The emergence of print in late fifteenth-century Italy gave a crucial new importance to the editors of texts, who determined the form in which texts from the Middle Ages to their own day would be read, and who could strongly influence the interpretation and status of texts by adding introductory material or commentary. Brian Richardson here examines the Renaissance circulation and reception of texts by writers including Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and Ariosto, as well as popular works of entertainment. In so doing he sheds light on the impact of the new printing and editing methods on Renaissance culture, including the standardization of vernacular Italian and its spread to new readers and writers, the establishment of new standards in textual criticism, and the cultural rivalry between the two cities on which this study is chiefly focused, Venice and Florence.

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