The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance

Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-90-04-24547-1
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 26, 474 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 242 mm, Gewicht: 925 g

Reihe: Library of the Written Word / Library of the Written Word - The Handpress World

This work offers the first English-language survey of the book industry in Renaissance Italy. Whereas traditional accounts of the book in the Renaissance celebrate authors and literary achievement, this study examines the nuts and bolts of a rapidly expanding trade that built on existing economic practices while developing new mechanisms in response to political and religious realities. Approaching the book trade from the perspective of ist publishers and booksellers, this archive-based account ranges across family ambitions and warehouse fires to publishers' petitions and convivial bookshop conversation. In the process it constructs a nuanced picture of trading networks, production, and the distribution and sale of printed books, a profitable but capricious commodity.

Originally published in Italian as Il commercio librario nell’Italia del Rinascimento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1998; second, revised ed., 2003), this present English translation has not only been updated but has also been deeply revised and augmented.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in the history of the book, the history of the economics of the book trade, the economic history of the Italian Renaissance, the shopping history, the history of consumption of culture.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nuovo, Angela

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Medien-, Informations und Kommunikationswirtschaft Druckindustrie, Verpackungsindustrie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Medien-, Informations und Kommunikationswirtschaft Verlagswesen
• Interdisziplinäres Bibliothekswesen, Informationswissenschaften Buchgeschichte, Bibliotheksgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Commercial networks

Chapter 1: The Commercial Network of The Company of Venice

Johannes de Colonia and Nicolaus Jenson

Peter Ugelheimer, The Creator of the Commercial Network

The Transfer of the Network to Ugolino di Fabriano and Giovan Pietro Bonomini

A Transfer of Control in Perugia
The Network Ceded to Gerhard Lof

A Transfer of Control in Siena

Giovan Pietro Bonomini: From Tuscany to Portugal

Chapter 2: The Development of Commercial Networks

The Giunti

1. The First Generation

2. The Second Generation

3. The Third Generation

4. The Giunti in Rome

The Gabiano Family

1. Giovanni Bartolomeo da Gabiano

Other Booksellers’ Commercial Networks

1. Bernardino Stagnino

2. Giovanni Giolito de’ Ferrari

3. The Sessa Family

4. The Varisco Family

Juridical Relations Among Wholesalers and Retailers

1. The Practice of Sales on Commission in the Book Trade

2. The Sale or Return Contract

3. Other Types of Relations Between Wholesalers and Retailers

Production

Chapter 3: Press Runs

Press Runs Inferred from the Zornale of Francesco de’ Madi (1484-1488)

Geographical and Historical Oscillations

Press Runs in the Cinquecento

Chapter 4: Warehouses

The Market: From Local to Transnational
The Growth of Warehouses: The Warehouse of Sigismondo dei Libri (1484)

The Warehouse of Platone de’ Benedetti (1497)

The Warehouse of Niccolò Gorgonzola (1537)

Book Warehouses in the Cinquecento

Book Warehouses and Paper Supplies

Chapter 5: Marks and Branches

Marks

1. Marks in Printed Books

2. Contention Over Marks

3. The History of an Emblematic Mark: The Giolito Phoenix

4. Non-Commercial Marks on Printed Books

Branches

1. The System of Branches

2. The Transnational System of Branches

3. The Gabiano Family in Lyon

4. The Manuzio Firm in Paris

5. The Branch System in Italy

6. The Giolito Branch Organization

The Giolito Branch in Naples (1545)

The Giolito Branch in Rome (1582?)

7. Branches and Marks

8. Branches and the Diffusion of Publishing Initiatives

9. Foreign Branches in Italy?

Chapter 6: The Book Privilege System

The Institution of the Privilege

Book Privileges

Literary Privileges

Venetian Legislation Regarding Printing (Up to 1540)

Venetian Legislation Regarding Printing (1540s to 1603)

Applying for a Privilege

Notification and Display of Privileges

The Privileged Printer

Pre-publication Censorship and Licencing

Book Privileges in Rome

The Great Venetian Bookmen and Papal Privileges

Selling and Distribution

Chapter 7: Distribution

Distribution among University Cities: Cultural Contacts and Fiscal Exemptions

Distribution from Venice
Middlemen


Chapter 8: Fairs

Italian Bookmen at the Frankfurt Fair

Pietro Perna (d. 1582)

Pietro Longo (d. 1588)

Giovan Battista Ciotti (d. after 1625)

Italian Books at the Frankfurt Fair

Italian Fairs

Venice, a Permanent Book Fair

Book Fairs in Italy

The Fairs of Recanati and Foligno

The Fair of Lanciano

A Bookseller at the Fairs: Bernardo d’Asola, Agent of the Gabiano Firm (1522)

Chapter 9: Retail Sales: Distribution Inside and Outside of Bookshops

Cartolai and Peddlers in the Diario of the Ripoli Press (1476-1484)

Cheap Print Sales Outside of Bookshops

The Sale of Books in Cartolai’s Shops

Shop Sales: The Zornale of Francesco de’ Madi (1484-1488)

The Price of Books

Chapter 10: Shop Inventories

The Characteristics of Shop Inventories

Inventories of the 1470s and 1480s

Inventories of the 1490s

Early Sixteenth-Century Inventories

Inventories in the University Cities: Giunti in Perugia; Giolito in Turin
and Pavia

Bookshop Inventories after 1550

Ferrara

Rome

Verona

Venice

Vicenza

Cremona

Milan

Table: Editions and Copies in Bookshops

Chapter 11: Managing a Bookstore

Internal Views

Inside the Shops: The Placement and Arrangement of Books

Bound Books, Used Books

Buying and Selling a Bookshop

Men of Letters and the Bookshop

Epilogue

Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Angela Nuovo is Professor of the History of the Book at the University of Udine in Italy. She has published extensively on the book trade and private libraries in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.