Buchwesen in Wien, 1750–1850. Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der Buchdrucker, Buchhändler und Verleger. Mit einer um Informationen zur Verteilung der Befugnisses, Adressen und Biographien wesentlich erweiterten Fassung im PDF-Format auf CD-ROM (review)

There has been a welcome resurgence of interest in book culture in Austria in recent years, following the foundation of the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich in 1998. The present volume represents the first published output of a topographical project directed by Peter R. Frank under the auspices of the Gesellschaft to document the book trade in the Habsburg Monarchy from the early years of Maria Theresia's reign to the immediate aftermath of the failed Vormärz revolution of 1848. As the centre of a diverse conglomeration of affiliated territories ranging across Europe, Vienna was a melting pot of different languages and ethnicities, as well as being the seat of government administration and the Imperial Court. Print production in the city therefore reflected a range of cultural perspectives, as well as being subject to the changing tide of censorship, religious and educational reform, commercial legislation concerning trade and infrastructure, and the shifting demographic of reading and buying. As such, Vienna presents a rich field of study to historians of the book and print culture more generally, and this new book represents a timely and useful summation of essential information about individual firms engaged in the trade.

The book offers an annotated listing of businesses active between 1750 and 1850, and it follows neatly on from David Paisey's index of book publishers and printers active in Germany from 1701 to 1750, published by Otto Harrassowitz in 1988. Included within the scope of the book are publishers, dealers, type and copperplate printers, binders, lithographers, and typesetting firms. Subsidiary trades, such as ink or paper manufacture, are not covered. Each entry gives details of the period of activity of each firm, together with brief biographical details of the owners, references to extant sale catalogues and secondary literature, details of any predecessors or successors and affiliated shops in other towns or countries, and, in many cases, a short summary of the firm's activity. An accompanying CD-ROM allows readers to undertake free-text searches of the entire text, whilst also including supplementary information not included in the printed volume, such as street addresses.

Much of the information is drawn from secondary sources, such as the writings of Gustav Gugitz and Carl Junker published in the first half of the twentieth century and isolated studies of some major publishers. Gugitz's work was primarily based on a survey of birth, death, and marriage records in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, while Junker had access to important censorship and police records held by the Justitzpalast, which was largely destroyed by fire in 1927. Information about the trade in printed music, which enjoyed massive growth during the period, is mainly based on the published work of Alexander Weinmann and Friedrich Slezak, neither of whom engaged extensively with the archival record. Inevitably this leads to rather uneven coverage, with some major book publishers — such as Trattner — accorded full and detailed entries, while other important but less studied firms are listed with only skeletal information. As the authors acknowledge, however, the book represents a starting point for further research, rather than an exhaustive survey, and many important archival sources — such as those relating to the city, regional, or state bodies that enacted and controlled commercial activity in Vienna — remain to be fully explored and documented. Records of city taxation in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, for example, provide further detailed information about the ownership and size of premises occupied by firms in the late 1780s, and would no doubt bring to light previously unknown names and associations.

The book includes a useful list...