The consumption of books is closely intertwined with the material conditions of their production. The Tudor period saw both revolutionary progress in printing technology and the survival of
traditional forms of communication from the manuscript era. Offering a comprehensive account of Tudor book culture, these new essays by experts in early book history consider the formative
years of English printing; book format, marketing, and the reception of books; print, politics, and patronage; and connections between reading and religion. They challenge the conventional view
of the 1557 foundation of the Stationers' Company as an event that marks a shift between older and newer modes of book production, sale, and reading. Both continuity and change led to the
gradual development of late medieval book culture into the genuinely early modern book culture that emerged by the death of Queen Elizabeth.
