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Tudor Books and Readers

Tudor Books and Readers

Tudor Books and Readers

Materiality and the Construction of Meaning
John N. King, Ohio State University
January 2013
Available
Paperback
9781107412552
$57.00
USD
Paperback
USD
Hardback

    The consumption of books is closely intertwined with the material conditions of their production. The Tudor period saw both revolutionary progress in printing technology and the survival of traditional forms of communication from the manuscript era. Offering a comprehensive account of Tudor book culture, these essays by experts in early book history consider the formative years of English printing; book format, marketing, and the reception of books; print, politics, and patronage; and connections between reading and religion. They challenge the conventional view of the 1557 foundation of the Stationers' Company as an event that marks a shift between older and newer modes of book production, sale, and reading. Both continuity and change led to the gradual development of late medieval book culture into the genuinely early modern book culture that emerged by the death of Queen Elizabeth.

    • A diverse set of new perspectives on the making and reception of books from 1485 to 1603
    • Illustrated with eighteen examples of the visual features of Tudor books
    • Reflects recent developments in the study of book history

    Reviews & endorsements

    'John King's carefully edited volume sheds light on numerous aspects of Tudor book culture … most of the chapters directly relate to literary studies and offer valuable insights.' Annotated Bibliography of English Studies

    See more reviews

    Product details

    January 2013
    Paperback
    9781107412552
    290 pages
    229 × 152 × 15 mm
    0.39kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction John N. King
    • 1. Prologue: the first years of the Tudor monarchy and the printing press Lotte Hellinga
    • Part I. Book Format, Marketing, and the Reception of Books:
    • 2. The myth of the cheap quarto Joseph A. Dane and Alexandra Gillespie
    • 3. English literary folios 1593–1623: studying shifts in format Steven K. Galbraith
    • 4. Closing the books: the problematic printing of John Foxe's histories of Henry VII and Henry VIII in his Book of Martyrs (1570) Elizabeth Evenden
    • Part II. Print, Politics and Patronage:
    • 5. 'This heavenly boke, more precyous than golde': legitimating print in early Tudor England Douglas A. Brooks
    • 6. Authorial and editorial influence on luxury bookbinding styles in sixteenth-century England Robert J. D. Harding
    • 7. Print in the time of parliament:
    • 1560–1601 Cynthia Susan Clegg
    • Part III. Reading and Religion:
    • 8. 'The spider and the bee': the perils of printing for refutation in Tudor England Alexandra Walsham
    • 9. Reading the woodcuts in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs John N. King
    • 10. Readers' marks and religious practice: Margaret Hoby's marginalia Andrew Cambers
    • 11. Books in the bedchamber: religion, accounting, and the library of Richard Stonley Jason Scott-Warren
    • Select bibliography
    • Index.
      Contributors
    • John N. King, Lotte Hellinga, Joseph A. Dane, Alexandra Gillespie, Steven K. Galbraith, Elizabeth Evenden, Douglas A. Brooks, Robert J. D. Harding, Cynthia Susan Clegg, Alexandra Walsham, Andrew Cambers, Jason Scott-Warren

    • Editor
    • John N. King , Ohio State University