History of the Early Printed Hebrew Book: Circulation of Jewish Books

This is a guide to the History of the Early Printed Hebrew Book. It was copied with permission from the guide at the University of Pennsylvania, created by Bruce E. Nielsen, and updated for Columbia University by Michelle Margolis

Circulation and Selling Jewish Books

  • Abrahams, Israel and Charles E. Sayle, “The Purchase of Hebrew Books by the English Parliment in 1647,” [with 20 contemporary book prices] Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 8 (1918) 63-77
  • Baruchson-Arbib, Shifra, “The Prices of Printed Hebrew Books in Cinquecento Italy,” La Bibliofilia 97.2 (1995) 149-61
  • Baruchson-Arbib, Shifra, “On the trade in Hebrew books between Italy and the Ottoman Empire during the 16th century,” [Hebrew] pp. 53-77 in, ממזרח וממערב : קובץ מחקרים בתולדות היהודים במזרח ובמגרב = East and Maghreb 5.  Researches in the History of the Jews in the Orient and North Africa (Ramat Gan:  Bar-Ilan University Press, 1986) ed. Ariel Toaff
  • Baruchson, Shifra, Sefarim ṿe-ḳorʼim : tarbut ha-ḳeriʼah shel Yehude Iṭalyah be-shilhe ha-Renesans (Ramat Gan, 1993)
  • Benayahu, Meir, “On the Printing and Distributing of Books in Italy,” [Hebrew] Sinai 34 (1934) 156-202
  • Berger, Shlomo, “Selling Books in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam: A Yiddish Sale Advertisement from circa 1760,” Zutot 5 (2008) 129-134
  • Breger, Jennifer, "Competition in the Hebrew Book Market," AB Bookman's Weekly, Feb. 27, 1995, 940.
  • Dotan-Ofir, Shalhevet, “Advertising Yiddish Books: Solomon Zalman London's Koheles Shlomo,” Zutot 6 (2009) 61-70
  • Fuks-Mansfeld, Renate G., “The Hebrew Book Trade in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century,” [with some financials] pp. 155-68 in, Le Magasin de l'Univers = The Dutch Republic as the centre of the European book trade : papers presented at the International Colloquium, held at Wassenaar, 5-7 July 1990 (Leiden ; New York : E.J. Brill, 1992) ed. Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck
  • Fumagalli, Pier Francesco, “Documenti sul commercio di libri ebraici nel Ducato di Milano,” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 52,2-3 (1987) 345-356.
  • Heller, Marvin J., “The Hebrew book-trade as reflected in book catalogues,” pp. 241-56 in, Studies in the making of the early Hebrew Book (Leiden; Boston:  Brill, 2008)
  • Lowry, Martin, Book prices in Renaissance Venice:  The stockbook of Bernardo Giunti [price for one Hebrew Bible], Occasional Papers (University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Dept. of Special Collections) 5, (Los Angeles:  Dept. of Special Collections, University Research Library, University of California, 1991)
  • Offenberg, Adri K., “Some remarks on the date and original price of a rare Iberian Hebrew incunable,” Zutot 1 (2001) p. 114-117 (erroneous ill. corrected in vol. 2 (2002) 219)  
  • Simpson, Julianne, “Selling the Biblia Regia: The Marketing and Distribution Methods for Christopher Plantin's Polyglot Bible,” pp. 27-55 in, Books for Sale: The Advertising and Promotion of Print since the Fifteenth Century (New Castle, DE : Oak Knoll Press ; London : British Library, 2009) edd. Robin Myers, Michael Harris and Giles Mandelbrote
  • Sládek, Pavel, "A Sixteenth-Century Rabbi as a Published Author: The Early Editions of Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe’s Levushim," in Connecting Histories; Jews and Their Others in Early Modern Europe (2019) 49-66. Includes two pages discussing paratexts that describe what would be available to a reader in print in the 16th century.
  • Van Rooden, Peter T. and Jan Wim Wesselius, “Two Early Cases of Publication by Subscription in Holland and Germany; Jacob Abendana’s Mikhlol  Yofi (1661) and David Cohen de Lara’s Keter kehunah (1667),” Quaerendo 16 (1986) 110-30
  • Yaari, Abraham, “A Safad Bookseller of the XVIth Century,” [Hebrew] Kiryat Sefer 25 (1949) 305-310
  • Yudlov, Isaac, “A Document Regarding the Sale of Incunabulum in Naples in the Fifteenth Century,” [Hebrew] Asufot 10 (1995) 71-108.