Ian Maclean. Scholarship, Commerce, Religion: The Learned Book in the Age of Confessions, 1560–1630. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012. 400p. $49.50 (ISBN 978-0674062085).

Abstract

Based on the Lyell Lectures in Bibliography that Professor Ian Maclean delivered at Oxford in 2009 and 2010, Maclean’s book has expanded these lectures to produce an interesting, detail-rich history of the late Renaissance book market for scholarly works.

Though Maclean concentrates on the European learned book market, he also does a fine job of evoking the realities of the general European book trade during 100 years he covers; consequently, someone without a strong knowledge of the history of the book will find this work informative. Maclean includes chapters covering all aspects of the trade: labor, the evolution of some . . .