Permeable Boundaries: Manuscript and Print in Concert in Early Modern Sweden

Abstract

This article intends to show how manuscript and printed texts continued to co-exist during the first centuries following the invention of the printing press. The two media depended on and nourished each other in various ways. The handwritten text usually precedes the print, but often the print also becomes a model for handwritten copies. Furthermore, there are texts – and books – which were never intended to be printed due to their personal character, or which could not be printed due to their particular or provocative contents. Variations within this concomitance of printed and handwritten material are discussed on the basis of a number of manuscript books from Skara Stifts- och Landsbibliotek. The examples include authors’ originals, miscellanies, study compendia, interfoliated and annotated prints, and books that display manuscript and printed text items bound together. The creation of apographs by Swedish war prisoners during their Siberian captivity is referred to as a case where sheer necessity brought about manuscript book production in the early eighteenth century.