Person:

Blair, Ann

This article presents the contributions of Dr. Kathryn Schwartz (1984-2022), book historian of the modern Middle East. Her study of the origins and impact of the printing press in late Ottoman Egypt has challenged some long-standing assumptions in the historiography. She has also put into question the long-held belief that Ottomans banned printing. More broadly, her work has challenged Eurocentric approaches to this topic and has innovated by combining material and intellectual history.

We study the paratexts in Erasmus’ imprints with Johann then Hieronymus Froben of Basel between 1514 and 1536. From Valentina Sebastiani’s bibliography of Johann Froben we observe that Erasmus was a more abundant paratexter than other authors who published with Johann Froben. We supplement that work with a bibliography of Erasmus’ imprints with Hieronymus Froben. We note trends across the Erasmus-Froben corpus, including: a remarkable number of imprints, equally balanced between new editions and re-editions, abundant dedications without correlation to format, indexes in folio volumes especially, a growing attention to errata lists over time. These patterns shed light on one author-printer partnership but also on more general trends in learned publishing in the early 16th century.