Introduction

Summary

This Introduction explores the wild and wooly world of print culture in the sixteenth century, when authors and publishers struggled to establish the authenticity of scholarly books. They did this by devising the physical format of books from title pages to illustrations. Nevertheless, piracy was a constant in the burgeoning world of print culture. The Introduction also outlines the problem of the visual and the many ways in which visual imagery was applied and changed in printed books, pamphlets and maps. It concludes by detailing the rather limited historiography on visual imagery of Russians and introducing the chapters.