The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume III: 1400‐1557

Citation

Yeo, E. (2000), "The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume III: 1400‐1557", Library Review, Vol. 49 No. 8, pp. 404-415. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2000.49.8.404.5

This is the first volume of The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain to be published; the complete set of seven volumes will cover the period from about 600 AD to the end of the twentieth century. Despite the title, this volume is primarily concerned with the history of the book in England and to a much lesser extent in Scotland; Wales is very rarely mentioned. This is mainly due to the lack of surviving evidence for the book trade there; also, the history of the book in Wales has recently been studied in A Nation and Its Books (edited by P.H. Jones and E. Rees, Aberystwyth, 1998).

The period 1400‐1557 was one of change: the Renaissance, the Reformation and the invention of printing all greatly influenced intellectual and cultural life. In tracing the history of the book, we are shown both the effects of these events on books and their readers, and how books themselves contributed to the changes. Questions such as who owned books, how they acquired them and what markets the booksellers were targeting are taken into account. One omission is the manufacture of manuscript books, but this is because the process remained unchanged from the previous century; the aim of the editors is to show how practices at this period differed from those of other periods.

There are three main areas: Technique and trade; Collections and ownership; and Reading and the use of books. The first includes an extremely clear description of the development of printing, by Lotte Hellinga, and a statistical survey of the imports of printed books into England and Scotland, by Margaret Lane Ford. This last stems from her work on a database of early printed books with marks of English and Scottish ownership, a resource of which several other contributors have made use. She makes the point that here (as indeed in other areas such as politics or religion) England and Scotland have to be treated separately: they were independent countries with different foreign alliances and trade routes. The work of immigrant artists at a time when English illumination was in decline is also discussed, as are bookbinding, the development of the book trade, and the effect on it of the religious turbulence under Edward VI and Mary Tudor. “Collections and Ownership” covers private ownership of printed books and the social network which enabled books to circulate among these owners; the somewhat old‐fashioned collecting policies of erligious houses; and the history of the English Royal Library.

The third and longest section, “Reading and Use of Books”, is divided according to readership, namely scholars, professional men and lay readers. J.B. Trapp outlines the growth of humanism in the UK and the influence of writers like Erasmus, John Colet and Sir Thomas More, while other chapters are devoted to the university libraries and their contents, and to the textbooks, especially the small‐format books produced in quantity for use by students. Professional men have always needed specialised books, and the requirements of lawyers and doctors are considered. J.H. Baker gives an interesting picture of common law practice and its statutes, registers of writs and yearbooks, few of which survive.

Doctors often compiled their own commonplace books of useful texts, and there was a flourishing market for ephemeral works like almanacs. Ordinary men and women used a surprisingly wide range of books: schoolbooks, practical handbooks such as John Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry, prayerbooks, music and literary texts. Finally, Pamela Neville‐Sington describes how governments began to discover the power of the printing press as a propaganada machine.

There is an extensive bibliography, a general index, and indexes of manuscripts and printed books. The general index contains both names and subject entires. The latter are sometimes complex and require persistence: Ely cathedral priory is to be found under “Libraries – Monastic collections and catalogues/inventories – houses” but not under Ely. The list of abbreviations fails to identify Adams (H.M. Adams, Catalogue of Books Printed on the Continent of Europe, 1501‐1600, in Cambridge Libraries, Cambridge, 1967); Hain (L.F.T. Hain, Repertorium Bibliographicum, Stuttgart and Paris, 1826‐38); and HC (W.A. Copinger, Supplement to Hain’s Repertorium Bibliographicum, London, 1895‐1902). It is disappointing to find a rash of small errors and omissions in the general index and faulty transcriptions in the captions to the plates, but these detract little from the usefulness of the book as a whole.

Inevitably in a publication by a number of contributors writing on closely‐related subjects and often using the same sources, there is some overlap, but any repetition usually serves to emphasise and important point. Overall, this is a valuable work of scholarship by international experts. It draws together into one volume a wide variety of information about books, their production, circulation and readership, set against the troubled background of the period, and there can be no doubt that it will become an essential reference tool for anyone interested in the intellectual and cultural history of the UK.