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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.