Introduction

Publishing Networks in France in the Early Era of Print examines the multifaceted personal and commercial connections in early modern book production in northern France, in particular between Paris, Caen, Angers, Rennes, and Nantes, c. 1450–1550. Besides the book market, commercial trade and geopolitical ties connected this region, making it a fertile area for the transference of different kinds of knowledge via print culture. Whereas earlier scholarship on the early modern book trade between Paris and Brittany has surveyed the presses and imprints with an occasional glance to business contacts in the region, this book explores interconnections among these towns by examining different aspects of book production (typography and illustration), market (publishers and booksellers), and ownership (buyers and annotators). Publishing Networks draws on primary and archival sources to demonstrate how trade networks helped promote and expand not only commerce but also cultural, religious, and political knowledge at a time when the French monarchy had not yet consolidated its boundaries. To achieve this end, Diane E. Booton explores relations between tradesmen, their business dealings, and their use and exchange of typographic and illustrative material. This book offers an economic and artistic mosaic of the historical exchange and circulation of knowledge when the printed book was beginning to take shape as we have come to know it in modern times.

Diane E. Booton, PhD, studies medieval and early modern book and manuscript production, circulation, and reception. Among her earlier publications are “Commemorating Duke Jean IV of Brittany in Ritual and Image,” Nottingham Medieval Studies (2015); “Dynastic Identity and Remembrance of Ducal Brittany in a Fifteenth-Century Carmelite Missal,” Princeton University Library Chronicle (2011); Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Late Medieval Brittany (Ashgate 2010); and “The Librarius and Libraire as Witnesses to the Evolving Book Trade in Ducal Brittany,” Pecia (2010).