L'Apparition du livre by Lucien Febvre; Henri-Jean MartinReview by: James E. WellsThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Jul., 1959), pp. 201-204Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4304898 .

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REVIEWS

L'Apparition du livre. By LTUCIEN FEBVRE and HENRI-JEAN MARTIN. Paris: Albin Michel, 1958. Pp. xxxii+558+24 pls., 1 folding map.

The book, the medium through which most of our ideas of history are transmitted, has produced a considerable body of literature re- lating its own history; each year sees a steady accretion of new knowledge as well as a steady outpouring of new titles rehashing (not al- ways accurately) what has been said a great many times already. Occasionally, however, a work appears which, while taking stock of what we already know, adds both considerable new information and genuinely fresh interpre- tation. The present volume, planned by Lucien Febvre and executed by Henri-Jean Martin, with the aid of a group of specialists on vari- ous areas outside the main stream of book history, is such a book. The major credit for a provocative, stimulating, and highly intelli- gent survey of the state of the book trade from the invention of printing to about 1800, when the industrial revolution reached print- ing, belongs to M. Martin of the Biblioth&que Nationale, who was asked in 1953 to take over the writing of what had long been conceived as a crucial volume in the series "L'Evolution de l'humanite," that linking the medieval with the modern world. While aimed at the general reader (and benefiting from the effort to write decently on his behalf), the book has much to offer the specialist as well.

Febvre's brief preface gives the aim of the work: not another history of printing but a study of the tasks, the achievements, and the failures of the book during its first three and a half centuries. A second volume is planned to cover the modern period. The emphasis is social, economic, and to a great extent techni- cal; the way in which the fifteenth-century world created the modem book is assayed, and, at the same time, the interaction of the printed book with modem society is explored.

The introductory chapter, by Marcel Thom- as, sketches the background of the manuscript trade at the end of the Middle Ages. He ex-

amines the structure of monastic and secular scriptoria, analyzes the steadily increasing au- dience for books, and discusses the effect of the introduction of paper upon manuscript prices, while debunking earlier studies of the high cost of vellum and summarizing the or- ganization of the parchment trade. The de- scription of the role of the university in regu- lating the book trade, based primarily on Paris practice, is concise and illuminating, as are the comments on edition publishing of popular texts and on the atelier organization for turn- ing out "Books of Hours" and other popular books for the new bourgeois audience, already formed and ready for the printer to inherit.

The first chapter summarizes the invention of paper and its European migration; it also rationalizes the fifteenth-century appearance of printed books in Europe, the earliest mo- ment when all their requirements could be met: the demand, the ingredients needed for the production of type (metallurgical knowl- edge and the technique for striking matrices), the press-these had all been available at least a century earlier, but an adequate supply of reasonably priced paper had not. Papermakers had had to conquer distrust of the new mate- rial's durability as well as a number of techni- cal difficulties-efficient milling methods, ac- quisition of sufficient rag supplies, plentiful pure water, cheap transport. The need for the last three, as well as the location of a nearby market, determined the locations of the pa- permaking centers.

Chapter ii, dealing with the technical prob- lems inherent in the invention of printing and their conquest by the inventors-for Martin, while admitting German priority in establish- ing a commercially successful, large-scale printing industry, considers it certain that Gu- tenberg was but one of many experimenters- is a brilliant summary of a great mass of con- flicting theory and evidence. The various pos- sible methods of early printing-wood blocks, wood types, metal type, types cast in sand molds-are considered, the tangled story of Gutenberg's career retold fully but briefly, and

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202 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

the rapid progress of printing during its first fifty years traced. The next chapter treats the development of typefounding in the same way: the requirements, suitable tools and metals, are stated, and their fulfilment is related. The first great problems were the rapid consumption of type and the need for a tremendous quantity and variety, based on the attempts to copy manuscript models faithfully. Standardization and a consequent reduction in the number of sorts stocked by the printers solved some of these. Soon typefounding split off from the printing office and became an independent in- dustry, since it required greater capital and skill than the average printer had available. It was no accident that the early punch-cutters were usually goldsmiths or minters, combining a knowledge of metallurgy with skill in deli- cate engraving and experience in striking ma- trices from punches. The necessary skills, as well as the economic pressures toward large- scale production, by the seventeenth century had whittled several hundred foundries down to a few score, predominantly German.

Composition and presswork, treated next, are comparatively simple and showed little change from the fifteenth century until the nineteenth. The improvements in composition were mainly changes in the arrangement and construction of the case; those in press con- struction were the sliding bed, which obviated the need to remove the form from the bed for inking; the cut-out frisket, saving the leaf from ink splash; the development of make- ready, the cut-out bits of paper which even up irregularities in type height or the press bed; and steady increase in leverage and pressure. The presses were probably made locally by the same artisans who built wine, cheese, oil, and other similar presses, simply adapted for print- ing. Among Martin's most interesting passages are those containing figures on the rate of speed in composition and printing and on the procedures employed in buying, storing, and using paper, which help to explain the anoma- lies within a single volume which may baffle the modem bibliographer. The final section deals with Chinese precedents, apparently un- known in the West, with their similarities and far greater differences.

