Early European Book Demand & Printing

• This section focuses on everyday life, culture, and politics.

Print Culture and the Modern World

• It is difficult to imagine a world without printed material.
• Print has shaped our contemporary world, and it has a history.
• This chapter discusses the development of print from East Asia to Europe and India, along with its social and cultural impacts.

The First Printed Books

• The earliest print technology developed in China, Japan, and Korea involved hand printing.

Development of Print in China

• From AD 594, books were printed in China by rubbing paper against inked woodblocks.
• The traditional Chinese 'accordion book' was folded and stitched due to the inability to print on both sides of thin, porous paper.
• Skilled craftsmen duplicated calligraphy with accuracy.
• The imperial state was the primary producer of printed material for a long time, using it for civil service examination textbooks.
• The print volume increased from the sixteenth century with a rise in examination candidates.
• By the seventeenth century, urban culture in China diversified the use of print.
• Merchants collected trade information, and reading became a leisure activity.
• New readership emerged with preferred fictional narratives, poetry, and literary masterpieces.
• Rich women started reading and publishing their works.
• Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported in the late nineteenth century when Western powers established their outposts, shifting from hand printing to mechanical printing.
• Calligraphy is the art of beautiful or stylised writing.

Print in Japan

• Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology into Japan around AD 768-770.
• The oldest Japanese book, the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, was printed in AD 868 and contained six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations.
• Pictures were printed on textiles, playing cards, and paper money.
• In medieval Japan, poets and prose writers were regularly published, driving down book costs and increasing availabilty.
• Visual material printing led to interesting publishing practices.
• Illustrated collections of paintings depicted elegant urban culture in late eighteenth-century Edo (Tokyo).
• Libraries and bookstores were filled with various hand-printed materials, including books on women, musical instruments, tea ceremony, and cooking.
• Kitagawa Utamaro was known for ukiyo art, which depicted ordinary human experiences.
• These prints influenced artists in the US and Europe.
• Publishers commissioned artists to draw themes, which a woodblock carver then used to create a printing block, destroying the original drawing.
• The woodblocks belonged to the mid-13th century.
• The Tripitaka Koreana is a Korean collection of Buddhist scriptures.
• They were engraved on around 80,0000 woodblocks.
• They were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2007.
• Source: http://www.cha.go.kr

Print Comes to Europe

• Silk and spices flowed from China to Europe through the silk route for centuries.
• Paper reached Europe in the eleventh century, enabling the production of manuscripts by scribes.
• Marco Polo brought the knowledge of woodblock printing from China to Italy in 1295.
• Italians began producing books with woodblocks, spreading the technology across Europe.
• Luxury editions were handwritten on expensive vellum for aristocratic circles, who saw printed books as cheap.
• Merchants and students in university towns purchased cheaper printed copies.
• As book demand increased, booksellers started exporting books across countries and book fairs were held.
• Manuscript production was organised to meet demand, with more scribes employed by booksellers.
• More than 50 scribes often worked for one bookseller.
• Handwritten manuscripts were expensive, time-consuming, fragile, and had limited circulation.
• Woodblock printing became popular in Europe by the early fifteenth century for textiles, playing cards, and religious pictures with brief texts.
• Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known printing press in the 1430s in Strasbourg, Germany.
• Vellum - A parchment made from the skin of animals

Gutenberg and the Printing Press

• Gutenberg, drawing on his knowledge as a goldsmith and wine/olive presses, designed his printing press.
• By 1448, Gutenberg perfected his system.
• The first book he printed was the Bible, and 180 copies took three years to produce.
• Platen - In letterpress printing, the printer uses a board to press paper to get the impression from the type.
• Printed books resembled handwritten manuscripts in layout and appearance initially.
• Metal letters imitated handwritten styles, borders were illuminated, and illustrations were painted.
• Space was left for decoration in books for the rich to allow them to personalize the designs.
• Between 1450 and 1550, printing presses spread across Europe, with printers travelling from Germany.
• Book production boomed, reaching 20 million copies by the second half of the fifteenth century and about 200 million in the sixteenth century.
• This shift from hand printing to mechanical printing was described as the "print revolution".
• Gutenberg developed metal types for the Roman alphabet and a typesetting method, leading to the creation of the moveable type printing machine that remained the same for 300 years.
• The Gutenberg press could print 250 sheets on one side per hour, which was faster than carving each print block.
• Gutenberg printed about 180 copies of the bible, and not more than 50 have survived.
• The text was printed with metal type, its borders were designed, painted and illuminated by hand by other artists.
• Gutenberg printed the text in black, leaving spaces where the colour could be filled in later.
• Compositor - The person who composes the text for printing
• Galley - A Metal fram in which types are laid and the text composed

The Print Revolution and Its Impact

• Printing transformed lives, relationships with information and institutions, popular perceptions, and ways of looking at things.

