Gutenberg Biographie Recommendation. L. J. Coster Recommendation.
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Cristóbal Henestrosa said:I don’t know this book, but:“the Gutenberg revolution”“he aimed to make a fortune”“the beginning of the modern world”is neither critical nor historiographic, but fairly downright mystifying and hagiographic.The cover design of this edition speaks that very language: fast food for the simple mind.It may be nice reading, nevertheless.If one is interested in German works about the topic, I know of the concise and serious books by Helmut Presser (1967) and Albert Kapr (1977). There are other, more recent works, I’m pretty sure (but I’m not up-to date about this field of study).However, since Stephen Fry is credited on the cover of John Man’s book: his own remarkable program about Gutenberg’s legacy is well worth watching, at any rate.
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Andreas Stötzner said:“he aimed to make a fortune” [...] is neither critical nor historiographic, but fairly downright mystifying and hagiographic.If one is interested in German works about the topic, I know of the concise and serious books by [...] Albert Kapr (1977).
* Ooops. I missed that you are referring to this tiny Insel-Verlag thing rather than to the later more elaborate version:
† Albert Kapr: Johann Gutenberg. The Man and his Invention. Scholar Press (GB) & Ashgate Publishing Company (US), 1996.
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is neither critical nor historiographic, but fairly downright mystifying and hagiographic.The cover design of this edition speaks that very language: fast food for the simple mind.Hi, Andreas. While I can understand the reasons of your skepticism, I can tell you that I DID read the book, and that is why I am recommending it, even if the cover and the back cover copy is misleading—we agree on that.For what is worth, now that you mention the remarkable Stephen Fry’s program… well, John Man actually appears there—briefly, to be fair.
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And does anyone know of any good and critical studies on Laurens Janszoon Coster? So far everything sounds like nationalistic mystification on the level of the Piltdown Man, politely called a legend.
I have not read him, but I am informed that one of the main defenders of Coster was Hessels:
https://www.amazon.com/Haarlem-Birth-Place-Printing-Classic-Reprint/dp/1331964687
And there is this other book who examines Hessels’ claims:
Now, FWIW, I remember the first chapter of Loxley’s Type. The Secret History of Letters. It is certainly NOT a critical study about Coster but rather a good collection of nice stories about type history. Anyway, in the first chapter he makes IMHO a good argument about why we might allow doubts about Coster being the real inventor of the printing press.
In addition, in the first pages of Dutch Type, Middendorp (a Dutch man, recently deceased) wrote that Coster “was probably concocted. His name does not appear in writing until 1588, and there is a lack of formal evidence for a printer of that name having existed. The Coster legend is mainly a fascinating piece of cultural history: four hundred years of historical research, forgery, ardent patriotism and political strategy, resulting in a virtually indestructible myth.” You can read it here (p. 14).
Disclaimer: I am not a Coster expert. Or a Gutenberg expert, in any case.
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Cristóbal Henestrosa Thank you. O ordered a different book about Gutenberg (I can read German), but I will give it a chance also.I found the book of Antonius van der Linde (and Hessels) in Internet Archive luckily.1
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