Marketing English Books, 1476-1550: How Printers Changed Reading (Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture)

The monograph series Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture showcases the plurilingual and multicultural quality of medieval literature and actively seeks to promote research that not only focuses on the array of subjects medievalists now pursue - in literature, theology, and philosophy, in social, political, jurisprudential, and intellectual history, the history of art, and the history of science - but also that combines these subjects productively. It offers innovative studies on topics that may include, but are not limited to, manuscript and book history; languages and literatures of the global Middle Ages; race and the post-colonial; the digital humanities, media and performance; music; medicine; the history of affect and the emotions; the literature and practices of devotion; the theory and history of gender and sexuality, ecocriticism and the environment; theories of aesthetics; medievalism. Marketing English Books is about how the earliest printers moulded demand and created new markets. Until the advent of print, the sale of books had been primarily a bespoke trade, but printers faced a new sales challenge: how to sell hundreds of identical books to individuals, who had many other demands on their purses. This book contends that this forced printers to think carefully about marketing and potential demand, for even if they sold through a middleman--as most did--that wholesaler, bookseller, or chapman needed to be convinced the books would attract customers. Marketing English Books sets out, therefore, to show how markets for a wide range of texts were cultivated by English printers between 1476 and 1550 within a wider, European context: devotional tracts; forbidden evangelical books; romances, gests, and bawdy tales; news; pilgrimage guides, souvenirs and advertisements; and household advice. Through close analysis of paratexts--including title-pages, prefaces, tables of contents, envoys, colophons, and images--the book reveals the cultural impact of printers in this often overlooked period. It argues that while print and manuscript continued alongside each other, developments in the marketing of printed texts began to change what readers read and the place of reading in their lives on a larger scale and at a faster pace than had occurred before, shaping their expectations, tastes, and even their practices and beliefs. Cover Marketing English Books, 1476–1550: How Printers Changed Reading Copyright Dedication Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures List of Abbreviations Note on Transcriptions and Catalogue Numbers Introduction Selling Books Marketing Tools Title-Pages Woodcuts Tables Errata Notices and Claims of Correction Complementarity Innovation in Print Part I: Devotional Reading Chapter 1: Sweet Consolation: Catechetical and Contemplative Guides Catechetical Instruction Passion Meditations and Contemplative Guides Chapter 2: Dangerous Fruit: Selling Forbidden Books Evangelical Printing Abroad: 1517–1534 After 1534: Evangelical Printing in England Thomas Godfray Part II: Worldly Reading Chapter 3: A Taste for Trifles: Romances, Scurrilous Tales, and Merry Gests Romances Gests and Scurrilous Tales Chapter 4: A Hunger for News: Pamphlets and Broadsheets Accounts of Royal Ceremonies Reports of Natural Marvels and Disasters Lost News Ballads Polemical Ballads Part III: Practical Reading Chapter 5: Wide-Ranging Appetites: Pilgrimage Guides, Advertisements, and Souvenirs European Context English Printing Domestic Pilgrimage Souvenirs and Guides Chapter 6: For the Reader’s Digest: Books for the Householder, Husband, and Housewife Early Appeals to Householders The Book of Husbandry The Book of Carving The Noble Book of Feasts Royal and Cookery Practical Books for More Ordinary Households A New Tract or Treatise Most Profitable for all Husbandmen, 1523 Bankes’s Herbal, 1525 The Great Herbal, 1526 Books about Householding Richard Whitford’s A Work for Householders Xenophon’s Treatise of Household, 1532 Conclusion Afterword Bibliography Index of Printed Books General Index "This book sets out to show how new markets were cultivated by printers in the period 1476-1550. It argues that while print and manuscript reading continued alongside each other, developments in the marketing of printed texts began to change what readers read, the ways they read and the place of reading in their lives on a larger scale and at a faster pace than had occurred before. Rather than attempting to offer a superficial survey of how the marketing of every kind of book developed, it focuses on three broad (but not wholly discreet) categories: religious reading, secular reading, and practical reading. Within those categories, the chapters focus in detail on the development of types of book that either emerged for the first time during this period (evangelical books, news pamphlets) or underwent considerable changes in presentation (devotional texts, romances, travel guides, household works). The chapters examine the presentation of early printed editions, paying particular attention to paratexts, with the aim of illuminating the range of techniques that printers used to convince potential buyers to part with their money. The printers of these works were predominantly based in London, but this book places their efforts within a wider European context. It demonstrates that, just as English manuscripts were moulded by foreign influences, English printers responded to their European counterparts' experiments in the marketing of books"--Publisher's description This work explores how the earliest printers moulded demand and created new markets and argues that marketing changed what was read and the place of reading in 16th-century readers' lives, shaping their expectations, tastes, and their practices and beliefs Explores how the earliest printers moulded demand and created new markets and argues that marketing changed what was read and the place of reading in sixteenth-century readers' lives, shaping their expectations, tastes, and their practices and beliefs.