H-25. Fifteenth-Century Books in Print & Manuscript - Advance Reading List

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  • This is a list of useful readings for our course. None is required, but they cover a wide variety of the topics that we will discuss. The content and conduct of the course is based not on bibliographical or historical literature, but on the physical evidence of the 15th-century books themselves. Thus, the only really necessary reading (in order to not feel behind on day one) is Barbara Shailor’s useful The Medieval Book: Illustrated from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Medieval Academy, 1988; and reprints, etc.), held in many libraries and widely available on the online market.

  • Articles

    On the Materials and Methods of Gothic Manuscript Production:

    Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books: From the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

    Raymond Clemens & Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Cornell University Press, 2007).

    Jonathan Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (Yale University Press, 1992).

    Chrisopher De Hamel, Making Medieval Manuscripts (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 2018).

    On the Materials and Methods of 15th-Century European Printing:

    Needham, Paul. “ISTC as a Tool for Analytical Bibliography,” in Bibliography and the Study of 15th-Century Civilization, edited by Lotte Hellinga & John Goldfinch, (London, 1987), 39–54.

    Needham, Paul. The Bradshaw Method: Henry Bradshaw’s Contribution to Bibliography. The Seventh Hanes Lecture (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1988).

    Needham, Paul. “Prints in the Early Printing Shops,” in The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe, ed. Peter Parshall (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2009), 39–91.

    Needham, Paul. “Copy Specifics in the Printing Shop,” in Early Printed Books as Material Objects: Proceedings of the conference organized by the IFLA Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, Munich, 19-21 August 2009, edited by Bettina Wagner & Marcia Reed (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Saur, 2010), 9–20.

    Needham, Paul. “Book Production on Vellum and Paper in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Papier im mittelalterlichen Europa: Herstellung und Gebrauch, edited by Carla Meyer, Sandra Schultz, and Bernd Schneidmüller. (Munich: De Gruyter, 2015), 247–74.

    On the Dissemination, Use and Survival of Early European Printing:

    White, Eric. “Binding Waste as Book History: Patterns of Survival Among the Early Mainz Donatus Editions,” in Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500. Fifty Years that Changed Europe, ed. Cristina Dondi (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2020), 253–277.