"Aldus Manutius is the bibliophile’s bibliophile . . . Anyone who has sat in the park with a paperback has Aldus to thank for freeing the book from the library, the desk, the metal chain that sometimes bound books to shelves . . . Margolis’s biography – the first in English for forty years – was occasioned by the 500th anniversary of Aldus’s death, an anniversary that prompted a flurry of international exhibitions, catalogues and scholarship . . . Margolis’s book is an elegant visual biography that beautifully reproduces woodcuts, fonts, paintings, coins, letters, dedications, prefaces. It’s a cultural history of Aldus the myth, not Aldus the man. A stylish book, worthy of its stylish subject."

London Review of Books

"The central argument of Oren Margolis’s short, excellent new biography is that Aldus’s primary concern was not the books themselves, but the intellectual programme they represented. Far from being an inky-fingered pressman, Margolis’s Aldus is a serious, sometimes waspish humanist, determined to shape the scholarship of his day by bringing the classical Greek corpus into print in rigorously edited texts."

Times Literary Supplement

"Valuable for scholars of the history of the book. . . . Recommended."

Choice

"Margolis consciously eschews the idea of a conventional biography, announcing early on that he will instead argue for Manutius’s role as the inventor of publishing as we know it today . . . Margolis consistently displays both breadth and depth of knowledge in his analysis of early modern printing, Renaissance humanism, and the book trade . . . an erudite and well-researched book about an important figure of the Italian Renaissance . . . As the title suggests, Aldus Manutius was responsible for the invention of the modern publisher."

Sixteenth Century Journal

"Margolis’s study of Aldus Manutius is a hugely thoughtful, stimulating, and innovative reassessment of the career of this key Renaissance figure. He seeks to understand the persistent myths which have accreted around Aldus by recontextualizing them with unexpected and illuminating connections and through detailed and fresh analysis of certain phases and achievements in his life. The result is a vivid and persuasively argued view of Aldus’s cultural significance."

Stephen Parkin, curator of the British Library's Printed Heritage Collections, 1450–1600