Publishers, Censors and Collectors in the European Book Trade, 1650-1750 (Library of the Written Word: the Handpress World, 126)

This edited volume explores the development of the European book world between 1650 and 1750, concentrating on changes in publishing strategies, practices of censorship, the circulation of second-hand books and the building of libraries. Its essays discuss this critical, but much neglected period of print history through case studies from Spain, Italy, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Britain and the Netherlands. Ranging from the posthumous publication of Galileo to the regulation of the book auction market, this volume demonstrates that the century between 1650 and 1750 was a transformative period for the history of the printed book. Practitioners, Pills and the Press: Publishing Strategies in the Dutch Medical Market (c.1660–c.1770) Contents 6 Preface 8 Figures and Tables 11 Notes on Contributors 14 Part 1 Publishing Strategies 18 1 Practitioners, Pills and the Press: Publishing Strategies in the Dutch Medical Market (c.1660–c.1770) 20 2 School Books, Public Education and the State of Literacy in Early Modern Catalonia 38 3 The Cometary Apparition of 1743/44: Periodical Journals in the Holy Roman Empire and Their Communicative Role 61 Part 2 Censorship and Evasion 86 4 A Peculiar Case of Entrepreneurial Bravery: The First Edition of Galileo Galilei’s Collected Works in the Context of Mid-seventeenth-century Publishing and Censorship 88 5 Persecuted in the Spanish Colonies: Inquisitorial Censorship and the Circulation of Medical and Scientific Books in New Spain and New Granada 123 6 The Troubles of a Protestant Bookseller in a Catholic Market: The Nuremberg Bookseller Johann Friedrich Rüdiger (1686–1751) and the Prague Book Trade 144 7 Disclosing False Imprints: a New Look at Eighteenth-Century French Printed Production 178 Part 3 Auctions, Collectors and Catalogues 204 8 Early Modern English Parish Libraries: Collecting and Collections in the Francis Trigge Chained Library and the Gorton Chest Parish Library 206 9 ‘Libri Anglici’: English Books in Danish and Dutch Library Collections, c.1650–1720 227 10 The Government at Auction: Urban Policy and the Market for Books in Eighteenth-Century Lübeck 255 11 Philosophie or Commerce? Classification Systems in Eighteenth-Century French Private Library Catalogues 280 12 Sir Hans Sloane’s Collection of Books and Manuscripts: an Enlightenment Library? 307 Index 336