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The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800 by Lucien Febvre; Henri-Jean

Martin
Review by: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), pp. 490-493
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1877111 .
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Book Reviews
The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800. By Lucien
Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin. Translated by David Gerard. Edited by
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Dav,id Wootton. Foundations of History Library.
London: New Left Books; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
1976. Pp. 378. $27.00.
The recent appearance of an English translation points to the remarkably
durable character of this survey of the printed book trade in early modern
Europe. Despite the many years which have elapsed since 1958, when the
initial French version was issued,' it is still unsurpassed as a work of
synthesis. A lion's share of credit for producing such a long-lived work
should go to Henri-Jean Martin, who wrote almost all of it in the end. But a
debt is also owed to Henri Berr, who planned for the volume when
designing his Evolution de l'humanite series-a series notable for enlisting
the services of many future luminaries of the Annales school. As long ago as
1930, Berr lined up Lucien Febvre to serve as author of this particular
volume. But Febvre procrastinated, first producing his masterwork on Le
Problme de l'incroyance2 for the same series and then becoming engaged in
other projects. Although his name appears as that of a coauthor and
although he did furnish an initial outline, the actual work of writing devolved
upon Martin, a formidably energetic and industrious scholar who now
presides over a branch of the French knowledge industry devoted to the
history of the book.
This prolonged, complex production history has led to a certain tension
between plan and execution. Febvre's preface and chapter headings reflect
his idiosyncratic, evocative, impressionistic style and provide somewhat
deceptive packaging for the prosaic contents, loaded with facts and figures,
which are supplied by Martin. Readers who are curious about Lucien
Febvre's views on "the impact of printing" should not be deceived by the
misleading subtitle tacked on to the English version. There is nothing in
L'Apparition du livre which comes close to resembling the seminal passages
on "L'Imprimerie et ses effets" in La ProbWme de lincroyance (pp. 418
ff.). Indeed, there is very little in the volume under review on the effects of
the advent of printing, and what little there is seems disappointingly trite.
The problems which most intrigued Febvre and which are still being tackled
by many of his disciples are different from those with which Martin is
concerned. Unlike other French scholars, such as Robert Mandrou, who
have also written on the French book trade, Martin is less interested in the
problem of 'mentalites" than in administrative and institutional issues. As
one can see from his more recent masterwork, the two-volume Lihre bi
I Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, L'Apparitiondu livre, L'Evolution de
l'humanite (Paris. 1958).
2 Lucien Febvre, Le Probleme de lincrovance aiC XVI' si/cl:
La Religion de
Rabelais (Paris, 1942).
Permission to reprint a book review in this section may be obtained only from the author.

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Book Reviews

491

Paris,3 he is immensely well informed on the production, distribution, and


consumption of printed books in early modem France. In L'Apparitiondu
livre he also provides guidance to trends elsewhere in Western Europe and
has enlisted the aid of collaboratorsto provide brief sketches (so brief as to
be almost worthless in my view) of developments in Eastern Europe, Asia,
and the Americas.
In sketching the institutional and economic context of early printing, in
handlingproblems associated with official controls and clandestine channels,
in providing a close-up view of major printers and their firms, and in
outlining a general 'geography" of book trade patterns, Martin offers a
historical expertise which is lacking in other surveys produced by "bookmen" and library scientists. Comparedto S. H. Steinberg's Five Hundred
Years of Printing,4 which races over the last five centuries, and Rudolf
Hirsch's densely detailed Printing, Selling and Reading,5 which stops short
a century after Gutenberg, the volume under review has the additional
advantageof covering an interval that makes sense-both in terms of print
technology and periodizationschemes, for the '"earlymodem" era coincides
with the age of the handpress. The work also has the merit of providing a
full bibliographicalapparatus; it is richly annotated and contains a magnificent classified bibliography.Despite inevitable outdating after a passage
of eighteen years, this bibliographyprovides helpful guidance to a backlog of
special studies, and it seems regrettablethat the English editors have seen fit
to omit it from their version without supplying an alternative or even an
explanation.
Although one might wish for a new edition containing a supplementary
section covering the last two decades of research, the 1958volume holds up
well as a useful survey of the emergence and expansion of the printed book
trade in early modern Europe. It seems to me to be less successful in its
effort to integrate this topic into the more general history of Western
civilization. For one thing, it shares with other volumes in this series a
tendency to confuse the evolution of French culture with that of all humanity and offers a parochial French view of a truly cosmopolitan enterprise.
Emphasis on French developments may be partly justified by considering
that the period covered in this volume coincides with the French hegemony
in Europe and with the displacementof Latin by French as a cosmopolitan
language. Nevertheless, foreign firms played a leading role in the output of
French-language presses, while Paris never did serve (as did Venice,
Antwerp, and Amsterdam)as a central city of the early modem Republicof
Letters. To be sure, these points are made clear in the excellent account of
the 'geography of the book." But they are obscured in the strategic final
chapter where an effort is made to relate the book trade to concurrent
trends associated with humanism, Protestantism,early modern science, and
the rise of the vemaculars. In the section on the Reformation,for example,
preoccupation with French developments leads to serious distortion. The
Lutheran revolt in Germany is sketched in the first eleven pages, the
remainingtwenty-seven deal with French affairs; about the Reformationand
I Henri-JeanMartin.Liurepouiaoirset societe a Paris au XVII siecle (1598-1701), 2
vols. (Geneva, 1969).
4 S. H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing, rev. ed. (London, 1961).
Rudolf Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550, 2d ed. (Wiesbaden,
1974).

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492 Book Reviews


the printed book trade throughout the rest of Western Europe nothing is
said.

