История письма и чтения. Асафова Г.К. - 123 стр.

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of a small fee. The first stationer to enter a book acquired a right to the title or

“copy” of it, which could then be transferred as might any other property. As the

beginning of a system of copyright, this procedure was an admirable development;

but the grip that the company obtained and its self-interested subservience to

authority were to stunt the free growth of the English book trade for the next 100

years.

The flourishing book trade: 1550–1800

From the mid-16th through the 18th century, there were virtually no

technical changes in the methods of book production, but the organization of the

trade moved gradually toward its modern form. The key functions of publishing,

selecting the material to be printed and bearing the financial risk of its production,

shifted from the printer to the bookseller and from him to the publisher in his own

right; the author, too, at last came into his own. The battle with the censor became

increasingly fierce before any measure of freedom of the press was allowed.

Literacy grew steadily and the book trade expanded, both within and beyond

national boundaries.

PRINTED ILLUSTRATIONS

Although 15th-century printers characteristically were content to exploit the

existing book format, their use of printed illustrations in fact produced a new

means of expression. Printers used woodcuts to print illustrations by the relief

process and experimented with intaglio in copper engravings. Woodcut pictures

were produced before metal types, and it was a simple development to make

woodcuts in appropriate dimensions for use with type to print illustrated books.

Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg was printing books illustrated with woodcuts about

1461. Copper engravings, which were better able to produce fine lines, were

especially suitable for the reproduction of maps; among the few incunabula

illustrated with engravings is a Ptolemy Geographia printed at Rome by Arnoldus