Early Modern Themes: Printing Press

*Early Modern Resources*
Print Cultures
Search \| Reference \| Themes \| Representations \| HOME

Libraries worldwide, when they decide to join the digital age, often turn first of all to the products of a former cultural revolution: print. In the process, they make accessible some of the most beautiful and most significant material artefacts of the early modern age. This page will include such projects, as well as scholarly web-sites on the history of the book and of printing and publishing

SHARP Web (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) a wide range of resources for researchers, an electronic discussion list, information on the society

HoBo (Ian Gadd, Martin Moonie) History of the Book at Oxford website: information on events related to the history of the book, directory of Oxford scholars with relevant interests, web links, among other things

Centre for the History of the Book (University of Edinburgh) 'an international and interdisciplinary centre for advanced research into all aspects of the material culture of the text'; information on current projects, links

The Printing Press and a Changing World (Bruce Jones) tracing the development of the printed book (taken from a set of lectures), with images and bibliography

The Early Modern Book Website (David Scott Kastan) materials from a course which aims 'to explore various aspects of the production, circulation and reception of books in early modern England'

Publishing in the Renaissance (Internet Shakespeare Editions) topics include papermaking, printing, the problems of printing from manuscripts, and censorship

An Early Information Society: News and Media in Eighteenth-century Paris (Robert Darnton) the first electronic article to be published by the American Historical Review, this is an 'enhanced' version of an essay (and originally, presidential address) by this distinguished cultural historian of early modern France. As well as the text, it has maps and (translated) police reports corresponding to the places shown, images, songs (texts and translations, as well as performances for those with the software), an online discussion, and another, long, essay by Darnton on Public Opinion and Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris'. A superb site.

The Impact of Print 1500-1850 (Virtual Norfolk) Aimed primarily at students, this offers a wealth of primary sources with well-written commentaries/introductions by staff at the University of East Anglia

Early Modern Printing 1480-1707 (Washington State University) much of interest including incunabula, travel books, histories, bibles, herbals

The Gutenberg Bible (British Library) the daddy of 'em all: here are the BL's two copies, digitised, indexed, fully searchable (both copies at once or alternately), and you just click on the image to get an enlarged version. And you might want to join in the debate over whether Gutenberg really did invent movable type or not (What did Gutenberg invent?)...

The First Scottish Books (National Library of Scotland) from the first printing press in Scotland, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, small books containing mainly poetry

Cultural Readings: Colonization and Print in the Americas (University of Pennsylvania Library) online exhibition, exploring Europeans' attempts 'to "read" native cultures of the Americas' (and vice versa); six thematic sections, including 'promotion and possession', 'viewers and the viewed', 'colonial fictions, colonial histories'

Chez la Veuve: Women Printers in Great Britain 1475-1700 (University of Illinois Library) the diverse output of early modern women printers; a good introduction followed by sections on educational books, religion and moral instruction, specialist printers (such as music), popular literature, and women involved in politically contentious printing and publishing

Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture (Library of Congress) a selection from the manuscripts, rare books and maps in the Vatican Library, dating from the fifteenth century, presenting 'the untold story of the Vatican Library as the intellectual driving force behind the emergence of Rome as a political and scholarly superpower during the Renaissance'

Restoration Print Culture (Francis Steen) a 'multimedia presentation', much of it ballad material

Early Eighteenth-century Newspaper Reports (Rictor Norton) an online 'sourcebook', at present rapidly growing: it contains transcripts of reports on crimes, love and marriage, popular amusements, health and medicine, amongst others. Fascinating on each of the topics and as an introduction to the early newspapers

Early Newspapers (HistoryBuff) this site is the work of an avid newspaper collector, Rick Brown; largely, but not solely, focusing on early American newspapers

Publishing Drama in Early Modern Europe (British Library) online exhibit, accompanying a series of lectures by Roger Chartier which examined 'the relationship between plays in performance and plays in print and the often tortuous transmission of texts from the theatre to the printing house in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries'.

The clandestine universe of the early eighteenth century (Margaret Jacob) an illustrated article about 'clandestine' books and manuscripts, a 'shadowy world of hidden printing presses, coteries of bold talkers, and aspirants to living by the fruits of one's pen' which, she argues, nurtured the early stages of the Enlightenment