@article{bibcite_7939,
  author = {Mark B. Bland},
  title = {John Windet and the Transformation of the Book Trade, 1584-1610},
  abstract = {John Windet began his career as a master printer at an opportune moment. His first four years in business from 1584 to 1587 saw rapid changes in the book trade of which he was to take advantage. Then, from 1588 to 1592, England experienced a period of prosperity and confidence: the Italianate influence in music and literature, the rise of the public theatre, the publication of the Arcadia and The Faerie Queene, and the transformation of the appearance of the printed page, are all an index of the changes that were taking place.1 It was a period of transition in other respects as well: if the deaths of Robert and Ambrose Dudley, Earls of Leicester and Warwick, Sir Walter Mildmay, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Sir Francis Walsingham marked the passing of the old political order, the open division that a few years later would polarize the next generation was yet to emerge.2 The confidence evident in 1588{\textendash}92 started to dissipate when the plague hit in 1593, and it was undermined further by the inflation and harvest failures that followed until 1596: during these years the standard of living dropped by 20 percent.3 If there was an Elizabethan golden age, 1588{\textendash}92 was it, and it was very short-lived. What matters, and why this matters for the history of the book, is that this transformative moment shaped trade practices during the next two decades and beyond; the career of John Windet is as good a record as any as to what, how, and why it happened.},
  year = {2013},
  journal = {Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America},
  volume = {107},
  pages = {151-192},
  language = {English},
}