The chapter on presentation covers format, design, and production from the manuscript imitation to the mechanically produced book with its own conventions, among them title page, printer's mark, pagination, full imprint,

and the functional distinction between roman, italic, and bold type. The printing trade, es- pecially in the university towns, grew up with- in an established publishing framework, regu- lated by the faculties, dominated by the guilds and confraternities, marketing through the stationers. The transition was remarkably smooth, and most stories of organized resist- ance to printing, especially with the scribes, are apocryphal. It was natural that the first printed books should resemble manuscripts, not in order to deceive but because the manu- script was a highly efficient tool. The first books had distinct regional flavor, mirroring their prototypes, conventional choices of type faces depending on subject matter and audi- ence and other characteristics inherited from the scriptoria-characteristics which rapidly broke down as the wide marketing of books essential to economic operation of printing made publishing an international industry. Martin describes the evolution of book illus- tration, stressing technology rather than aes- thetics, and binding; here he describes the ear- ly binding methods and shop procedures and the changes which mass-produced editions brought about in materials, methods, and mar- keting; expenses of transport generally deter- mined where a book would be bound, and by whom, for shipment in sheets was far cheaper.

Chapter iv, "The Book as Merchandise," treats more fully the organization of the book industry, hinted at in earlier chapters. Among its subjects are capital requirements; the amount and kind of equipment used in various sized establishments; the purchase, rental, and borrowing of material; and the pnrcing of books-the fractions apportioned to paper, to composition and printing, to binding, and to profits. The working of the international book trade, the role of the book fair, and the influ- ence of such factors as geography, banking fa- cilities, or the dominance of commerce, poli- tics, or academic life in deternining whether a town would become a publishing center are considered. Some of the most fascinating pas- sages are those which portray the careers of such successful publishers as Barthelemy Buyer of Lyon, the Giu Giuntas, and Kober- ger, in which the changing printer-publisher re- lationship emerges and in which one can see the gradual shift in the emphasis of the trade from the service of a scholarly community at a comparatively modest profit to that of a larger and better-paying market.

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REVIEWS 203

"The Small World of the Book," chapter v, is concerned with personnel: workers, masters, scholars, booksellers, authors. Here one learns of labor-management relations, wages and hours, working conditions; of the strife be- tween opposing interests, master and man, small printer versus large, author against pub- lisher; of the political and intellectual quali- ties of the printers, their training, their hab- its. Martin discusses various sized shops, avoiding too easy generalization, and national differences in custom and law. He illuminates and enlivens his narrative with vivid portraits of many of the great scholar-printers, who gradually gave way to the successful entrepre- neurs; treats of the great dynasties among the publishers; and discusses the relationship be- tween the philosophe booksellers and their clients.

The geography of the book, closely related to the general economic and commercial fabric of Europe, is treated in some detail. The di- rection in which the new industry spread; the factors which favored or inhibited its develop- ment; its relationship with authority, civil or ecclesiastic; the gradual concentration, from an industry of many small shops in numerous small towns to a few dominant shops in the cities which controlled the major part of the trade; the effects of such political upheavals as the Reformation and the Counter-Reforma- tion on the migrations of printers and on the volume of counterfeits and piracies resulting from the loss of political protection-these are a few of the topics treated. Finally, there are brief summaries of the introduction of print- ing to the various sections of Europe, to the New World, and, as a European technique, to the Far East.

Chapter vii, "The Book Trade," deals with the economics of book distribution rather than book production, a realm in which both the large capitalist-backed firm with many branches and correspondents and the small, individual bookseller played a part. Methods of exchanging and paying for stock, including the letter of exchange and simple barter; the vital importance of the great fairs, especially those of Lyon, Frankfurt, and Leipzig; the de- velopment of such tools as catalogs and bibli- ographies; and the growth of specialized pub- lishers and booksellers are taken into account.

The final chapter, "Le livre, ce ferment," is an essay in intellectual history in which Mar- tin describes the role of the book in the great

movements of the day-in the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Counter-Reforma- tion, the new science, the Enlightenment. Again statistics provide a useful tool; fif- teenth-century production is broken down by subject and by language, and the spread of humanism is plotted through the curve illus- trating the number and place of publication of its basic texts. One sees the vernaculars dis- place Latin and the secular texts overtake re- ligious books in sales. The rise in Greek and Hebrew learning is related to the development of Greek and Hebrew typography. A brilliant section deals with the part played by printing in the Reformation: the wanderings of the Protestant printers; the rise of new printing centers to provide ammunition and tools for the battle; the attempts at censorship, the methods used to evade it, the fate of the mar- tyrs who were caught as well as the many more printers who successfully re-established themselves. The main function of the book, however, has always been didactic rather than controversial; Martin illustrates this through a discussion of the influence of the printed book in standardizing the grammar and orthog- raphy of the various European languages, building his analysis upon a wealth of concrete detail.

