Book offer (history)
The history of books on offer is part of research into book studies. While the history of literature concentrates on the literary genres , with novels , dramas and poems moving into the center, the history of the books on offer is broader. It encompasses all types of books and it usually includes newspapers and magazines in its perspective. What is particularly interesting is the nature of the offer: how was this offer sorted at different locations?
In this initial situation, bid studies usually only provide detailed answers after evaluating individual documents . Individual bookstores may have recorded their offer. Book trade catalogs, the exhibition catalogs , provide information on the range of books that were presented at the book fairs . Evaluations of modern computer catalogs are added.
The major fields of offer and their developments
The range of books is older than the printing press. Even in the Middle Ages, a market for handwritten copied texts and bound books developed, which were privately owned by scholars as well as citizens. The civil use ranged from the possession of precious manuscripts of medieval songs and heroic poems down to the possession of edifying writings: holy lives, prayer books were popular here.
With the introduction of pressure: a high and a low market
With the printing, the market was divided into two parts: Scientific works were offered to learned circles and specialist libraries. A simple literature addressed the "Illiterati", with a wide range of books of everyday use. This included entertainment in the form of books with witty stories or brief heroic epics , including works of daily religious use: saints legends, prayer books, exhortations for moral life. There were also practical guides: health books, books with practical instructions.
In the course of the first 100 years of pressure, the cheap market segment was geared towards a lower audience, which was mainly served with standard titles, with well-known and well-read books, which are increasingly crude - including the woodcuts that are still repeated in the same books to standard scenes - were disseminated. Linguistic revisions turned out to be minor and careless, at the beginning of the 18th century small books in the typical quarto format with deleted texts were bought on the cheap market ; At the beginning of the 19th century, literary studies , which had just been founded at the time, came across these titles: Folk books became the terminology used retrospectively.
The following (greatly abbreviated) list gives an overview of the range of titles that the publishers T. Norris and A. Bettesworth had in store in London in 1719 in the special market segment - it includes European narrative literature such as The Seven Wise Masters , religious edification with the works of Bunyan as well as medical education in Sexualibus - Aristotle's Masterpiece promised more here than the customer received. Jokes and instruction (in history and spelling with the London Spelling Book ) were added. The titles are only briefly quoted - customers knew what to ask for:
|
History of Reynard the Fox. |
_______ Good news. |
First newspapers
Newspapers developed from single-sheet prints of memorable events, where woodcuts and terse text reports came together. The periodic appearance of individual sheets developed like an international news market in the 17th century: the sheets took messages from one another and from the middle of the 17th century increasingly established a single European news stand. Publication three times a week became the rule for most papers well into the 18th century. Daily newspapers developed in London at the beginning of the 18th century, where they took on the tasks of the events calendar and advertising leaflet. In the smaller cities (London had half a million inhabitants at the beginning of the 18th century, cities such as Leipzig, Munich and Cologne had 20 to 40,000 inhabitants), the newspaper concentrated on foreign policy reporting from the early 17th century, which it also did in front of local ones Protected censorship.
For readers with taste: the “belles lettres” as a new market segment
With the 16th century, the range of European books varied. Between the learned and the writings for simple readers, there was a separate range of books for readers with education and taste. Novels, memoirs, elegant epics in verse were not interested in the academic sciences theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and philosophy, and they passed by the lower audience, which was overwhelmed by the artful language and the price of beautifully made books. The readers were largely educated and well-educated women - in cities like Paris, women played a significant role in the city's cultural life, with salons where people met for educated conversation. The readers of the new product were men with education who, in addition to their academic work, kept their freedom open. Nobles with a taste for scholarly subjects, but an aversion to the schooly business of academic learning, were added, citizens and bon vivants who were looking for a living as authors were among the audience of the new market segment.
The new product initially appeared mainly on the French market. Their label “ belles lettres ” was cleverly chosen. The "Lettres" were the field of science, but here a sub-field of "beautiful science" was opened. The German translation "beautiful sciences" came into fashion in the 18th century, it was preceded by the translation "gallant sciences", which emphasized the fashion aspect and the fact that here an education for women and men with taste compared to the "pedantic" academic scholarship of universities arose. Translated primarily in French, the new commodity had a European market - it sold in France and the rest of Europe, which used French as the most elegant living language.
In the second half of the 17th century it became profitable in London to present the latest French belles lettres in English. English authors translated and soon launched their own editions of ancient classics, elegant memoirs, and modern novels in a high new style. The German book supply lagged, which was mainly due to the fact that the customers of the belles lettres appreciated French original editions. A second was added: Germany had a firmly established university landscape that was traditionally committed to Latin teaching. From the 1680s onwards, she perceived the new formation from the field of belles lettres as a threat. Scholars like Christian Thomasius confessed to her and began teaching in German - they also praised the French market for elegant books. The pioneers of the belles lettres in Germany received their salaries in university life. In London they tried, who shared the taste, to live from the market and to produce for it in their own language.
It was not until the 18th century that large-scale production of German-language fiction began . At the same time, it found a new focus on the poetry of the nation, the field that broke through as the literary market from the 18th to the 19th century.
The national literature as a branch of the belles lettres
With the 18th and 19th centuries a separate area of national competition and interest arose within the belles lettres: The area from which national literature was formed (for more details see the article Literature ). The new market, largely promoted by the literary debate, which changed its subject at this point, created a field of broad national exchange, and in the course of it an educational subject that could be introduced as national literature in school lessons.
Up until this point, theology and science were the major areas of the book market. As a result of this development, fiction has replaced theology in books on offer - and in national discussions. The current division of the book offer came about: The largest field is fiction production. In it, "sophisticated literature" has its own area. Compared to fiction, there is specialist literature. Separate fields lie in the border field between fiction and specialist literature with a wide range of advice literature , non-fiction, cookbooks, religion, philosophy and esotericism.
