The history of printing encompasses a broad range of subject matter, everything from paper and typography to printing processes, illustration and binding. One can build an extraordinary private library by focusing on any one of these.
Although printing from movable metal type was known in Korea as early as the 13th century, most general histories of early printing tend to focus on the introduction of movable metal type to Western Europe by Gutenberg and his successors.
One of the earliest of these general histories was James Watson's The history of the art of printing: containing an account of its invention and progress in Europe; with the names of famous printers, the places of their birth, and the works printed by them...(1713). Although the first edition of this title (shown below) is difficult to come by, there is a readily available reprint edition that was published in 1965:
Leon Voet's The Golden Compasses: A History and Evaluation of the Printing and Publishing Activities of the Officina Plantiniana at Antwerp (1969-1972) is another such title. The Officina Plantinania was one of the greatest of the early printing houses--certainly Belgium's all-time most important printing house, and arguably the all-time most important European printing house of the 16th and 17th centuries. Founded in 1555 by Christoffel Plantin (who would become the greatest typographer of his day), its operations managed to survive until 1876 (under Plantin's successors, the Moretuses). [Voet was curator of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, opened in 1877]:
Another important general history of early printing is Edwin Hall's Sweynheym and Pannartz and the Origins of Printing in Italy: German Technology and Italian Humanism in Renaissance Rome (1991). Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweinheim, who are forever linked in the annals of printing, had worked with Gutenberg before establishing Italy's first printing press (at Subiaco) in 1464. Regrettably, Hall's work has never (to our knowledge) been released in a trade edition, and is very difficult to come by:
Probably the most readily available general history of printing is S. H. Steinberg's Five Hundred Years of Printing (rev. 2001). This general history includes a number of chapters on the significant technological changes that have rewritten the history of printing over the past several decades:
Tomorrow we will examine a few more general histories of printing, including a couple that are relevant to the Americas....
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