“Buying a Book in Early Modern England”

“Buying a Book in Early Modern England” -RBS Summer 2024 Lecture by Aaron Pratt
There is a healthy amount of writing out there on printing and publishing process: how authors interacted with publishers, how publishers without presses of their own interacted with printers, and especially how printers turned manuscripts into the printed sheets that went to publishers for sale. According to Aaron Pratt, there is no dedicated study, however, that offers a reliable account of how regular buyers-readers-acquired their books from English booksellers. What did shops look like? How did potential customers interact with booksellers and physical books they were interested in? What exactly did customers leave the shop with when they followed through on a purchase? And when they did, how soon after buying? During this lecture, Pratt will cover some of this terrain, helping correct some sticky misconceptions and offer some clarity about one of the most basic aspects of England's early modern book trade.
Aaron Pratt is Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching focus on bibliography, the history of the book, and the literature and culture of early modern England. His writing has appeared in a number of venues, both academic and public, including “Shakespeare Quarterly,” “Shakespeare Studies,” “The Library,” “Fine Books & Collections” magazine, and edited collections published by Oxford and Cambridge. Most recently, a coauthored article in the “Times Literary Supplement” announced the discovery of John Milton's extensively annotated copy of Holinshed's “Chronicles.” Pratt's first major exhibition, “The Long Lives of Very Old Books,” was on view at the Ransom Center in the autumn of 2023. At the moment, he is attempting to resurrect and then quickly put to bed a longstanding monograph project that tells the early history of English playbook buying and collecting.