Elizabeth L. Eisenstein

A full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change, first published in 1980.

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change

What difference did printing make? Although the importance of the advent of printing for the Western world has long been recognized, it was Elizabeth Eisenstein in her monumental, two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, who provided the first full-scale treatment of the subject. This illustrated and abridged edition provides a stimulating survey of the communications revolution of the fifteenth century. After summarizing the initial changes, and introducing the establishment of printing shops, it considers how printing effected three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science. First Edition Hb (1984) 0-521-25858-8 First Edition Pb (1984) 0-521-27735-3

The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe

Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe

Printing Press as an Agent of Change

In 1979 Elizabeth Eisenstein provided the first full-scale treatment of the fifteenth-century printing revolution in the West in her monumental two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. This abridged edition, after summarising the initial changes introduced by the establishment of printing shops, goes on to discuss how printing challenged traditional institutions and affected three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of modern science. Also included is a later essay which aims to demonstrate that the cumulative processes created by printing are likely to persist despite the recent development of new communications technologies.

l'invenzione della stampa e la nascita dell'età moderna

Le rivoluzioni del libro

Eighteenth-century French readers who wanted to keep up with political and literary trends had to rely on books and journals imported from abroad. French writers, such as Voltaire and Rousseau, also depended on foreign firms to get their works in print. Grub Street Abroad demonstrates the importance of extraterritorial publishing for the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. By placing the periphery at the centre of the stage, it highlights neglected cosmopolitan aspects of the French Enlightenment and points to forces which undercut Bourbon claims of cultural hegemony. Firms serving French markets from abroad are viewed as part of a far-flung communications network which, although sensitive to diplomatic pressures from diverse courts, still comprised a relatively autonomous, independent field of operations. Topics covered include the publishing and editing of francophone journals and clandestine manuscripts; the emergence of the book review and the editorial board; the reliance of the philosophes upon foreign firms; the cosmopolitan outlook of so-called 'Grub Street hacks'. Overall, a revised picture of the nature and importance of publishing in the period emerges - a presentation that will provoke and interest a wide range of historical, literary, and bibliographical specialists.

Aspects of the French Cosmopolitan Press from the Age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution

Grub Street Abroad

'Divine Art, Infernal Machine' presents a history of the printing press & of the ambivalent attitudes of the public toward printers & printing since the days of Gutenberg & his business partner Johann Fust, a gentleman often tellingly confused with the notorious Doctor Faustus.

The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending

Divine Art, Infernal Machine

There is a longstanding confusion of Johann Fust, Gutenberg's one-time business partner, with the notorious Doctor Faustus. The association is not surprising to Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, for from its very early days the printing press was viewed by some as black magic. For the most part, however, it was welcomed as a "divine art" by Western churchmen and statesmen. Sixteenth-century Lutherans hailed it for emancipating Germans from papal rule, and seventeenth-century English radicals viewed it as a weapon against bishops and kings. While an early colonial governor of Virginia thanked God for the absence of printing in his colony, a century later, revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic paid tribute to Gutenberg for setting in motion an irreversible movement that undermined the rule of priests and kings. Yet scholars continued to praise printing as a peaceful art. They celebrated the advancement of learning while expressing concern about information overload. In Divine Art, Infernal Machine, Eisenstein, author of the hugely influential The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, has written a magisterial and highly readable account of five centuries of ambivalent attitudes toward printing and printers. Once again, she makes a compelling case for the ways in which technological developments and cultural shifts are intimately related. Always keeping an eye on the present, she recalls how, in the nineteenth century, the steam press was seen both as a giant engine of progress and as signaling the end of a golden age. Predictions that the newspaper would supersede the book proved to be false, and Eisenstein is equally skeptical of pronouncements of the supersession of print by the digital. The use of print has always entailed ambivalence about serving the muses as opposed to profiting from the marketing of commodities. Somewhat newer is the tension between the perceived need to preserve an ever-increasing mass of texts against the very real space and resource constraints of bricks-and-mortar libraries. Whatever the multimedia future may hold, Eisenstein notes, our attitudes toward print will never be monolithic. For now, however, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein

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