Patents, Pictures, and Patronage

Elizabeth Evenden's study of the career and output of the Tudor printer John Day provides a welcome addition to the increasing body of scholarship on the early modern English book trade. Day is widely considered to have been the most important printer of the late Tudor period, though most of the scholarship dealing with his life and work has focused on his role in producing one book: John Foxe's Acts and Monuments. By detailing Day's early business practices and his shrewd handling of important patrons, Evenden offers a more complete account of the printer than has previously been available. The first chapter details Day's early strategic partnership with William Seres and the subsequent tension between the up and coming Day and the more established Reyner Wolfe, holder of the Royal patent for printing Latin. Evenden establishes that it was during this early period, from the mid–1540s through the Marian accession, that Day found his niche as a printer of religious texts in English, thanks to the obstacle presented by Wolfe's Latin patent

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · Art history · Early modern period · General partnership · History of the book · Period (music · Political science · Scholarship · Visual arts · Classics · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History · Scottish History and National Identity