Graphic Devotions: Late Medieval European Blockbooks
Pre-order a copy today! Available late October 2026
A comprehensive study of late medieval European blockbooks, combining original material analysis with the first descriptive census of copies in US collections to redefine our understanding of this pivotal early print medium
European blockbooks—heavily illustrated books printed from woodblocks that contained both text and image—represent a brief but crucial experiment in book production, emerging alongside early typographic printing. Although short-lived as a book medium, blockbooks illuminate the expanding demand for books and the experimental practices that shaped the transition from manuscript to print culture.
This exhibition catalogue draws on the author’s recent discoveries in production and copy history to provide both a synthetic study of the medium and the first comprehensive descriptive census of extant blockbooks in the US. Across four chapters, the book examines how blockbooks were produced, circulated, and read both by early readers and later collectors and demonstrates that they cannot be understood simply as reproductions of manuscripts or precursors to typographic books. Grounded in extensive firsthand examination of surviving copies, it integrates bibliographical, codicological, and material analysis, addressing printing techniques, bifolia production, relationships to manuscript and print traditions, and the physical materials of manufacture, including paper, inks, and pigments.
At the heart of the catalogue is its descriptive census, which records every known blockbook or fragment held in US public and private collections, noting physical characteristics, provenance, and dispersed leaves to aid in reconstructing original copies. By placing material evidence at the center of inquiry, the book establishes a new foundation for blockbook studies. It will be indispensable for scholars and students of book history, bibliography, medieval studies, art history, and the history of printing.
Published by the Morgan Library & Museum in association with Penn State University Press.
In the Press
“This important volume restores blockbooks to their rightful place as a subject of serious scholarly inquiry alongside manuscripts and early printed books. Every scholar interested in the history of the book, whether in the fifteenth or sixteenth century or beyond, and every library, especially reference and research libraries, will want a copy of McQuillen’s comprehensive catalogue, which further includes four chapters about the history of blockbooks, which were made alongside and sometimes after books produced with moveable type.”
—Martha Westcott Driver, author of The Image in Print: Book Illustration in Late Medieval England and Its Sources
This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Graphic Devotions: Late Medieval European Blockbooks on view at the Morgan Library & Museum from November 6, 2026, through May 16, 2027.