William A. Kelly and Giulia Trentacosti (eds): The Book in the Low Countries

The seven essays published together in The Book in the Low Countries focus on what is better known today as the Netherlands and the Flanders region of Belgium, both constituting a single language area with a robust, common cultural history that predates the creation of their respective nation-states in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. These essays derive from a wide-ranging seminar, held at the National Library of Scotland, on the topic of the history of the book in the Low Countries from the manuscript period to the present. The seminar, in turn, reflects the strong and long relationship between Scotland and the Low Countries in the fields of printing and publishing. Yet this is not an insular approach for the volume as it considers the impact of the book industries of the Low Countries on other countries in Europe as well as their present and future prospects.