Inky fingers : the making of books in early modern Europe /

A new book by Grafton (Princeton) is always a cause for celebration. His breathtaking range of knowledge of Latin and vernacular Renaissance texts, and of modern commentaries on them, has enabled him over 40 years to illuminate countless byways of early modern European culture. Except for one chapter on the role of correctors in (and outside) Renaissance printing shops, Inky Fingers is not about printing; it is about authorship, especially how books are made of other books. Grafton begins with the way students were advised to keep choice passages from their reading in notebooks--adversaria or more carefully arranged commonplace books. Many scholars added to these notebooks throughout their lives and some, like the "Bee-Hive" of Francis Daniel Pastorius of Germantown, PA, reached stupendous length; such compendia were storehouses from which further books were made. Grafton discusses this in detail and also explores early modern comparative religion's efforts to trace Christian practices back to Judaism and even ancient paganism and tease out the theological sources Baruch Spinoza mined to construct his radical Tractatus Theologic-Politicus; Jean Mabillion's De Re Diplomatica (1681), the founding work of modern paleography; and learned scholars taken in by fakes, among them the most daring forger of the age, Annius of Viterbo, poisoned by Cesare Borgia. All are fascinating. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Douglas Lane Patey, Smith College