Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning

by John N. King (Editor)

Overview

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 new 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107412552
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/03/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

John N. King is Distinguished University Professor and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies in the Department of English at the Ohio State University.

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.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

'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

Editorial Reviews

'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

From the Publisher