ARCHIVE OF THE AMSTERDAM BOOKSELLERS GUILD, 1662-1812

University Library Amsterdam, Library of the Netherlands Book Trade Association

on microfiche

Background

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Amsterdam was the publishing and bookselling capital of Europe. In no other city in the Dutch Republic or in Europe for that matter, were there more members of the various branches of the book trade. The growth of the business of printing and selling books made the formation of a separate guild for these occupations desirable and so it was that in January 1662 the booksellers and binders left the painters' guild to establish their own together with the printers, who had not had a guild until then. Art and print dealers making use of presses could choose which of the two they would join, while letter founders and makers of playing cards were not under obligation to become a member. In keeping with the general atmosphere of toleration in the Republic Jews could also be admitted.

The guild kept office at a number of locations in Amsterdam in the course of the years and began consciously ordering its archive from the seventeenth century on. In the eighteenth century many loose pieces were bound into folio volumes and extensive indexes were made. Through a series of circumstances the archive was split in the nineteenth century after the guild was officially disbanded (1812). The majority of the documents found their way into the rich collections of the Vereeniging ter bevordering van de belangen des Boekhandels (Royal Dutch Book Trade Association), now housed in the University Library Amsterdam; a smaller group of documents is deposited in the Municipal Archives of the city.

Now the entire archive has been brought together in a convenient microfiche edition which will further research into a great many aspects of publishing and printing in the early modern period and into a host of more general cultural and historical aspects of the Enlightenment.

Contents

Among other things the archive contains the minutes of the guild meetings in which the activities and concerns of the Amsterdam booksellers can be followed. Another important series of documents is formed by volumes containing the so-called requesten van privileges (requests for licenses to publish specific works). These documents are a fundamental source of information on the books being published (or that were planned for publication, but perhaps never saw the presses). The conception, publishing, distribution and potential reception of a host of different types of works can be researched with the use of these documents. The products of European culture in the Golden Age and Age of Enlightenment can be found here from obscure local authors to the literary and cultural giants of the period, such as Voltaire.

Also of interest is a virtually complete run of nearly 100 years of a popular Dutch almanac (Stichter's Comptoir Almanach) that the guild kept in its offices for making annotations year in, year out concerning book auctions, sales of printing companies and type foundries and the names of booksellers who failed to attend guild meetings. The almanac is in itself a valuable source for popular culture, containing for example, representations of the four seasons and other prints, prognostications and chronicles, as well as practical information such as the dates and places of markets and the schedules of postal and public transportation services.