Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 1340-1520 [Hardback]

As a new digital era increasingly impacts on the 'age of print', we are ever more conscious of the way in which information is packaged and received. The influence of the material form on the reading process was no less important during the gradual shift from manuscript to early print culture. Focusing on the physical structure and presentation of manuscripts and printed books containing texts by one of the most influential authors of the medieval period, Rhiannon Daniels traces the evolving social, cultural, and economic profile of Boccaccio's readership and the scribes and printers who laboured to reproduce three of his works: the Teseida , Decameron , and De mulieribus claris .

"This descriptive study provides many details that will benefit any scholar interested in the reception of Boccaccio’s works before the transformations they undergo in the later Cinquecento."
Martin Eisner
Renaissance Quarterly (63.2, 2010, 545-46)

"Original and highly detailed... Chapter 1 could usefully be recommended to students of the history of the book in Italy for the clarity with which it presents all of the aspects that need to be considered in a discussion of readership, reception, production, and paratext, in both manuscripts and printed books... A significant contribution to the history of the book in Italy."
Jane Everson
Modern Language Review (106.2, April 2011, 564-66)

"This book is a valuable and stimulating contribution to the reception history of Boccaccio. Particularly interesting is the way that Daniels looks at manuscripts and printed editions that have not been given their due, and the reader will constantly come across intriguing details."
K. P. Clarke
Medium Aevum (74, 2010)