Of Printing Presses and the Publishers who use them...

Knight, Death and the Devil by Durer

I had the opportunity Monday to spend a few hours sitting between the bookshelves of the library and in researching some of the topics I found myself getting lost just taking in all the knowledge around me! In creating my bibliography, the first thing that I learned is that five hundred years is too much time to have only a handful of authoritative sources for research purposes. Many of the books that I perused contained the same information, maybe with an emphasis on one part of the story over another, or explaining how it related to their perspective. I learned to love the fact that books are grouped by subject and finding one good source usually means you've found two or three others next to it on the shelves! This isn't necessarily the case with search engines that return a search based on your input.

Many of the texts that I looked through were surrounded by older sources written in Italian, a point that we have an amazing library at BYU. I served as a missionary in Rome for two years and my Italian definitely was helpful for more than a few of the books that would reference a quote by Aldo Manuzio the way he said it, or even the Latin which I could sort of make out. In all, I actually enjoyed looking through the books and in its own way I felt immersed in the research.


Richardson, Brian. Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge University, 1999. Nestled among many other books on Italian Printing, Richardson gives a history of the beginning of the press, the first cities to hold one and their supporters as well as early inventions in the Renaissance to do with publishing printed knowledge. Includes a detailed bibliography with more recent publications than Eisenstein due to age. Cites Eisenstein and Bernstein. [Found and used in print version ]. (BYU Reference: Z 340.R53 1999)


Landau, David and Parshall, Peter W. The Renaissance Print: 1470-1550. Yale University, 1994. Landau and Parshall spend a portion of this work detailing the different branches of early printing in Northern Europe as well as Italy. The focus is on specific people and specific places and how this ties into the development of the print during the Renaissance period. (Google Books Scans here).

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: communications and cultural transformations in early modern Europe. Cambridge University, 1979. It would be unjust to leave this source out as it is a very detailed history of the printing press and it's impact. I found this text on my own before discovering that Dr. Burton had also posted it. Eisenstein has a section on the dissemination of printed materials as well as the pioneers of the early print trade and their influence on printing. It also includes a very extensive bibliography that would give any researcher ample material to continue searching through. [Found and used in print version ] (BYU Reference: Z 124. E37 Vol 1).

Oswald, John Clyde. A History of Printing : It's development through five hundred years. JJ Little and Ives Co., 1928. This is a good history of the who and where of early print. It is filled with example texts from that time period including reproductions of the colored drop caps and colored pages of early print. I stopped following sources here since the bibliography went into the 1800's. [Found on the bookshelves next to other references in this collection.] (BYU Reference:  Z 124. O86 )

Moran, James. Printing Press. London (Faber and Faber), 1973. This is a full bodied history to the printing press and takes the perspective of the changes it undergoes throughout the years, focusing primarily on innovation. This puts the type of press that was used in perspective with the location and inventors. [Found and used in print version ]. (BYU Reference: Z 249. M748 1973b)

Bernstein, Jane A. Music Printing in Renaissance Venice: The Scotto Press, 1539-1572. This gives the history in the eyes of one publishing company as it grows and develops during the incunabula. While the focus is not necessarily the entire picture of printing, there is much to be learned from the depth and detail in this one publishing companies story. A very Ken Burns documentary style. (BYU Reference ML 405. B47 1998 or Google Books).