Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Note on transcription
- 1 Printers, authors and the rise of the editor
- 2 Editors and their methods
- 3 Humanists, friars and others: editing in Venice and Florence, 1470–1500
- 4 Bembo and his influence, 1501–1530
- 5 Venetian editors and ‘the grammatical norm’, 1501–1530
- 6 Standardization and scholarship: editing in Florence, 1501–1530
- 7 Towards a wider readership: editing in Venice, 1531–1545
- 8 The editor triumphant: editing in Venice, 1546–1560
- 9 In search of a cultural identity: editing in Florence, 1531–1560
- 10 Piety and elegance: editing in Venice, 1561–1600
- 11 A ‘true and living image’: editing in Florence, 1561–1600
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of Italian editions 1470–1600
- Index of manuscripts and annotated copies
- General index
1 - Printers, authors and the rise of the editor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Note on transcription
- 1 Printers, authors and the rise of the editor
- 2 Editors and their methods
- 3 Humanists, friars and others: editing in Venice and Florence, 1470–1500
- 4 Bembo and his influence, 1501–1530
- 5 Venetian editors and ‘the grammatical norm’, 1501–1530
- 6 Standardization and scholarship: editing in Florence, 1501–1530
- 7 Towards a wider readership: editing in Venice, 1531–1545
- 8 The editor triumphant: editing in Venice, 1546–1560
- 9 In search of a cultural identity: editing in Florence, 1531–1560
- 10 Piety and elegance: editing in Venice, 1561–1600
- 11 A ‘true and living image’: editing in Florence, 1561–1600
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of Italian editions 1470–1600
- Index of manuscripts and annotated copies
- General index
Summary
The first century of printing in italy saw a steady increase in the importance of the editor of vernacular texts. For the three decades after the appearance of the first dated vernacular book in 1470, the fact that an editor had been at work was not always considered worth mentioning, nor was particular attention drawn to it. Often editors were not identified; and even when they were, their names might be hidden away in a dedicatory letter or at the end of a book, in some concluding verses or in a colophon. However, around the start of the sixteenth century, this situation began to change. First of all, title pages of vernacular books announced the fact that they had been revised or that they contained additional material. The first page of the Venetian Petrarch of 1500, for example, said that the poems had been ‘newly corrected’ (‘correcti novamente’). As competition between Venetian editions of Petrarch grew more intense, the next step was to use title pages to identify editors by name. One would only have learned the identity of the editor of the 1500 Petrarch, a certain Nicolò Peranzone, from reading the preface or the colophon. In 1508, though, the edition printed by Bartolomeo de Zanni included Peranzone's name on the title page, pointing out that he had corrected the poems ‘with many shrewd and excellent additions’ (‘con molte acute et excellente additione’).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Print Culture in Renaissance ItalyThe Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600, pp. 1 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994