Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Buringh, Eltjo
• Van Zanden, Jan Luiten

Titel

Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries

Ist Teil von

• The Journal of economic history, 2009-06, Vol.69 (2), p.409-445

Ort / Verlag

New York, USA: Cambridge University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2009

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This article estimates the development of manuscripts and printed books in Western Europe over the course of thirteen centuries. As these estimates show, medieval and early modern book production was a dynamic economic sector, with an average annual growth rate of around one percent. Rising production after the middle of the fifteenth century probably resulted from lower book prices and higher literacy. To explain the dynamics of medieval book production, we provide estimates for urbanization rates and for the numbers of universities and monasteries. Monasteries seem to have been most important in the early period, while universities and laypeople dominated the later medieval demand for books.