A PAPER READ BEFORE THE FORTNIGHTLY CLUB OF ROCHESTER NEW YORK
This edition features
• illustrations
Excerpt
PRINTING did not make the Renaissance; the Renaissance made printing. Printing did not begin the publication and dissemination of books. There were libraries of vast extent in ancient Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome. There were universities centuries before Gutenberg where the few instructed the many in the learning treasured up in books, and where both scholars and professional scribes multiplied copies of books both old and new. At the outset of any examination of the influence of printing on the Renaissance it is necessary to remind ourselves that the intellectual life of the ancient and the mediaeval world was built upon the written word. There is a naive view in which ancient literature is conceived as existing chiefly in the autograph manuscripts and original documents of a few great centers to which all ambitious students must have resort. A very little inquiry into the multiplication of books before printing shows us how erroneous is this view.
![Printing and the Renaissance [Illustrated]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/2940013878686_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg)
![Printing and the Renaissance [Illustrated]](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
![Printing and the Renaissance [Illustrated]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/2940013878686_p0_v1_s600x595.jpg)
