The monograph series Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture showcases the plurilingual and multicultural quality of medieval literature and actively seeks to promote research that not only focuses on the array of subjects medievalists now pursue - in literature, theology, and philosophy, in social, political, jurisprudential, and intellectual history, the history of art, and the history of science - but also that combines these subjects productively. It offers innovative studies on topics that may include, but are not limited to, manuscript and book history; languages and literatures of the global Middle Ages; race and the post-colonial; the digital humanities, media and performance; music; medicine; the history of affect and the emotions; the literature and practices of devotion; the theory and history of gender and sexuality, ecocriticism and the environment; theories of aesthetics; medievalism. Marketing English Books is about how the earliest printers moulded demand and created new markets. Until the advent of print, the sale of books had been primarily a bespoke trade, but printers faced a new sales challenge: how to sell hundreds of identical books to individuals, who had many other demands on their purses. This book contends that this forced printers to think carefully about marketing and potential demand, for even if they sold through a middleman--as most did--that wholesaler, bookseller, or chapman needed to be convinced the books would attract customers. Marketing English Books sets out, therefore, to show how markets for a wide range of texts were cultivated by English printers between 1476 and 1550 within a wider, European context: devotional tracts; forbidden evangelical books; romances, gests, and bawdy tales; news; pilgrimage guides, souvenirs and advertisements; and household advice. Through close analysis of paratexts--including title-pages, prefaces, tables of contents, envoys, colophons, and images--the book reveals the cultural impact of printers in this often overlooked period. It argues that while print and manuscript continued alongside each other, developments in the marketing of printed texts began to change what readers read and the place of reading in their lives on a larger scale and at a faster pace than had occurred before, shaping their expectations, tastes, and even their practices and beliefs.

About the Author
Alexandra da Costa is a Senior University Lecturer at the Faculty of English in Cambridge. Her research primarily focuses on early printed books meant for an English readership and late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century religious culture. Her previous book, Reforming Printing: Syon Abbey's Defence of Orthodoxy 1524-1535 (OUP, 2012) examined the printed books that Syon Abbey sponsored in the turbulent 1530s, when the Church in England was threatened by both the spread of Lutheran heresy and Henry VIII's desire for greater ecclesiastical control.

Reviews
Da Costa's erudite, impeccably documented, and wide-ranging study convincingly argues for the active agency of printers in creating a reading market for their books in order to survive in the largely untested business of bookselling. With impressive scholarship she has skilfully negotiated the difficulties presented by the patchiness of extant material evidence within the highly complex religious and social environment of the early sixteenth century. * Hilary Maddocks, Script & Print *
da Costa reminds literary scholars of the importance of looking beyond the text, not just to the paratext but also to the economic motives of those who had a hand in producing the text. And for book historians, da Costa's study demonstrates the benefits of looking beyond a single printer, author or genre to see broader trends arise from books that may not have otherwise been studied together. * Mimi Ensley, Journal of British Studies *
Marketing English Books is a valuable resource for readers who wish to understand the book trade as a whole as well as those interested in contextualizing a specific text or genre. It often challenges traditional assumptions about how texts were marketed and offers convincing evidence to support its challenges. * David Eugene Clark, Reformation *
^lMarketing English Books, 1476-1550 succeeds in demonstrating how individual printers could build on previous marketing strategies but also prove themselves innovators by putting those strategies to new uses. * Brenda M. Hosington, Universite de Montreal/University of Warwick, Renaissance and Reformation *
Alexandra da Costa's account of the marketing of early English printed books certainly lives up to the scholarly standards demonstrated in previous Oxford Studies works and responds admirably to the general editors' criterion of interdisciplinary and innovative research. * Brenda M. Hosington, Renaissance and Reformation *
accessible and detailed ... useful to a variety of readers, regardless of prior experience. * David Eugene Clark, Reformation *
this is a readable account of the early history of printing in England that succeeds in revealing the strategies that printers deployed in the presentation of individual works * Margaret Connolly, Journal of Early Book Society *
Throughout every chapter, da Costa brings a wide range of examples from the genre under examination, which gives a richly detailed picture of the English print market during its first seventy-five years. Her meticulous research focuses scholarly attention on the often-overlooked contributions of early printers, particularly those beyond the frequently studied pair of Caxton and de Worde, and shows the potential abundance of insights that can be drawn from close analysis of the material aspects of printed texts. * Rhonda Sharrah, Comitatus *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198847588
Author Alexandra da Costa
Format Hardback
Page Count 290
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 592g
Dimensions(mm) 22mm * 165mm * 240mm