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+\title{Book review: The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe}
+\author[Jonathan Fine]{Jonathan Fine\\Email:\texttt{J.Fine@pmms.cam.ac.uk}}
+\begin{Article}
+\begin{quote}
+\emph{The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe},
+Elizabeth L Eisenstein
+ISBN 0 521 44770 4 (paperback)
+\pounds 7.95, \$11.95
+300 + xiv pages
+Cambridge University Press (Canto imprint)
+\end{quote}
+
+This book is an abridgement for the lay reader of a full scale work
+written for scholars, the result of a decade of study. It is that
+rare and valuable thing, a scholarly work accessible and interesting
+to the educated general reader.
+
+The author {\em had long been dissatisfied with the prevailing
+explanations for the intellectual revolutions of early modern
+times}. She decided to investigate. (This review italicizes the
+author's words.) {\em What were some of the most important
+consequences of the shift from script to print? Anticipating a
+strenuous effort to master a large literature, I began to investigate
+what had been written on this obviously important subject. To my
+surprise, I did not find even a small literature available for
+consultation. No one had yet attempted to survey the consequences of
+the fifteenth century communications shift}.
+
+In this century there has been a communications shift, which is still
+continuing, and whose consequences are likely to be as important and
+durable as that of the fifteenth century (from script to print). The
+telegraph was followed by the telephone, radio and then television.
+Electronic computers (built out of radio valves, telephone exchange
+parts and the like) were the next development. Magnetic recording
+technology (developed for voice and music) was adapted for use by
+computers, moving from tapes to cards, drums and discs. Telephone
+lines were used to transfer data and thus to link geographically
+remote computers. The latest in the technological revolution is the
+Internet or World Wide Web, CD-ROM, and the beginnings of what are
+called portable documents.
+
+History is more than a sequence of Kings and Queens, or in our case a
+list of technological Aces and Jokers. This technology came from
+somewhere. Its creation appears to be influenced by political,
+economic and social forces. For example, Universities support
+Science. In our case, fundamental contributions of Faraday, Maxwell,
+Planck, Curie, Einstein, Rutherford, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Bohr,
+Dirac and many others have laid the scientific basis for the present
+shift from paper to digital or electronic media.
+
+From where then did science arise? Was Newton chance, and what effect did
+science and religion have on each other? How did what we may call
+early modern Europe emerge from late medieval society? Was it due to
+the Renaissance? Eisenstein's book is a carefully considered and
+well written discussion of the emergence of a human culture based on
+printed communication, that began in the late fifteenth century, and
+its influence on the humanities, on religion and on science. This
+print culture was something new, just as the film and television
+culture of today is new. Each has an effect on the human mind.
+
+Before describing the text of this book, some comments about
+illustrations. They have been well chosen. There are about sixty
+illustrations, mostly pages from rare books, but sadly they are not indexed.
+They have reproduced well, and add greatly to the book. For Bibles,
+there is a page from the Gutenberg Bible compared to a contemporary
+hand-copied Bible, the so-called wicked Bible of 1631 (which misses
+the `not' from the adultery commandment), and the frontpiece and
+beginning of Genesis from Christopher Plantin's great Antwerp
+Polyglot Bible of 1571. There is the title page of Galileo's final
+treatise (printed by the still flourishing Elsevier), and its
+appearance on the (printed) Vatican index of prohibited books. There
+are many other useful and illuminating illustrations, including an
+extract from a pattern book for tailors and dressmakers (Seville,
+1588) which made the Spanish fashion ``visible through the far-flung
+Hapsburg empire''.
+
+The quotations and incidental facts are also well chosen. Here are
+two such gems. The hazards of having a famous face are not new to
+this century. Eisenstein writes:
+\begin{quote}
+The difference between the older repeatable image which was stamped
+on coins and the newer by-product of print is suggested by one of the
+more celebrated episodes of the Frech Revolution. The individual
+features of emperors and kings were not sufficiently detailed when
+stamped on coins for their faces to be recognized when they travelled
+incognito. But a portrait engraved on paper money enable an alert
+Frenchman to recognize and halt Louis~XVI at Varennes.
