The Scottish Book Trade 1500‐1720: Print Commerce and Print Control in Early Modern Scotland: An Historiographical Survey of the Early Modern Book in Scotland

Citation

Simpson, M.C.T. (2002), "The Scottish Book Trade 1500‐1720: Print Commerce and Print Control in Early Modern Scotland: An Historiographical Survey of the Early Modern Book in Scotland", Library Review, Vol. 51 No. 2, pp. 107-112. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2002.51.2.107.4

This book is a remarkable achievement. Prior to it there was no detailed single publication on the early Scottish book trade, of any vintage. Dr Mann’s book is very impressive, covering as it does a period of over two eventful centuries. He has clearly worked intensively in the archives, including those in the Low Countries. He has also mined the extensive printed primary material and the printed secondary sources (many of them written a long time ago). The publication has its origins in his 1997 Stirling PhD thesis “The book trade and public policy in early modern Scotland, c.1500‐c.1720”.

The wordy subtitles of the work are important. Out of seven chapters, chapters 1‐2 and 4‐6 are about control of some sort or another: central government control, municipal and ecclesiastical control, censorship, copyright, prescription and proscription of certain titles. These chapters could have done with some pruning, as there is considerable duplication and investigation of the same subject from a variety of different angles. It is not until chapter 7, the last chapter, that what should be seen as the point of departure for any history of the book trade anywhere, “The economics of the book trade”, is described. Sandwiched between the chapters on control is chapter 3, on trade with the Low Countries, a trade which also involved controversial literature, regulation, proscription and the likes. To be a fully rounded history, this book should at least have had a mirroring chapter on the trade between Scotland and England, always important and becoming increasingly so. There could also have been much fuller discussion of the fledgling export business, as well as the strong links with France. Finally, as the cover states: “It is the public, not the private world of book dissemination that is examined. Emphasis is placed more on supply than on demand.” This means that the trade from the view of the consumer, a very important facet of the subject, and one with a wealth of sources of its own, is only superficially covered.

The book is well, if conventionally, produced. The many footnotes are at the bottom of each page, which is a great advantage to the reader. The nine pages of line illustrations of contemporary printings are reproduced without a toned background, which shows up cruelly how bad Scottish printing work was at this period. There is an extremely thorough and useful bibliography (although it does not, for example, cite his own thesis), a good index, and appendices listing copyright patents granted, banned titles, and financial data, gleaned from testaments, on members of the trade.

It is to be hoped that Dr Mann will now investigate those aspects of the trade not covered in this volume and thus fill the gaps to make his work fully comprehensive. However, even as it stands, this book will remain as the cornerstone of all future studies on the subject.