Lots of very interesting work on the "bibliothèque bleue" --
cheap paper in blue covers, for "popular" themes and broad
distribution -- has been done by Roger Chartier:
* http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/chartier/
* http://www.historyliteracy.org/scripts/search_display.php?Article_ID=108
* http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~rselfe/520/ob.html
* http://www.histoire-genealogie.com/themes_detude/mentalite/bibliotheque.htm
* The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe
Between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries. trans. Lydia G.
Cochrane. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994
* The cultural uses of print in early modern France. translated
by Lydia G. Cochrane. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University
Press, c1987.
* L'ordre des livres : lecteurs, auteurs, bibliothèques en Europe
entre XIVe et XVIIIe siècle. Aix-en-Provence : Alinea, c1992.
* Lectures et lecteurs dans la France d'Ancien Régime. Paris :
Editions du Seuil, c1987
* Culture écrite et société : l'ordre des livres, XIVe-XVIIIe
siècle. Paris : A. Michel, c1996.
* Figures de la gueuserie. Paris : Montalba, c1982.
-- also plenty of erudite & very readable articles... favorite
Chartier topic, "la bibliothèque bleue"...
Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, L B Hatt wrote:
> Three books printed on blue paper in the 16th C are described
> in Robin Halwas: Catalogue 5 (a few years back): item 16
> (Venice 1548), 106 (Venice 1541) and 142 (Venice 1524). Some 36
> books printed on blue paper in the same era, and known copies
> of these, are listed as footnotes to the description of item 16
> (Bembo: Delle rime), which is a short essay on the practice of
> printing on blue paper in the 16th C, with some references.
>
> I've read that in the 18th and early 19th C low quality paper
> was sometimes coloured blue: better that than greyish ...
>
> Lorenz B Hatt
>
>
>