+\end{quote}
+while to open the Preface she quotes Joseph Ames (1749) who wrote:
+\begin{quote}
+I do ingenuously confess that in attempting this history of Printing I
+have undertaken a task much too great for my abilities the extent of
+which I did no so well perceive at first.
+\end{quote}
+
+The book is divided into two parts. The first,
+{\em The emergence of print culture in the West}, can be thought of
+as an essay on the differences between the earlier scribal culture
+and the new print culture. Before print each book was a unique item,
+and each new copy would have new copyists errors. It rarely makes
+sense to talk of an edition of a hand-written book. Printed books
+come in editions, of hundreds or thousands or beyond. Each copy will
+be identical to each other, except that printers too can make errors.
+
+Even without the commissioning of new works, the wider circulation of
+scribal texts is a significant change. For example {\em as a student
+at Cracow in the 1480s, the young Copernicus probably found it hard
+to get a look at a single copy of Ptolemy's {\em Almagest}---even in
+a corrupted medieval Latin form. Before he died, he had three
+different editions at hand. As a fourteen-year-old in Copenhagen in
+1560, the young Tycho Brahe could purchase all of Ptolemy's work,
+including an improved translation of the full {\em Almagest} made from
+the Greek.}
+
+Perhaps the most important consequence of the shift was the emergence
+of an expanding republic of letters. The reading public, their
+booksellers and printers, their authors and illustrators. {\em As the
+key figure around whom all arrangements revolved, the master printer
+himself bridged many worlds. He was responsible for obtaining money,
+supplies, and labor, while developing complex production schedules,
+coping with strikes, trying to estimate book markets and lining up
+learned assistants. He had to keep on good terms with officials,
+while cultivating talented authors and artists who might bring his
+firm profit or prestige. In those places where his enterprise
+prospered and he achieved a position of influence with fellow
+townsmen, his workshop became a veritable cultural centre attracting
+local literati and celebrated foreigners, providing both a meeting
+place and message centre for an expanding cosmopolitan Commonwealth
+of Learning}. Christopher Plantin, whose activities are briefly
+discussed, is an outstanding example of a master printer. {\em After
+settling in Antwerp and establishing ties with Leiden, Plantin
+decided to learn Dutch. Never one for wasted effort, he ``placed in
+piles and in alphabetical order'' each new word that he learned. Thus
+was launched a collaborative venture which resulted in [\ldots] the
+``first Dutch dictionary worth its name.''} For more on Plantin's
+remarkable life and legacy, consult Colin Clair's biography.
+
+The second part considers the {\em Interaction with other
+developments}. In it {\em possible relationships and connections are
+explored with the aim of providing a basis for some tentative
+conclusions concerning the effects of the communications shift upon
+three movements which seem strategic in the shaping of the modern
+mind.}
+
+The first in the Renaissance, which has long been something of a
+challenge for historians to understand. Eisenstein suggests that it
+would be productive for historians to {\em direct attention to
+something that really did happen, that was obviously of crucial
+importance, that occurred in the second half of the fifteenth century
+and at no other time in the history of the West}. This is of course
+the shift to print culture. Later she writes {\em early humanists,
+from Petrarch to Valla, owe their still vital reputation as culture
+heroes to the prosaic print-made knowledge industry. [\ldots]
+Earlier scholars had been less fortunate}.
+
+The second is {\em Western Christendom disrupted}. Protestantism was
+{\em the first movement of any kind, religious or secular, to use the
+new presses for overt propaganda and agitation against an established
+institution. By pamphleteering directed at arousing popular support
+and aimed at readers who were unversed in Latin, the reformers
+unwittingly pioneered as revolutionaries and rabble rousers}. Between
+1517 and 1520, we are told, Luther's thirty publications sold well
+over 300,000 copies. Even by modern standards this is a considerable
+achievement.
