This edited collection offers in seventeen chapters the latest scholarship on book catalogues in early modern Europe. Contributors discuss the role that these catalogues played in bookselling and book auctions, as well as in guiding the tastes of book collectors and inspiring some of the greatest libraries of the era. Catalogues in the Low Countries, Britain, Germany, France and the Baltic region are studied as important products of the early modern book trade, and as reconstructive tools for the history of the book. These catalogues offer a goldmine of information on the business of books, and they allow scholars to examine questions on the distribution and ownership of books that would otherwise be extremely difficult to pursue. Contributors: Helwi Blom, Pierre Delsaerdt, Arthur der Weduwen, Anna E. de Wilde, Shanti Graheli, Ann-Marie Hansen, Rindert Jagersma, Graeme Kemp, Ian Maclean, Alicia C. Montoya, Andrew Pettegree, Philippe Schmid, Forrest C. Strickland, Jasna Tingle, Marieke van Egeraat, and Elise Watson.

This volume examines a number of different book lists from a variety of European countries during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. It offers a wide-ranging re-evaluation of one of the most interesting and underused resources for early modern book history.

This book presents and explores a challenging new approach in book history. It offers a coherent volume of thirteen chapters in the field of early modern book history covering a wide range of topics and it is written by renowned scholars in the field. The rationale and content of this volume will revitalize the theoretical and methodological debate in book history. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the field of early modern book history as well as in a range of other disciplines. It offers book historians an innovative methodological approach on the life cycle of books in and outside Europe. It is also highly relevant for social-economic and cultural historians because of the focus on the commercial, legal, spatial, material and social aspects of book culture. Scholars that are interested in the history of science, ideas and news will find several chapters dedicated to the production, circulation and consumption of knowledge and news media.

Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World brings together a diverse range of case studies to reconstruct the characteristics of specialist book production in the early modern period.

This book provides a new perspective on book history, with essays from leading scholars showing how communities of writers, publishers and readers across early modern Europe shaped the consumption of print.

In the late 15th century, the book trade in England was modest in scale and ambition, hamstrung by legislation, centred in London and heavily dependent on its European connections. During the 17th century a nationwide market for books emerged and in 1695 the Licensing Act lapsed, allowing provincial printing to develop. By the early decades of the 18th century the trade was national in character, better organised and perceptibly 'modern' in its structure. These essays shed light on this transformation, revealing the practices and perceptions of authors, translators, producers and collectors, the shifting geographical networks that characterized the early modern book trade and, crucially, what these changes meant for readers.