As a book lover, I place a certain value to the way a book is presented, printed, and packaged as a whole, not just the content inside them. Of course, the content is important as that is the main selling point of the book, although at times, the author is the reason why people buy certain books, and other times, the book cover’s appeal piques the curiosity of readers, thus inducing them to buy the book.
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
In the early modern era, which spanned between the 1450s to the 1800s, saw a lot of books being printed in a certain fashion. There was more thought into how texts were printed as well as how the elements on a page were formatted. Nowadays, we won’t generally see images in novels or non-fiction works, and oftentimes, those can only be seen either in textbooks, children’s books, or graphic novels. Back then, since it was an explosion of information, writers wanted their readers to be immersed and experience something new from reading their books. And so, there are several books with drawings in them, as the examples shown by Res Obscura.
Nowadays, we prefer standard fonts, but early modern books had much more character and personality showing through the pages as different authors chose different typography and design throughout their books, and that’s why many of them have a very distinct feel that defines the zeitgeist of that era. For more examples of the beautiful early modern books, Benjamin Breen of Res Obscura shares them in his article.
(Image credit: Natalia Y./Unsplash)
Source: neatorama