Writers Seeking Readers

Authorial Publication from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance

Edited by Samu Niskanen Edited by Valentina Rovere Edited by Andrea Antonio Verardi

Book cover: Writers Seeking Readers

Extent: 530 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Medieval Studies

Series: Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia

Series volume number: 101

Language: English, Latin

Hardback (Forthcoming)

(January 2027)

ISBN: 9782503618906

Price: $188.00

This volume offers a wide-ranging examination of how texts were published in the age of the manuscript from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, revealing the social, institutional, and material practices through which authors sought readership and shaped literary transmission.


Texts are written to be read, and to ensure that a work will find as many readers as possible, action must be taken. In the age of the manuscript book, as now, authors recognized the necessity of publishing their work. Even so, the question as to how this was done in the Middle Ages, and to what effect, has only recently evolved into a sustained scholarly debate. Spanning more than eleven centuries, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, this volume offers the most comprehensive contribution to that discussion to date. Drawing on a wide array of sources, including letters, hagiography, historiography, commentaries, scholastic treatises, and humanist writings, the contributions investigate the diverse contexts in which medieval publication practices took shape. Topics addressed include the relationship between authorship and royal or ecclesiastical patronage, the social and professional dimensions of disseminating texts, the emergence of vernacular literary identities, and the evolving interplay between manuscript and print cultures. Together, these studies illuminate the complex mechanisms through which medieval authors sought readers and shaped their own reception.

  • Edited by Niskanen, Samu
  • Edited by Rovere, Valentina
  • Edited by Verardi, Andrea Antonio