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Printed book cultures in Scandinavia before 1525 were formed by their vicinity to expanding European book markets. Collections of prints were founded, decisions on printing books in Scandinavia were based upon thorough knowledge of what printers on the continent achieved in question of volume, quality and price. Building on a large database of contemporary provenances and statistical analyses of every possible aspect of peripheral book markets, as well as on new readings of many old and new sources, this book recalibrates scholarly looks on Scandinavian book history before the Reformation. The result is a fresh portrait of a dynamic period in cultural history which places Scandinavia, though in the geographical periphery of Europe, in the middle of European printing.
Much work is required to ensure the well-being of the manuscripts in the care of libraries, archives and other collections. The international seminars held in Copenhagen provide a good opportunity for conservators, archivists, librarians and those who work with manuscripts to meet and discuss their problems. Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 8 examines wooden bindings, the manufacture of parchment, the conservation of embroidered bindings, the study of paint layers, the restoration of heat-damage parchment, binding decoration and hand tools for Ottoman period manuscripts, biomonitoring of rare books and documents, German stamped bindings, new recipes for the conservation of leather and parchment, as well as codicology and palography. The book is well illustrated and contains references and a list of manuscripts.
This book is about the creation, relocation, and reconstruction of libraries between the late Middle Ages and the Age of Confessionalization, that is, the era of religious division and struggle in Northern Europe following the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the time, different creeds clashed with each other, but it was also a period in which the political and intellectual geography of Europe was redrawn. Centuries-old political, economic, and cultural networks fell apart and were replaced with new ones. Books and libraries were at the centre of these cultural, political, and religious transformations, frequently seized as war booties and appropriated by their new owners in distant locations.
The book highlights aspects of mediality and materiality in the dissemination and distribution of texts in the Scandinavian Middle Ages important for achieving a general understanding of the emerging literate culture. In nine chapters various types of texts represented in different media and in a range of materials are treated. The topics include two chapters on epigraphy, on lead amulets and stone monuments inscribed with runes and Roman letters. In four chapters aspects of the manuscript culture is discussed, the role of authorship and of the dissemination of Christian topics in translations. The appropriation of a Latin book culture in the vernaculars is treated as well as the adminstrative use of writing in charters. In the two final chapters topics related to the emerging print culture in early post-medieval manuscripts and prints are discussed with a focus on reception. The range of topics will make the book relevant for scholars from all fields of medieval research as well as those interested in mediality and materiality in general.
The papers collected in this volume discuss descriptive methods and present conclusions relevant for the history of the book production and reception. Books printed in Europe in the 15th and 16th century still had much in common with manuscripts. They are not mere textual sources, but also material objects whose physical make-up and individual features need to be taken into account in library projects for cataloguing and digitization.
This volume seeks to enhance our understanding of printing and the book trade in small and peripheral European cities in the 15th and 16th centuries through a number of specific case studies.
This volume challenges the persistent association of the Middle Ages with closure and fixity. Bringing together a range of disciplines and perspectives, it identifies and uncovers forms of openness which are often obscured by modern assumptions, and demonstrates how they coexist with, or even depend upon, enclosure and containment in paradoxical and unexpected ways. Explored through notions such as porosity, vulnerability, exposure, unfinishedness, and inclusivity, openness turns out to permeate medieval culture, unsettling boundaries, binaries, and clear-cut distinctions.
Supported by the legal ideas of Hugo Grotius, the Swedish armies exploited opportunities to seize books as spoils of war from conquered enemies to an unparalleled degree in the seventeenth century. They took books from countries such as today’s Latvia, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic and Denmark, distributing the goods to recently founded institutions and private manors in their native country. In Looted Libraries, Looted Books – The Swedish Case, Peter Sjökvist gives a summarizing overview of these plunders: from which regions and owners full libraries or selected books were taken during the conflicts, where they subsequently tended to end up when arriving in Sweden, and how they have been received and curated over the years. It is argued that it can be questioned whether large portions of the spoils have served any proper user needs in their new contexts.
This edited collection presents new research on the development of printing and bookselling throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, addressing themes such as the Reformation, the transmission of texts and the production and sale of printed books.
Questions of survival and loss bedevil the study of early printed books. Many early publications are not particularly rare, but many have disappeared altogether. Here leading specialists in the field explore different strategies for recovering this lost world of print.