'Guid, Black, Prent' - 500 years of Scottish print
from Chapbooks to Dabbities, a rare glimpse of Scotland's past in print
The Mitchell
August to December 2008
A seldom-seen selection from The Mitchell Library's collection which illustrates the early days of Scottish printing. Religious pamphlets, scholarly works and broadside ballads give us some insight into what our forebears read. Including:
- incunabula (books printed before 1500)
- early maps
- first book printed in Glasgow
- fragments from Blind Harry's 'Wallace' of 1508
- Chapbooks and Broadsides
- early newspapers
The printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany around 1439 and was one of the most important technological innovations of all time. Before this, books were copied out by hand and a single book could take months to transcribe.
In stark contrast, a printing press could produce 16 copies of 1 page in less than an hour. This new invention literally changed the world and revolutionised the way ideas and knowledge were disseminated.
Printing came to Scotland relatively late and some considerable time after Caxton had established his press in England in 1476. The Mitchell Library's collections hold several items which illustrate the development of printing in Scotland, and particularly Glasgow.
