Overview

A fresh reading of Aldus Manutius, preeminent in the history of the printed book. Aldus Manutius is perhaps the greatest gure in the history of the printed book: in Venice, Europe's capital of printing, he invented the italic type and issued more rst editions of the classics than anyone before or since, as well as Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the most beautiful and mysterious printed book of the Italian Renaissance. This is the rst monograph in English on Aldus Manutius in over forty years. It shows how Aldus redened the role of a book printer, from mere manual laborer to a learned publisher. As a consequence, Aldus participated in the same debates as contemporaries such as Leonardo da Vinci and Erasmus of Rotterdam, making this book an insight into their world too.

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9781789147797

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"""Valuable for scholars of the history of the book. . . . Recommended.""-- ""Choice"" ""Aldus Manutius is the bibliophile's bibliophile . . . Anyone who has sat in the park with a paperback has Aldus to thank for freeing the book from the library, the desk, the metal chain that sometimes bound books to shelves . . . Margolis's biography - the first in English for forty years - was occasioned by the 500th anniversary of Aldus's death, an anniversary that prompted a flurry of international exhibitions, catalogues and scholarship . . . Margolis's book is an elegant visual biography that beautifully reproduces woodcuts, fonts, paintings, coins, letters, dedications, prefaces. It's a cultural history of Aldus the myth, not Aldus the man. A stylish book, worthy of its stylish subject.""-- ""London Review of Books"" ""Margolis's study of Aldus Manutius is a hugely thoughtful, stimulating, and innovative reassessment of the career of this key Renaissance figure. He seeks to understand the persistent myths which have accreted around Aldus by recontextualizing them with unexpected and illuminating connections and through detailed and fresh analysis of certain phases and achievements in his life. The result is a vivid and persuasively argued view of Aldus's cultural significance.""--Stephen Parkin, curator of the British Library's Printed Heritage Collections, 1450-1600"

""The central argument of Oren Margolis's short, excellent new biography is that Aldus's primary concern was not the books themselves, but the intellectual programme they represented. Far from being an inky-fingered pressman, Margolis's Aldus is a serious, sometimes waspish humanist, determined to shape the scholarship of his day by bringing the classical Greek corpus into print in rigorously edited texts.""-- ""Times Literary Supplement"" ""Margolis consciously eschews the idea of a conventional biography, announcing early on that he will instead argue for Manutius's role as the inventor of publishing as we know it today . . . Margolis consistently displays both breadth and depth of knowledge in his analysis of early modern printing, Renaissance humanism, and the book trade . . . an erudite and well-researched book about an important figure of the Italian Renaissance . . . As the title suggests, Aldus Manutius was responsible for the invention of the modern publisher.""-- ""Sixteenth Century Journal"" ""Valuable for scholars of the history of the book. . . . Recommended.""-- ""Choice"" ""Aldus Manutius is the bibliophile's bibliophile . . . Anyone who has sat in the park with a paperback has Aldus to thank for freeing the book from the library, the desk, the metal chain that sometimes bound books to shelves . . . Margolis's biography - the first in English for forty years - was occasioned by the 500th anniversary of Aldus's death, an anniversary that prompted a flurry of international exhibitions, catalogues and scholarship . . . Margolis's book is an elegant visual biography that beautifully reproduces woodcuts, fonts, paintings, coins, letters, dedications, prefaces. It's a cultural history of Aldus the myth, not Aldus the man. A stylish book, worthy of its stylish subject.""-- ""London Review of Books"" ""Margolis's study of Aldus Manutius is a hugely thoughtful, stimulating, and innovative reassessment of the career of this key Renaissance figure. He seeks to understand the persistent myths which have accreted around Aldus by recontextualizing them with unexpected and illuminating connections and through detailed and fresh analysis of certain phases and achievements in his life. The result is a vivid and persuasively argued view of Aldus's cultural significance.""--Stephen Parkin, curator of the British Library's Printed Heritage Collections, 1450-1600

"""Aldus Manutius is the bibliophile's bibliophile . . . Anyone who has sat in the park with a paperback has Aldus to thank for freeing the book from the library, the desk, the metal chain that sometimes bound books to shelves . . . Margolis's biography - the first in English for forty years - was occasioned by the 500th anniversary of Aldus's death, an anniversary that prompted a flurry of international exhibitions, catalogues and scholarship . . . Margolis's book is an elegant visual biography that beautifully reproduces woodcuts, fonts, paintings, coins, letters, dedications, prefaces. It's a cultural history of Aldus the myth, not Aldus the man. A stylish book, worthy of its stylish subject.""-- ""London Review of Books"" ""Margolis's study of Aldus Manutius is a hugely thoughtful, stimulating, and innovative reassessment of the career of this key Renaissance figure. He seeks to understand the persistent myths which have accreted around Aldus by recontextualizing them with unexpected and illuminating connections and through detailed and fresh analysis of certain phases and achievements in his life. The result is a vivid and persuasively argued view of Aldus's cultural significance.""--Stephen Parkin, curator of the British Library's Printed Heritage Collections, 1450-1600"

"""Margolis's study of Aldus Manutius is a hugely thoughtful, stimulating, and innovative reassessment of the career of this key Renaissance figure. He seeks to understand the persistent myths which have accreted around Aldus by recontextualizing them with unexpected and illuminating connections and through detailed and fresh analysis of certain phases and achievements in his life. The result is a vivid and persuasively argued view of Aldus's cultural significance.""--Stephen Parkin, curator of the British Library's Printed Heritage Collections, 1450-1600"

Author Information

Oren Margolis is a lecturer in renaissance studies at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of The Politics of Culture in Quattrocento Europe: Rene of Anjou in Italy.

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