Talk: The Curious Case of the Hart Press - a remarkable story of dissent, deception and domination

Talk: The Curious Case of the Hart Press - a remarkable story of dissent, deception and domination

Speaker: Dr Alastair Mann, Senior lecturer in History, Stirling University

Venue: The Special Collections Seminar Room, Sir Duncan Rice Library

Andro Hart (d.1621) emerges as a book merchant in the 1590s and as a printer in the first decade of the 17th century. Early in his commercial career he also became involved in the confessional politics of Scotland and England before the Union of the Crowns and was on several occasions arrested for association with Presbyterian clergy, writers and printers. None of that activity prevented him from developing sound business ties with the printers and book merchants of northern Europe and London and becoming sufficiently an establishment figure to be granted extensive publishing rights. After his death his widow Janet Kene continued the press and became one of the leading lights in the proliferation of female book traders in early modern Scotland. The 1633 Hart Bible, that is the cornerstone for this talk, is emblematic of both the press’s renowned quality and its less obvious sharp practice.

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