Printing in provincial France has not attracted the same interest as the main centres of print. Using archival as well as printed sources, this book provides a groundbreaking new understanding of the development of printing in the provinces. Though printing in Brittany started during the incunabula period, the presses disappeared in the first decade of the sixteenth century. This work analyses the role of booksellers during these critical years and examines the business models that enabled the presses to return to the duchy. It also looks at issues such as ownership of books, Protestantism...

The late medieval and early modern period is a particularly interesting chapter in the development of meditation and self-reflection. Meditation may best be described as a self-imposed disciplinary regime, consisting of mental and physical exercises that allowed the practitioner to engender and evaluate his self-image, and thence to emend and refashion it. The volume aims at examining the forms and functions, ways and means of meditation from c. 1300 to c. 1600. It tries to analyze the internal exercises that mobilized the sensitive faculties of motion, emotion, and sense (both external and...

French Books III & IV complete a comprehensive bibliographical survey of all books published in France in the first age of print. It lists over 40,000 editions printed in France in languages other than French during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries together with bibliographical references, an introduction and indexes. It draws on the analysis of over 3,000 collections situated in libraries throughout the world. French Books will be an invaluable research tool for all students and scholars interested in the history, culture and literature of France, as well as historians of the...

Scholars of pre-modern literary culture rely almost exclusively on texts that have survived: mostly those that have reached the comparative safety of modern library collections. But the urge to record, catalogue and advertise the wealth of new publications in the age of print created an additional and valuable resource: book lists. Printers made lists of their available stock; owners catalogued their libraries; religious authorities drew up indexes of banned books; assessors inventoried collections and stock as part of the settlement of estates, or legal proceedings. This volume examines an...

Anyone who has studied the history of the Reformation, the book and communication will have come across or been influenced by Andrew Pettegree’s contributions to these fields. The forty-four essays in this Festschrift and its companion volume have been commissioned to cover the broad scope of Pettegree’s areas of interest and expertise, and to reflect and build upon them. The pieces, written by forty-three scholars based at over thirty institutions, are organised around nine key themes, ranging from the intersections of religion and print to the history of book collecting, the periodical...

Anyone who has studied the history of the Reformation, the book and communication will have come across or been influenced by Andrew Pettegree’s contributions to these fields. The essays in this Festschrift have been commissioned to cover the broad scope of Pettegree’s areas of interest and expertise, and to reflect and build upon them. The pieces, written by forty-three scholars based at over thirty institutions, are organised around nine key themes, ranging from the intersections of religion and print to the history of book collecting, the periodical press and pioneering book historical...