentators for the Ross King suggestion. My Yale UP copy of The Bookshop of the World is indeed a paperback and looking at it again I can agree that the print is small by common trade paperback standards today. Perhaps it needed to be produced as a larger format paperback.

And the two new suggestions are very welcome too. While we are on the topic of the history of books and printing, I have an additional title to suggest that I read two years ago: The Paper Chase by Joseph Hone, a case-study of a clandestine printing operation in Queen Anne's London. Cheers! and Happy New Year