A Concise Companion to the Study of Manuscripts, Printed Books, and the Production of Early Modern Texts

Through a series of case studies written by a global team of international scholars, this Concise Companion demonstrates how manuscripts and printed books met the needs of two different approaches to literacy – an important cultural marker of the early modern period. Whereas manuscript culture centred on a group of literate readers and writers communicating with one another according to established practices, print culture served a wider audience and greatly increased literacy amongst the general population. Together, the written records in these two different forms combined to create the literary achievements of the Renaissance.

The Companion is divided into three sections, covering archival and manuscript studies; the provenance of texts and the authority of editions; and studies of genre,  religion, and literary history. The range of essays throughout is exceptionally broad – from the printing of the gospels in Arabic, to a contemporary reconceptualization of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and a group dedicated to the life and writings of Milton. The result is a text that provides an invaluable platform for highlighting on-going attention to the history of the book and its corollary subjects of reading and writing practices in the 1500s and 1600s.