Bibliograph

Gutenberg's apprentice, Alix Christie

Type

Label

Gutenberg's apprentice, Alix Christie

Language

eng

Illustrations

maps

Index

no index present

Literary Form

fiction

Main title

Gutenberg's apprentice

Responsibility statement

Alix Christie

Summary

Paris 1450: A thrilling place for a young scribe. Peter Schoeffer spends his days hand-crafting texts, his evenings tasting the delights of the city. He is dismayed to be summoned home by his father, merchant Johann Fust, to corrupt and feuding Mainz to meet 'a most amazing man'. That man is Johann Gutenberg, a blunt and driven inventor. Gutenberg has devised a revolutionary method of bookmaking using a 'printing press'. Peter is apprenticed in his workshop, a hellish place of flaming furnaces and mindless labour. The task in hand is ambitious, even blasphemous: printing the Holy Bible. Against a richly detailed historical backdrop Alix Christie recounts the story of Gutenberg's Bible, transporting readers to a bustling medieval town. Her characters are achingly real; their pride, ambition, jealousy and desire reverberate on every page. All are at the centre of a revolution, the consequences of which those who made it happen could never have imagined

Classification