Author Description

"Movements of books, both as individual volumes and as collections, have sometimes covered long distances across many centuries. Subject to the vagaries of war, shipwreck and personal ruin, as well as the intervention of the book trade and of collectors, the travels of books often have an intricately detailed and compelling story to tell. One of the most active areas of current research in book history is concerned with interpreting the clues from individual copies and piecing together the documentary evidence to provide this narrative. In this volume, leading specialists in book history consider examples from the sixteenth to the twentieth century to chart some of the paths followed by books through the European network of print. This may focus on the large collections accumulated by Renaissance scholars, but may equally involve tracking multiple copies of the same work through the marks of ownership left by unknown readers. Books on the Move Represents an important contribution to an understanding of the shifting interactions over time between libraries, collectors and the book trade."--Jacket.