Venice

I do not know what you think about when the city of Venice, Italy, pass­es through your mind—if it ever does. A city built on water—to be sure—and a repub­lic for one thou­sand years. (In 1783, there were only two republics in the world: The USA and Venice.)

But for writ­ers and pub­lish­ers there are oth­er cru­cial facts. For Venice—at the begin­ning of the 15th century—was the cen­ter of Euro­pean book pub­lish­ing, with some six­teen press­es oper­at­ing in the city. And print­ing bare­ly fifty years old. But then, at the time, Venice was the rich­est city in the world, with a pop­u­la­tion of one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand. Amaz­ing enough, one-sixth of ALL Euro­pean books—at the time—were pub­lished in Venice.

More­over, vital­ly, the Venet­ian books pub­lished (guid­ed by print­er Aldus Manu­tius) stressed clas­si­cal (Greek, Arab and Roman) texts—rather than Chris­t­ian theology—which was a major fac­tor in devel­op­ing Renais­sance Human­ism. Venet­ian press­es were also pio­neers in music, map, and med­ical publication.

It was Manu­tius who invent­ed ital­ic type fonts. Con­sid­er the word and you can see it imbeds the term Italy in it—as in “The Ital­ian font.” One of the advan­tages of ital­ic font print­ed books is they use less pages—again, a fac­tor in commerce.

The city was also the first to estab­lish laws of copy­right, the log­i­cal exten­sion of the Venet­ian com­mer­cial way of life.

So, when—if—you think of Venice—consider its place in the world of mod­ern writ­ing and pub­li­ca­tion. It’s vital, if rarely remem­bered. And Ama­zon has just made its lat­est Kin­dle water­proof. That means you can take it to Venice safely.

Ciao.