ABSTRACT
I begin with a simple observation: the biggest difference between the way we relate to Renaissance books and the way contemporary readers related to them is the fact that they were consumers in a way that we cannot be. We never look at an early modern book as an ordinary product we might buy for our daily reading; they did so as a matter of course.1 This basic observation has far-reaching implications. Until the past decade, modern scholars have not shown much interest in front matter, the pages that were traditionally presented before the “main text” of a Renaissance book. In modern editions, original front matter has often been handled with less care than main texts; titles are shortened and standardized, title pages are transcribed in a footnote, and epistles become appendices.2 The most common purpose of front matter is to advertise and present the main text, and because we are not in a position to buy original books, front matter seems peculiar to us. But it was far from peculiar to contemporary book buyers; front matter was the central
1 Occasionally, of course, modern scholars and collectors buy facsimiles and actual
surviving Renaissance books, or modern editions thereof, and we occasionally inspect original texts as objects of research or as collectible artifacts, but all of these ways of relating to Renaissance books are fundamentally different from being an ordinary consumer. We might buy an early modern book on horsemanship, medicine, or religion in facsimile or its original form, but our reason for buying it would be scholarly antiquarianism or investment; it is unlikely that we would buy such a book for the reasons that the early modern reader did, for example, to help us breed horses, to cure diseases, or to bring us closer to God.