This final chapter, which is evocatively titled "Le Livre, ce ferment"


(prosaicallyrenderedas "The Book as a Force for Change" in the English
version), is unsuccessful in other ways. Flaws which run through the
volume entailing uncertain focus and weak powers of analysis are most
visible here. To describe how "the book" acted as "a force for change" one
would have to go back at least to the late Roman Empire and the advent of
the codex. The real point of departurefor this volume is not the shift from
roll to codex but from script to print. Its real subject is not the advent of the
book but the advent of a duplicatingprocess which changed the nature of
the book and of other written materials. From title to final chapter heading,
however, all labels point the reader in the wrong direction, while the author
all too often tries to have things both ways. The "ridiculousthesis that the
Reformationwas the child of the printingpress," for example, is scornfully
dismissed by pointing to the book: "no book has ever sufficed to change
anybody's mind." Then confusion is compounded by discussion of Protestant propaganda embodied in such nonbooks as handbills, posters, and
broadsheets (pp. 433-35).
This basic confusion helps to blunt the cutting edge of every attempt at
analysis. That the treatment of the major cultural developments of early
modern times is, to say the least, uninspired may be judged from the
following excerpts: "All over the place but especially in Italy where
humanism had already developed before, interest in the civilisations of
antiquity and in the Latin language was growing . . . (p. 253)." "Printing
does not seem to have played much part in developing scientific theory at
the start althoughit seems to have helped draw public attention to technical
matters . . . a new outlook . . . was already apparent in the numerous
technical advances made in as many fields in the first half of the 15th
century. And printingwas, after all, simply the most spectacular" (p. 259).
I have deliberatelycited from the new English version to supply evidence
in supportof my negative verdict concerningthe recent translation. Even in
the more smoothly written, clear French original, however, the reader will
find that description rather than analysis is the author's strong point.
Unfortunately,he has been ill served by those responsible for the English
version on all counts. Grantedthat Lucien Febvre's style is notoriously hard
to translate and that chapter headings presented difficulties, Martin's clear
French could have been rendered into clear English. The careless handling
of propernames (Peiresc appearsas Pairesc on p. 154; Omont as Ormonton
p. 351), the inconsistent use of French and English forms (Henry of and
Margueritede Navarre), the puzzling failure to follow the French index
where its guidance might have helped (look up "paper" in both indexes),
and other similardefects impairthe book's value as a useful reference work
and make things unnecessarily difficult for the uninformedreader. A preface to the French volume by Paul Chalus, outliningthe volume's production
history, has been dropped, along with the classified bibliography;footnotes
have been removed to the back of the book; a misleading subtitle has been
tacked on to the cover; yet there is no editorial note informingthe reader
that the French original has been altered in any way. Indeed, I have found
no indicationof the rationaleor policy followed by those responsiblefor this
translation.
Althougheditors and translatorhave been given no space, the blurbwriter

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Book Reviews

493

on the jacket cover has been given too much. The now-celebratedwork of
Lucien Febvre and the Annales school is featured prominently; Martin's
indefatigablelabors are downplayed. The volume is described as "one of the
most exciting works of cultural history to have been produced in Europe
since the war." Readers hoping to find something along the lines of the
work of a Huizinga, a Burckhardt,or a Lucien Febvre are bound to be
disappointed.For all Martin'ssterling virtues, he is an unexcitingauthor and
this translationmakes him unfairlyhard to read. Teachers who recommend
it to non-French-readingstudents will be runninga risk. Instead of stimulating interest in an intrinsicallyfascinating topic, The Coming of the Book in
the English version is likely to have a deadening effect.
ELIZABETH

L.

EISENSTEIN

University of Michigan
Methodology of History. By Jerzy Topolski. Translated by 0. Wojtasiew'iCZ.
Synthese Library, number 88.
Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1977. Pp. x+690. $39.50.
This huge volume by a Polish Marxist, which has been translated into
adequate, if not impeccable, English, is in many ways an impressive one. As
one would expect, it contains extensive discussions of the nature and types
of historical sources and of various strategies of historical criticism and
research, including a long and rather conservative chapter on the quantitative revolution. But it also goes well beyond what most American readers
would normally call "methodology" of history, involving itself in problems
of theory of meaning and theory of knowledge generally; ontological concerns about the nature of space and time; the analysis of basic historiographical concepts like fact, explanation, cause, and law; and the characterization of the historian's subject matter in general terms, the author's own
word for the whole package being "historics." By way of preface, there is a
160-page survey of the history of reflection on history and historical inquiry
from the Greeks to the present day. This is a story in six rather unequal
stages, which are described as pragmatic, critical, erudite, structural, logical,
and dialectical, and for which exemplars are found in such figures as
Herodotus, Voltaire, Ranke, Weber, the logical positivists, and Marx. The
range of reading which is drawn on in filling out this ambitious scheme is
truly astonishing. While Polish sources are understandably prominent, the
works cited in other languages would provide an excellent select bibliography of the theory of historiography from the standpoint of a number of
schools and interests.
Topolski's Marxism leads him at times to quote from Lenin and other
authorities in ways that are rather tiresome. However, what is disappointing
about the book is not that it argues dogmatically from a Marxist point of
view-that could have been a valuable exercise-but that too often it argues
only feebly, or fails to produce anything that could be called an argument at
all. On issue after issue, after identifying allegedly "extreme" positions, the
author simply reports his own "opinion," which generally falls somewhere
in between. Among the very controversial theses he propounds with
scarcely a vestige of supporting argument, and which this reviewer will not
be alone in wanting to resist, are the following (I select only a few at
random): all antecedent knowledge brought by historians to the interpreta-

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