Galileo Makes a Book: The First Edition of “Sidereus Nuncius,” Venice, 1610 by Paul Needham (review)

Galileo’s small book Sidereus Nuncius, recording his observations of the moon and Jupiter, revolutionized the study of cosmology and is a landmark in the history of science. It is now the subject of a study that will be regarded as a landmark in the history of bibliography. That Paul Needham is the author comes as no surprise, for he has produced over the years a series of magnificent essays that have made him one of the great figures in the history of the study of fifteenth-century books. His Galileo Makes a Book, though it stands on its own, was published as the second volume of a handsome two-volume set with the overall title of Galileo’s O, edited by Horst Bredekamp. The first volume, Galileo’s “Sidereus Nuncius,” is a collection of essays by various hands (edited by Irene Brückle and Oliver Hahn) discussing aspects of a copy that in 2005 came into the hands of the New York rare-book firm Martayan Lan. Because in this copy there are hand-drawn illustrations in place of the usual etchings, it has the appearance of being a proof copy. Subsequent researches by Nicholas Wilding and Needham, since the publication of these two volumes, have determined that it is a forgery; but this development does not affect Needham’s book, where the Martayan Lan copy appears only in one short chapter and some passing references.

Needham’s book is based on eighty-three other copies, and he draws as well on Galileo’s letters, drafts, and various external documents. The result is a detailed account of the early months of 1610, from January 15, when Galileo decided he must publish his discoveries, to March 13, when the printing was completed; an additional chapter discusses the book’s distribution and Galileo’s corrections in some copies. The task of bibliography, as stated by Needham, is to know “the materials and human actions that produced (in multiple copies) the structure of a printed book.” Systematically he takes up the paper, type, and format of Sidereus Nuncius and provides a quire-by-quire analysis of its production, making exemplary use of many techniques of bibliographical analysis, each patiently and clearly explained, with accompanying illustrations. The book could serve as an excellent introduction to this kind of work; but even more remarkably, it demonstrates how interconnected are the physical object and its intellectual content. The title sentence, “Galileo makes a book,” has a double meaning: not only did Galileo write the text, but he also attended to its physical production, making the presentation of the text integral to its meaning. Needham does not neglect Galileo’s writing itself: he calls Galileo “an artist with words,” whose “prose embodies not just close reasoning, but also life and emotion.”

This assessment applies equally to Needham’s own writing, which combines rigorous but readable technical analysis with an awareness of the human side of that work and the story it reveals. This combination recalls an earlier bibliographical classic, Allan Stevenson’s The Problem of the Missale Speciale (1967), another full-length treatment of a single book. Even the sense of humor displayed by Stevenson has its counterpart here: when, for example, Needham explains two hypotheses as to when the printing of Galileo’s book began, he calls the one that postulates a later date “the dilatory view.” At the end Needham praises the many nameless actors, such as papermakers and printing-shop workers, who played roles in the story; and he closes with “the mules and oxen whose humble labor moved sheets of Sidereus Nuncius across the face of Europe, under the eyes of the boundless sky.” This passage, occurring in a work of bibliographical analysis, epitomizes the work’s unusual accomplishment: it breaks new ground in the study of a major book, sets forth its discoveries in an engaging narrative, and in the process shows how bibliography can be essential...