The Bibliography is full, yet carefully chosen; there are a few odd gaps-important works by Konrad Bauer, Lawrence Wroth, and William Ivins come to mind-but the wonder is not that they are so many but so few. A greater fault is the frequent omission from the Bibliography of works cited in text or foot- notes (plentiful and on the page, where they belong, rather than lumped together at the end in the prevalent cheap but awkward fashion). The Index is copious, well organized, and use- ful. The proofreading, especially for foreign languages, slips occasionally: "Collijn" be- comes "Collion"; "Chile" is rather amusing when it becomes "Chili"; Mr. Scholderer loses his c and Mr. Morison gains an r-minor er- rors which one hopes will be corrected in the inevitable second edition. The selection of plates is also somewhat uneven: many are fresh, as the comparisons between Bernard Salomon vignettes and tapestries and paint- ings with the same subjects, the Colines proof- sheet, and the punch for a letter of the Grecs du roi; others are disappointingly trite for a book generally original. The book's most seri- ous fault, however, lies in its perhaps inevita-

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204 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

ble emphasis on France and French practice, which produces a somewhat unbalanced pic- ture.

All in all, L'Apparition du Iivre is a first- rate work in an area all too often dominated by the second rate. One hopes that some en- terprising publisher will commission an Eng- lish translation so that it may become more widely known.

JAMES E. WELLS

Newberry Library Chicago

Werden und Wesen des Hauses R. Olden-

bourg, Miinchen: Ein geschichtlicher Uber- blick, 1858-1958. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1958. Pp. 146.

Die Geistesgeschichte des Verlags R. Olden- bourg, 1858-1958. By MANFRED SCHR6TER. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1958. Pp. viii+ 147.

The study of influential publishing houses forms part of the history of scholarship and literature. The two volumes here reviewed provide a comprehensive history of the firm of Oldenbourg, which in 1858 developed out of the "Literarisch-Artistische Anstalt," the Munich branch of Cotta. The founder of the firm, Rudolf Oldenbourg, conducted this branch from 1836 to 1869, toward the end concurrently with his own firm.

Werden und Wesen is a historical survey of the firm through four generations of Olden- bourgs, with biographical sketches of its prin- cipals. Written quite obviously in "majorem gloriam familiae," it does not dwell unduly on the remarkable accomplishments of the found- er and his successors; it contains valuable in- formation on the business side of the opera- tion, as, for example, on the number of em- ployees, the type and number of presses, and the textbook publishing program, which is not dealt with in the Geistesgeschichte.

Die Geistesgeschichte des Verlags R. 01- denbourg is produced very simply, by offset, with unadjusted margins; yet this volume proves considerably more informative than the Werden und Wesen. In six sections it deals with the founding of the firm and with the publishing activities of the Oldenbourgs in the fields of engineering, the natural sciences, his- tory, art, language and literature, education, and philosophy.

In the words of Rudolf Oldenbourg, up to the early parts of the nineteenth century "pub- lishing was conducted as an instrument is played by a musician," that is, by feel rather than by design. Rudolf Oldenbourg developed a publishing program which was aware of trends and sensitive to demands, business-like, well informed, and clearly assessing the finan- cial implications of his ventures. In this pe- riod of technological advance he published the first journal on German soil devoted to any special area of engineering, the Journal fiur Gasbeleuch tung und Wasserversorgung (1858). In 1865, under the influence of Justus von Liebig and Max von Pettenkofer, he began publication of the Zeitschrift fur Biologie; in 1883, with renewed concern about epidemics and contagious diseases, he began the Archiv fur Hygiene. Equally timely was the publica- tion of the Repertorium fur physikalische Technik, mathematische und astronomische Instrumentenkunde, beginning in 1866, and the Zeitschrift fiur angewandte Elektrizitiits- lehre in 1879. In flourishing Munich Olden- bourg developed his internationally important firm; it is difficult to say to what extent it ben- efited from rapid advances in science and technology and to what extent it stimulated research and industry. Foresightedness re- mained typical. In 1910 Oldenbourg published the first German journal on aviation (Zeit- schrift fiur Flugtechnik), under the influence of Lilienthal; as early as 1923 the firm begins a series of monographs on rockets to the outer spheres (cf. Hermann Oberth Die Rakete zu den Planetenriiumen). The program in the natural sciences similarly reflects current in- terest and new theories. Between 1876 and 1890 Oldenbourg published Zittel's Handbuch der Palliontology, and in 1884 (obviously un- der the influence of Darwin) C. von Nigelis Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Ab- stammungslehre.

While still working for Cotta (but also con- ducting his own publishing house), Rudolf 01- denbourg stressed another area, history. Under the influence of Leopold von Ranke and Hein- rich von Sybel he began in 1859 the Histo- rische Zeitschrift, the first scholarly journal in its field and still of great importance, now un- der the editorship of Ludwig Dehio. Among great historians brought out by the Olden- bourgs we mention Treitschke, Dbllinger, Doeberl, Droysen, and, in more recent times, Meinecke and Ritter; among great standard

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