The total amount of printed goods
At the moment it is difficult to get an overview of the total amount of printed goods in their historical development. The evaluations in the English-speaking area are very advanced thanks to the structure of the English Short Title Catalog . This began as the " Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalog", a computer catalog of all prints from the 18th century, and was later expanded to include all prints published in the English-speaking area between the introduction of the printing press and the year 1800.
The statistics on the right show the total number of titles after individual printing years. Periodicals, newspapers and magazines are excluded. The statistics immediately show a discontinuity: the book supply developed steadily until 1640, after which it was subject to massive fluctuations.
The peculiarity results from the emergence of politically religious pamphlets. 1641/42 is the date of the English Revolution. The highlights of the press activity, which can lead to particular fluctuations in the statistics: Charles I was beheaded in 1649 , then the civil war broke out, which ended in 1660 with the restoration of power. The bottom line was that book production fell in these years. It rises from 1660 to 1720, with years of political debate culminating. The war against the Netherlands created such debates in the 1670s, the Glorious Revolution 1688/89 hit the books with massive production, the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701/02, the change of power in London in 1709/10. The Walpole era that begins in the 1720s creates a quieter development. Then from the middle of the 18th century a completely different rise begins with a curve instead of massive swings. The public is growing in the colonies, literacy creates a growing public, and fiction is now becoming a determining market segment.
The big fluctuations in the statistics harbor their own distortions: During the press campaigns, many publications that responded to one another within a few days were published, very short titles that were reprinted within a few weeks if a dozen editions were sold.
If you wanted to produce more informative statistics on the supply of books, you would have to include the newspapers and journals in the statistics and try to extrapolate the volume of paper - that would reduce the importance of the short titles and give a clearer picture of the purpose for which the printing presses were actually running.
Comparable data are not available for the German-speaking area. The VD 16 and VD 18 are comparatively young projects that do not yet allow statistical projections. The measurement catalogs of the German-speaking area, which recorded the supply in the 17th and 18th centuries, are, on the other hand, a questionable source, since they only list what ended up in supraregional trade: a long-term marketable product, mainly from Protestant publishers.
Volumes within the book offer
The measurement catalogs , which were used in the book trade to find out about new publications (and which were no less used for orientation), allow production volumes to be recorded in contemporary assortments. However, they do not provide an overview of the entire range, as only titles for national trade are listed here. From the middle of the 17th century, the southern German Catholic book trade was absent from the German mass catalogs, and regional and short-term productions were underrepresented in all mass catalogs. Newspapers are missing, magazines are poorly represented or not represented at all.
The following statistical breakdowns analyze an English and a German measurement catalog from the early 18th century (Easter 1711). Differences in the market sorting become clear. The German catalog gives more weight to the books of erudition, the English one subdivides into most categories according to new and reissued titles, which highlights the current production, which is gaining particular importance in London in the daily political exchange.
Both statistics offer sums on the right in the red blocks: 56% of the English offer is up-to-date literature in the fields of theology and politics. 70% falls on these two areas at all:
| [DIVINITY.] | 71 | 37% | ||
| REPRINTED. | 24 | 13% | ||
| HISTORY AND POLITICKS. | 35 | 18% | 56% | |
| REPRINTED. | 3 | 2% | 70% | |
| MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES. | 11 | 6% | ||
| REPRINTED. | 4th | 2% | ||
| PHYSICAL AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. | 4th | 2% | ||
| REPRINTED. | 5 | 3% | ||
| PHILOLOGY. | 4th | 2% | ||
| REPRINTED. | 7th | 4% | ||
| POETRY. | 3 | 2% | ||
| REPRINTED. | 2 | 1 % | ||
| MISCELLANIES. | 18th | 9% | ||
| ADVERTISEMENT. | (1) | |||
| 191 | 100% |
The German mass catalog opens with the three major faculties of the sciences: theology, law and medicine (the other subjects fell under the basic philosophical course). 45% of its offer remains determined by theology in the three denominations (the first red column), the proportion of German-language books is currently just as high (the second red column on the right) - with this interim result, the national language is clearly on the advance compared to Latin . The section of "German Historical, Philosophical and Other Books" deserves special attention in the German exhibition catalog. It encompasses the fiction market - novels stand here between memoirs, travel reports and current political journals without being specially labeled. A section of “literature” is missing in both catalogs. “Poetry” notices texts in bound language in the English catalog.
| Libri Theologici Theologorum Augustanae Confessionis | 67 | 10% | ||
| German theological books of the Augsburg Conference relatives | 167 | 25% | ||
| Libri Theologici Theologorum Catholicorum | 35 | 5% | ||
| German theological books of the Catholics | 17th | 3% | ||
| Libri Theologici Reformatæ Religionis | 9 | 1 % | ||
| German theological books of the Reformed | 13 | 2% | 45% | |
| Libri Juridici | 62 | 9% | ||
| German legal books | 16 | 2% | ||
| Libri Medici et Chymici | 19th | 3% | ||
| German medical books | 21st | 3% | ||
| Libri Historici Philosophici et Aliorum Artium-Humanorum | 113 | 17% | ||
| German historical, philosophical and other books | 108 | 16% | 45% | |
| Libri Peregrini Idiomatis | 18th | 3% | ||
| Musical books | 3 | 0.4% | ||
| Libri Futuris Nundinis Prodituri | (92) | |||
| Books, so already finished, but their titles came in too late. | 11 | 2% | ||
| 679 | 100% |
Both measurement catalog cross-sections are snapshots of a larger development, they lead from the book market, which was dominated by theology and the sciences, to the modern book market, in which fiction sets the tone - a market that only developed in the 19th century, covered by major national discussions.
