Frédéric Barbier (1952–2023)

Initial note: this is a translation from the French of: L'Europe de Gutenberg : le livre et l'invention de la modernité occidentale, XIIIe-XVIe siècle (2006). I had no issues with the translation.

This is an outstanding work of scholarship, but I'm going to address the one problem I had with the structure of this translation of Frédéric Barbier's GUTENBERG'S EUROPE. I'll do this by example.

In chapter 6, "Innovation," I run across the following statement with note number: ". . . modern investigative methods sometimes make it possible to find variants that were previously difficult to spot.(24)" When I then flip to the extensive notes section, grouped by chapter as an appendix, I find the citation for chapter six, number 24 to be: Wolfenbüttel 1990 for example, p. 30." Wanting to find a full citation, I first noted that there was no single section for a bibliography of sources to determine to what "Wolfenbüttel"refers. Thinking that this might be a shorthand for a previous citation, I meticulously looked at all previous citations for chapters 1 through 6 and found other references solely to "Wolfenbüttel" and nothing else.

After a thorough inspection of this work, I found in the section following the foreword, "Abbreviations," the full citation for Wolfenbüttel: Gutenberg : 550 jahre buchdruck in europa. (Wolfenbüttel, 1990).

Moral? The core audience for this book is one for whom "Wolfenbüttel, 1990" is probably a known reference. Similarly, ISTC in the abbreviations refers to the "Incunabula short title catalogue," a work with which I am familiar, but others may not be. A simple comprehensive list of sources with more detailed citation information would have made following up citations (at least some of them) a lot easier. I'm certain that others, including those in the reading audience who are not already familiar with this field of study, would not readily think to look in the "Abbreviations" section for a more detailed citation.

Nothing in this book was new to me, but the thoroughness and breadth of the historical context of Europe in Gutenberg's time makes this compelling. I'm keeping in my library right next to Principles of Bibliographical Description (St. Paul's Bibliographies) by Fredson Bowers, A New Introduction to Bibliography by Philip Gaskell]], and Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing by Joseph Moxon.

Though not beyond the casual reader, this is definitely a tome directed towards analytical bibliographers, special collections librarians dealing with incunabula and the history of printing, and uber-book nerds like me.

Note: Book received via Amazon Vine reviewers program.… (mais)