+
+This book was originally written as a contribution to historical
+debate. Its main thesis is the effect of print as an agent of social
+change has been ignored or underestimated. ``One of the mysteries
+of Reformation history [is] how this proposal for academic
+disputation [Luther's theses], written in Latin, could have kindled
+such enthusiastic support and thereby have such far-reaching impact'',
+wrote one modern scholar. To dispel this mystery, Eisenstein
+suggests that we should {\em instead of jumping directly from church
+door to public clamor, move more cautiously, a step at a time,
+looking at the activities of printers, translators, and distributors
+who acted as agents of change. Probably we ought to pause with
+particular care over the interval in December 1517 when three
+separate editions were printed almost simultaneously by printers
+located in three separate towns}.
+
+{\em On the whole,} the author concludes, {\em it seems safe to
+conclude that all the problems associated with the disruption of
+Western Christendom will become less baffling if we approach them by
+respecting the order of events and put the advent of printing ahead
+of the Protestant Revolt.}
+
+The third movement is {\em The book of nature transformed: printing
+and the rise of modern science}. As with the Reformation, the author
+argues that {\em the advent of printing ought to be featured more
+prominently by historians}. This theme is developed mainly with
+regard to maps and astronomy, the trial of Galileo and the publishing
+activities of the Royal Society. Copernicus has already been
+mentioned. Newton was encouraged to publish. Galileo discouraged.
+
+One of the illustrations is of a grandly titled {\em A description of
+the the whole world}~(1606), and another is a printed challenge from
+Blaeu~(1622) to find any errors in his printed sea charts. He wrote
+{\em Whatsover there is yet resting to be corrected or made better,
+is as easie to be corrected in the Cardes [charts] that are printed,
+as in them that are written, which we also are readie to doe at our
+charge, if any man can by good proofe shewe us any thing, that is to
+be corrected in the Cardes that are printed by us}. This is an early
+example of errors being, if not rewarded, at least corrected without
+charge.
+
+The author gives many useful examples of the opportunities for
+(self)-promotion that print provides. We know much about the early
+history of print from the documents they printed about themselves.
+{\em Indeed, their use of title pages entailed a significant reversal
+of scribal procedures; they put themselves first. Scribal colophons
+had come last}.
+
+The author cogently argues the importance of print for the creation
+of accurate maps. {\em But this kind of checking could not occur
+until voyagers were provided with uniform maps and encouraged to
+exchange information with map publishers}. Before print maps, like
+books, were usually held in fixed and safe locations. They were much
+to rare and valuable to be subjected to the hazards of a voyage to
+foreign parts. Information from merchants was sent back to trained
+cartographers, but without print this information could not then be
+sent back out for the use (and checking) by others. The
+development of maps (and globes) contributed to the European
+discovery of the rest of the world.
+
+In the conclusion the author writes {\em This book has stopped short
+in the age of the wooden handpress. It has barely touched on the
+industrialization of paper making and the harnessing of iron presses
+to steam. Nothing has been said about the railway tracks and
+telegraph wires which linked European capitals in the mid-nenteenth
+century, or about the Linotype and Monotype machines which went
+together with mass literacy and tabloid journalism. The typewriter,
+the telephone, and a vast variety of more recent media have been
+entirely ignored. Too much territory has been traversed too rapidly
+as it is. Because contrary views have been expressed, however, it
+seems necessary to point out that there are irreversible aspects to
+the early modern printing revolution. Cumulative processes were set
+in motion in the mid-fifteenth century, and they have not ceased to
+gather momentum in the age of the computer printout and the
+television guide}.
+
+And so we are back again in the present, with its own communications
+shift from paper to electronic media, from print to computer. I have
+read this book through several times and on each occasion (I am not
+well educated in history) I get a richer deeper understanding of the
+present time. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wishes to
+develop for themself an understanding of the human and social
+consequences of the growing move towards electronic publishing and
+the information superhighway.
+\end{Article}