Block Book - Dates and Locations of Printing

Dates and Locations of Printing

Block books are almost always undated and without statement of printer or place of printing. Determining their dates of printing and relative order among editions has been an extremely difficult task. In part because of their sometimes crude appearance, it was generally believed that block books dated to the first half of the 15th century and were precursors to printing by movable metal type, invented by Gutenberg in the early 1450s. The style of the woodcuts was used to support such early dates, although it is now understood that they may simply have copied an older style. Early written reports relating to "printing" also suggested to some early dates, but in fact are ambiguous.

Written notations of purchase and rubrication dates, however, lead scholars to believe that the books had been printed later. Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber, a leading nineteenth century scholar of block books concluded that none of the surviving copies could be dated before 1455-60. Allan H. Stevenson, by comparing the watermarks in the paper used in blockbooks with watermarks in dated documents, concluded that the "heyday" of blockbooks was the 1460s, but that at least one dated from about 1451.

Block books printed in the 1470s were often of cheaper quality. Block books continued to be printed sporadically up through the end of the 15th century. One block book is known from about 1530, a collection of Biblical images with text, printed in Italy.

Most of the earlier block books are believed to have been printed in the Netherlands, and later ones in Southern Germany, likely in places such as Nuremberg, Ulm, Augsburg, and Schwaben, among a few other locales.