How a Small Italian Book Press Revolutionized Reading in the Renaissance

B efore the podcast soothed commutes, before the audiobook entertained drivers and before the mass-market paperback folded into coat pockets, there was the Aldine, the original portable text, a small-format publishing innovation that triggered a revolution in reading in the Renaissance. Now, some five centuries later, a selection of Aldine volumes from Bibliotheca Brookeriana is to be offered at Sotheby’s New York, celebrating this ground-breaking episode in bookselling history.

Aldus Manutius – an Italian humanist, scholar and printer – opened his pioneering workshop, the Aldine Press, on a narrow side street in the Venetian sestieri of San Polo in the mid-1490s. He soon became renowned for his editions of classical works – in the original Greek and Latin – as well as contemporary Renaissance texts in Italian, many published in an octavo format – “handbooks” of a modest size. “He was the first person to introduce it on a mass scale and set the trend for books going forward,” says Fenella Theis, a Cataloguer in Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts Department.

The Aldine editions presented at Sotheby’s are part of T. Kimball Brooker’s exceptional collection numbering some 1,000 books and bindings, dating from the 1490s to 1590s, formed over the course of half a century by the bibliophile and businessman. The Aldine Collection D-M, being sold on 18 October 2024, is the second of three selections of volumes, taking readers on a tour from Dante to Medici. Many feature Aldus’ illustrious logo of a dolphin wrapped around an anchor (a design borrowed from a Roman coin given to him by the Venetian poet and theorist Cardinal Pietro Bembo).

Many of the works offered at Sotheby’s speak of the influence of Greek culture on 16th-century Venice. “There is a Demosthenes and a Homer, which are in Greek-style bindings called alla greca,” explains Theis. “After the fall of Constantinople, Greek scholars came to Venice and brought with them these classical manuscripts that Aldus printed, and also this Greek style of binding books. This Greekness spread throughout Europe and came to define Renaissance culture, where people would speak in Greek and read Greek books, have Greek bindings and wear Greek clothes.”

The octavo format – as refined by Aldus – democratized book reading. Previously, the enjoyment of books had been the pursuit of the privileged and wealthy, but the Aldine Editions opened up a new market in the middle and merchant classes. Although, they were still something of an intellectual treat, as Theis notes: “He widened the book market considerably, but it wasn’t really the exact equivalent of buying a paperback for a few dollars.”

At the dawn of the 16th century, an Aldine would have cost the equivalent of a teacher’s weekly salary. But monumental folio editions that were the standard at the time were considerably more expensive. “Only an aristocrat would be able to afford them,” says Theis. And the folios were far more cumbersome than the Aldines. “They can be gigantic. Sometimes you need two people to carry them.”

Smaller, more affordable volumes helped to introduce the idea of giving books as presents. “Gift giving, but also sharing knowledge in terms of bringing a book to someone’s house and reading it together – that was suddenly possible when it never was before. Books as shareable, portable vessels of knowledge.”

And there were other milestones: Aldus was responsible for the first appearance of italic type and the earliest printed editions of many classical manuscripts (volumes known as editiones principes).

If impersonation is the highest form of flattery, Aldus was extremely flattered: a roaring trade in counterfeit Aldines soon developed, often emerging from a coterie of frauds in France. “Aldus’ editions came onto the scene around 1500. As close as 1502, printers in Lyon were creating counterfeit editions,” says Theis. “It could be called the first copyright scandal.”

The pirate copies were cheaper, riddled with mistakes and, as Aldus pointed out in disgust, often had a “heavy odor.” Even worse, he complained, the typography exuded a certain “Frenchiness.”

However, some of these fraudulent editions are highly desirable today; the Sotheby’s auction includes several examples. “It’s its own little mini-collecting category within Aldines, which is quite fun,” says Theis. “I really like the vellum counterfeit of Dante, because it’s just so luxurious but also a counterfeit – a word we usually associate with something of lesser quality. Also, the Dante counterfeit was the first edition of Dante printed outside of Italy.”

In 1503, an outraged Aldus issued his Monitum – a formal cease and desist warning – listing all the errors and typography blunders in the fraudulent works, in order that buyers could identify pirate copies. “In Lyon, printers just read Monitum, corrected all their errors and carried on printing them,” states Theis.

Aldus published more than 100 editions in his lifetime, works that are today considered masterpieces of Renaissance printing. So, was he the first paperback printer? Well, sort of, says Theis. “The vellum bindings are probably the closest in texture to a paperback. They’re quite thin.” She selects a first edition of Saint Gregory of Nanzianzus’s sermons in the original Greek, a copy in an unusually lithe binding. “This is flexible calf, so it would be pretty bendy,” she observes. “Relatively!”

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