I just finished a book that pinged all my Queensberry values. Gutenberg’s Apprentice is a novel by Alix Christie that brings to life the inspiration, invention and sheer hard work over several years that went into the Gutenberg Bible. Published in 1454-5, it was the first major book to be printed using moveable type. Until then books were copied by hand — by scribes — and therefore scarce, hugely expensive and prone to error.

I love the way Alix Christie has given credit not just to the inventor, but also to his foreman Peter Schöffer, his business partner Johannes Fust and even the other workmen.

I love her description of the small inventions and refinements needed to make Gutenberg's grand idea a reality, and the pride they take in making the book beautiful. They even attempt two-colour printing to replicate the traditional practice of “rubrication”, whereby passages of text are written in red for emphasis. They had to abandon the effort after a few pages, but Schöffer and Fust's next major publication, the Mainz Psalter, often claimed to be the most beautiful book ever, was printed in three colours …technology pushed to the limit in the interests of beauty.


And I love the fact that Alix Christie is herself a printer, from a family of printers, knee deep in the technology to which this book is a love song.

Cheers, Ian


The illustrated page is from the Mainz Psalter: printed by Fust and Schoeffer (Bodleian Library, Oxford) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons