Popular Print under the Press

Abstract

Mistakes, printing defects, reused woodcuts and low-quality paper are often the result of strategies enabled by printers and publishers to offer printed material at a low price while balancing profit/loss in their daily activities. It was precisely due to these strategies that a wider class of population could read, sing, learn and enjoy life in early modern Europe. This essay illustrates the preliminary results of a comparative analysis aimed at investigating the production phase of cheap books and prints all over Europe. With a focus on editorial strategies, printing practices and materials commonly adopted and used in these publications, it demonstrates that European publishers and printers followed very similar patterns while producing cheap products.