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Book Talk in Early Modern Europe Noah Millstone
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Book Talk in Early Modern Europe
Noah Millstone
The lively trade in book news rumors, summaries, extracts, and judgments among early modern readers and nonreaders alikeIn early modern Europe, the printing press created an ocean of new publications and inspired endless discussions in schools, churches, and academies, in families and among friends. But, as Noah Millstone shows in this engaging account, many of the people talking about books hadn’t actually read them. Would-be readers often couldn’t get their hands on the books they wanted; others could get them, but found they lacked the skills or time to read them.
Drawing from posters, catalogs, correspondence, lecture notes, censorship files and diaries, Millstone argues that one major result of limited access to and time for books was an explosion of discourse about books: book news, extracts, reviews, judgments, and anecdotes were produced and circulated in huge volume. Where other scholars have cast books as material objects, Millstone reframes books as objects of knowledge and curiosity. Millstone writes of the Swiss polymath Conrade Gessner (1516–1565), whose published Universal Library included hundreds of bafflingly vague entries for books he hadn’t read or even seen; the frustration of French bibliophile Pierre de L’Estoile (1546–1611), who collected rumors about topical pamphlets he couldn’t find; and the philosopher Anne Conway (1631–1679), who spent years trying to track down a copy of the Letters of René Descartes.
For journalists, spies, students, and the merely curious, limits to access could be productive, spurring the development of new practices and new ways to think about the book. Millstone’s intriguing history of people talking about books they hadn’t read is also the story of the first self-conscious media revolution of the modern age.
| Media | Books Hardcover Book (Book with hard spine and cover) |
| To be released | August 3, 2027 |
| ISBN13 | 9780691272764 |
| Publishers | Princeton University Press |
| Pages | 628 |
| Dimensions | 150 × 220 × 20 mm · 971 g (Weight (estimated)) |
