Dover - New Approaches to European History: The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe

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Paul M. Dover 2021

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To my parents

One of the themes of this book is the reality of information overload, and, recognizing my incapacity to master it all, I am acutely aware of how I have benefitted from the assistance and insights of others. Jacob Soll, Hamish Scott, Isabella Lazzarini, Brian Maxson, Ann Blair, Tamara Livingston, Gerrit Voogt, and Randy Patton all read and commented on drafts of chapters. I am also grateful to the anonymous reader at Cambridge University Press. Ann Blair, who perhaps knows more about early modern information than anyone else, has been a repeated source of knowledge and encouragement. I also wish to thank Geoffrey Parker, Anthony Grafton, Michael Levin, Randolph Head, Filippo De Vivo, Meghan Williams, and Suzanne Sutherland, for conversations and advice that have helped shape the book. I have appreciated the opportunities afforded to me over the last several years to present ideas and research related to the book at the University of Glasgow, the University of Toronto, Catholic University in Washington, the University of Groningen, and the Clark Library at UCLA.

Much of the initial research for this book took place at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, where I was a long-term National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. The Folger was, for a year, my personal Shangri-La, replete with rich scholarly resources and fascinating people. At the Folger, I am indebted to Michael Whitmore, Kathleen Lynch, Caroline Duroselle-Melish, and especially to the late Betsy Walsh and her wonderful staff in the reading room. The scholarly community at the Folger was a merry band of brothers and sisters, who enriched my time in Washington with their learning, advice, and camaraderie. I am thinking particularly of Christopher Highley, Newton Key, Emma Depledge, Claire Bowditch, Elaine Hobby, John Hunt, Alex Walsham, and Lucy Nicholas. [W]here there is true friendship, there needs none. ( Timon of Athens I.2). Further support for the book was provided by my home institution, Kennesaw State University, in the form of summer stipends and a semester-long sabbatical from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in 2018. I also wish to thank Liz Friend-Smith and Melissa Ward at Cambridge University Press for their guidance, their encouragement, and (especially) their patience in shepherding this project, including during the particularly challenging environment created by the Covid-19 pandemic.