New Reading Public

• Printing reduced costs and increased book production.
• Access to books created a culture of reading, which was earlier restricted to elites with a world of oral culture (sacred texts read aloud, ballads recited, folk tales narrated, people collectively experiencing the content).
• Books were expensive and couldn't be produced in significant numbers before print.
• Ballad A historical account or folk tale in verse, usually sung or recited
• Transition of text was not simple, but was accompanied by oral story telling
• Books could only be read by the literate but European literacy rates were low until the twentieth century.
• Printers began illustrating books and publishing popular ballads/folk sales to appeal to non-readers.
• These were sung or read aloud at gatherings and in taverns to a mixed oral and reading public.
• Taverns - Places where people gathered to drink alcohol, to be served food, and to meet friends and exchange news

Religious Debates and the Fear of Print

• Print enabled wide circulation of ideas, introducing debate and discussion.
• Those disagreeing with authorities could print and circulate their ideas, reaching wider audiences.
• Some feared the effects of the printed word, worrying that rebellious thoughts might spread and valuable literature would be destroyed.
• In 1517, Martin Luther wrote Ninety Five Theses criticizing the Catholic Church
• A printed copy of the Theses challenging religious practices was posted on a church door in Wittenberg
• Luther's writings quickly multiplied, starting the Protestant Reformation.
• Luther translated the New Testament, and the first edition sold 5,000 copies within weeks. Later he says is grateful to print.
• Protestant Reformation - A sixteenth-century movement to reform teh Catholic Church domininated by Rome.

Print and Dissent

• Print and popular religious liturature stimulated many distinctive individual interpreations of faith.
• Menocchio, and Italian miller, reinterpreted the bible and created views of God that enraged the Church.
• The Roman Catholic Church created the inquisition to repress heretical ideas.
• The church imposed severe controls over publishers and booksellers and maintained an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558. Action, speech or writing that is opposing the government.
• Inquisition - A former Roman Catholic Court for indentifying and punishing heretics.
• Heretical - Beliefs that do not follow the accepted teachings of the Church.
• Satiety - The state of being fulfilled beyond staisfacation
• Erasmus was a Latin scholar and catholic reformer, who critiqued the excesses of Catholic.
• He expreesed deep anxiety about printing, saying to many corners of the world do books fly?

Reading Mania

Denominations – sub groups within religion

• Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, literacy rates increased in Europe.
• Churches of different denominations set up schools in villages, spreading literacy to peasants and artisans.
• The rates were as high as 60 to 80 per cent by the end of the eighteenth century.
• Almanac - An annual publication with astronomical data and eclipse timings, for important
• A virtual reading mania emerged, with people producing books in great numbers.
• Booksellers employed pedlars who roamed villages with almanacs or ritual calendars, ballads and folktales.
• Chapbook – Pocket sized book
• In England, there were chapbooks and sold for a penny.
• In France, there were Bibilotheque Bleue, which were low priced books.
• Romances were 4 to 6 pages, and histories were stories about the past.
• The periodical press, newspapers and journals carrying information about wars, trade, and news devleoped from 18th century. James Lackington, wrote in his diary, sales of book inc.

Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!

• By the mid-eighteenth century, books were seen as spreading enlightenment.
• They believed libraries could liberate society and rule intellect.
• Louise -Sebastien Mercier was convinced of the power of print and believed printed text would bring enlightenment and destroy the basis
• Despotism - A system of gov regulated by const checks

Print Culture and the French Revolution

• Some historians argue that the French Revolution was due print culture. -Print popularised enlightenment ideas, gave commentaries on tradition.
• They attached the authority to the state, reading these books saw the world through new eyes.
• Print created a culture of dialogue and debate.
• Print did not directly shape.

The Nineteenth Century

vast leaps in mass literacy in Europe came to workers, women, and children.

• As primary was required by law, children were significant readers. A childrens' press was devoted to justlit.
• The Grimm Brothers printed the rural folk. They collected, edited, and published the stories.
• magazines and manuals were geared towards women
• Some well known novels were by women: like Jane Austen, The Bronte sisters and George Eliot-
• Lending libraries had been around since the 17th cent. They became instruments such as reading white class workers.
• Gorky tells of struggles to read amongst grim obstacles

Further Innovation

• Mid Nineetenth: Richar M. Hoe NY printed press which was capable of 8000 sheets per hour
• The offset press could up to six colours
• There are many stories on this

India and the World of Print

Manuscripts Before the Age of Print

• India had a rich tradition of handwritten manuscripts in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, and vernacular languages.
• Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or handmade paper, sometimes with beautiful illustrations.
• Manuscripts were handled with care and difficult to use, not commonly used in everyday life.
• Bengal had village primary schools, students very learnt down dictate texts.

Print Comes to India

• The the press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries 16th cent.
• Jesuit studied Konkani and printed texts, 50 books were printed 1674
• Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579, first Malayalam book in 1713.
• English East India company presses from 1700.
• In1780, James set uP commercial paper. Hickey published a lot of gossips, but Hastings persecuted Hickey
• Bengal was created by Gandhar and was about rammon Roy
• Bolts says business if business in city

Religious Reform and Public Debates

From the early nineteenth century, there were intense around religious issues in colonialism. Some criticized the orthodox, and religious leaders stepped to discuss.

• Bengal Newspapers helped these discussions, Rammon Roy made the samd kaumd, The Persian did the jahann na and shamus aks
• ULama was a scoolars and the shari, made the legal pronouncements (faitwa) issues what the the law wasnt

New Forms of Publication

Printing created new ways of looking at writing. The new stories opened up new worlds with the stories became a focus.

• Visual culture took take late 18th cent.
• Printers and the woodcut shop grew and developed.
• By 1870s cartoons were published with social issues and people, for fear of the revolution to change.

1 Women and Print

• Women was a big part of life
• They started being involved in school, and read womens journlas and reading that made sense Women of the high class had to get reading under religious constriaint with the arabic quaran.

Tamil Novel stated the way of life through books

2 Print and The Poor People

• Very simple books were brrought around during the market which encouraged the read
• The libraries were set which provided a way for people to learn Kashibab published a book on this and the class system.

Increased book demand in Europe spurred printing innovation. Printing challenged manuscript production, initially resisted by elites. Book fairs grew more popular .