LITERATURE

The literature of the period 1520–59 was disseminated almost entirely by the printed page, and the general influences of the new process discussed in the previous volume must be borne in mind. It is, however, far less easy to generalise about sixteenth-century printed books than about incunables, for the simple reason that, while books printed prior to 1500 have been more or less exhaustively listed by scientific bibliographers, our knowledge of subsequent publications is by no means as comprehensive. There is a systematic list of publications in England covering the sixteenth century in the Short Title Catalogue of Books printed in England, Scotland and Ireland, 1475–1640; this takes in also books printed in English abroad, but (apart from Latin service books) not books printed abroad in other languages designed for the English market or by English authors, of which there were a considerable number. With this invaluable work as a basis, knowledge of both the quantity and the quality of English literary works in the sixteenth century is more securely established than is the case with the output of continental writers. With the exception of the recently (1981) completed author-catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, none of the great continental libraries has a printed catalogue of books and the student who seeks an overall view of sixteenth-century literature must perforce consult the printed catalogues of the British Library. The dangers of this are evident if one recalls that it has been reckoned that the Library’s holding of French books before 1600 ‘represents not much more than a fifth of the editions known to have been printed at Paris, and less than a sixth of the output of the French provinces’.