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Forget the Tudors and think books.

• Message 1.Μύ

  Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Thursday, 10th November 2011

  I was reading this article today and rather think the author has a good point. In our fascination of the politics, scandal and controversy that surrounds the Tudors we have overlooked the single most important development of the 16th century. The very invention that has made our love of history possible.
  
  
  
  What do you think?
  

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 10th November 2011

  ID
  
  Certainly the invention of printing made it possible to develop "book culture" over the next three hundred years.
  
  By the end of the Eighteenth Century it was possible to believe that the "virtual reality" that could be found in libraries was somehow a more advanced reality than the mundane one of personal experience: and therefore that Libraries were almost like "Time Machines" in which it was possible to really move back into the Past and forward into the Future.
  
  Initially, of course, books had not been divorced from human contact and "real life".. The Bible, like the Torah, Koran and Guru Granth Sahib, was read communally and like many books gave rise to endless discussions at a truly human level. There are still "book clubs" that continue this tradition.
  
  But I am fond of a passage in the private papers of the Second Viscount Palmerston on his Grand Tour in Europe as a young man in the middle of the Eighteenth Century- just before government and politics began to be really heavily based upon books. Meeting learned scholars in Switzerland Palmerston noted that he had now come to see that the study of books might be more valuable than the study of horses.
  
  He also had letters that got him entry to visit Voltaire, the greatest mind in Europe of the Enlightenment. Voltaire was a great author, but he was no recluse and he greeted visitors from all over Europe. And he kept up a relationship with them in voluminous correspondence. Palmerston saw the piles of letters on his bed that he had received and replied to. Having met Voltaire Palmerston remarked that it was difficult to choose between Voltaire's books and conversing with the great man in real life. But in truth the books were no substitute for meeting the man himself.
  
  I can not now remember whether it was Palmerston or Casanova who, after visiting the Voltaire, commented that he seemed to have read everything in every language and could converse knowingly and authoritatively upon all learning.. Probably Casanova who regarded himself as rather a Renaissance "Universal Man" and "met his match".
  
  But I did work out that George III, who was an avid book-collector, and left his vast library to form the basis for the Library of the British Museum, would have had to read 3-4 books per week throughout his whole long adult life in order to have read his own collection.
  
  In the nearly 200 years since his death the output of books, and other versions of the printed word has increased exponentially. Just taking History alone by the time that Lord Acton was so important in the project to write the "Cambridge Histories" towards the end of the Nineteenth Century, it was already accepted that no-one- not even the great Acton famous for his German educated thoroughness- could actually have read everything. Writing those histories required a "division of Labour" because Acton had been trained in the tradition of the great German historian Von Ranke who believed that first the historian must gather together and examine all the evidence.
  
  Things have got increasingly more piecemeal and as far as the printed word is concerned we have built up a kind of Tower of Babel with no overall coherence, structure or inherent stability.
  
  As you so often say, I write too much.
  
  Cass

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• Message 3

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  Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 13th November 2011

  Excellent article, ID. Thank you for the link.
  
  I read only this week that the printing press caused the Reformation and gunpowder enforced it.
  
  PS Thomas Penn's "The Winter King" (mentioned in the article) - a biography of that "dark prince", Henry VII - is absolutely superb. Highly recommended for all Tudor fans.

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  Posted by Gran (U14388334) on Sunday, 13th November 2011

  I was reading this article today and rather think the author has a good point. In our fascination of the politics, scandal and controversy that surrounds the Tudors we have overlooked the single most important development of the 16th century. The very invention that has made our love of history possible.
  
  
  
  What do you think?
  Μύ Here is a Wiki article about Caxton's printing press, and a nice picture of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville with their family, there are no details about the painting but it looks Victorian.
  
  
  
  Gran

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• Message 5

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  Posted by marchog_du_aka_Stoggler (U14998493) on Monday, 14th November 2011

  Here is a Wiki article about Caxton's printing press, and a nice picture of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville with their family, there are no details about the painting but it looks Victorian.
  Μύ
  
  Victorian indeed Gran - the picture is by Daniel Maclise, who lived throughout the 19th century.

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