Luxury Bound: Illustrated Manuscript Production and Noble and Princely Book Ownership in the Burgundian Netherlands (1400-1550) (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9782503525587)

This interdisciplinary study presents a two-part survey of the production and ownership of luxury manuscripts in the late-medieval Netherlands. Part I analyses a corpus of 3,700 illustrated manuscripts produced between 1400 and 1550 in the Low Countries. The result is a cornucopia of information about many aspects of manuscript production: chronological, geographical and gender distribution, the genres of texts, the languages used, the dimensions of books, the number of illustrations, and the relationship between the making of hand-written and printed books. Part II examines the libraries of the pre-eminent owners of illustrated manuscripts in the Netherlands: the ducal family and the noble elite. The great bibliophile Philip the Good set an example of book collecting that was emulated by the nobles of the court, creating a typical 'Burgundian' fashion in book ownership by which a small elite demonstrated a well defined group identity. Luxury Bound charts this new vogue in books and reading, an important aspect of cultural change in the late-medieval Low Countries.

Author: Hanno Wijsman
ISBN-10: 250352558X
ISBN-13: 9782503525587
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Language: English
Published: 03/01/2011
Pages: 731
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 4.67lbs
Size: 10.10h x 7.40w x 1.80d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 06/01/2011 pg. 30