Renske A. Hoff. Involving Readers: Practices of Reading, Use, and Interaction in Early Modern Dutch Bibles (1522–1546).

Renske A. Hoff. Involving Readers: Practices of Reading, Use, and Interaction in Early Modern Dutch Bibles (1522–1546). Leiden: Brill, 2025. 331 pages. ISBN 9789004696518. US $139 (hardcover). 

In Involving Readers, Renske A. Hoff brings to life the dynamic interplay between sixteenth-century Dutch Bibles and their readers. Drawing on dozens of annotated, amended surviving copies, Hoff offers a richly textured account of how early modern readers engaged with their Bibles on multiple levels: textual, visual, material, and devotional.

Hoff’s book emerges from the research project In Readers’ Hands: Early Modern Dutch Bibles from a Users’ Perspective (University of Groningen and KU Leuven, 2017–2021), initiated and supervised by Sabrina Corbellini and Wim François. This project was concerned with Bibles printed between 1522 and 1546 by three influential Antwerp printers. Hoff refers readers to Bert Tops’s work with Willem Vorsterman’s Bibles, while her own scholarship focuses on editions printed by Jacob van Liesvelt and Henrick Peetersen van Middelburch. The project yielded a collection of essays entitled In Readers’ Hands: New Perspectives on Premodern Bibles in Europe (Brill 2025), edited by Corbellini, François, and Hoff. 

Much of the previous scholarship on these Dutch Bibles has focused on confessional ideology or biblical translation. Hoff, however, places the surviving books themselves at the center, demonstrating how Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch invited interaction through complex paratextual programs and how readers accepted, adapted, or resisted these opportunities.

Hoff frames the study around two central questions: how did the printed book shape its envisioned readers, and how did actual readers respond in turn? These questions are addressed through five main chapters grouped in two parts. Part One, “Formative Spaces,” explores how printers structured reading through design: from prologues and title pages to glosses, calendars, and marginalia. The first chapter in this section introduces the category of “constructive paratext,” elements such as title pages, prologues, calendars and almanacs, and colophons that shaped readers’ expectations before or after the main biblical text. The second chapter turns to “directive paratext,” including tables of contents, topical indexes, woodcuts, and printed marginalia that guided navigation and interpretation. These chapters are grounded in careful analysis and bolstered by excellent black and white illustrations. Hoff’s attention to detail is often illuminating. Particularly compelling is her explanation that something as simple as blank space was not incidental; rather, wide margins or space between sections of text represented intentional decisions by Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch to aid their readers’ interaction with the book. 

Part Two, “Transformative Practices,” shifts to the use and alteration of the Bibles once they reached their readers. The framework of directive and constructive paratext offered in the first part of the book is so effective that it might seem the next step would be to simply list instances of interaction with these elements among the exemplars. What follows instead is infinitely more interesting. The first chapter of this section offers a sociographical survey of the variety of owners—men and women, clergy and laypeople—who left traces in these Bibles. The next chapter explores how these readers interacted with the contents of their books: annotating passages, adding maps, or modifying liturgical reading schedules to suit local practice. One strength of this second chapter lies in its attention to visual supplements. Hoff devotes attention to colored rubrics and added verse numbers, but her suggestion that inserted woodcut maps might have aided readers in visualizing themselves in the Holy Land is especially captivating. The final chapter of this section examines how readers used the Bible as a site of personal memory and identity formation. Ownership inscriptions, guild membership notes, prayers, astrological calculations, and records of births or deaths transformed the book into a spiritual and genealogical anchor across generations. 

Throughout, Hoff argues persuasively that the paratextual programs of these Bibles were not merely decorative or instructional; they created a “horizon of expectations” (p. 265) that framed the Bible as both guide and companion. But paratext alone cannot fully explain how books were used. It is the interaction between printed intention and lived response of the readers that drives the study forward. Hoff’s comparison of the two printers is particularly effective, highlighting how their differing strategies and decisions illuminate broader tensions of the Reformation-era Low Countries, where religious authority and textual control were vital matters which, if flouted, posed potentially fatal consequences. 

The study also contributes to broader conversations in book history about reader agency. While acknowledging the difficulty of capturing “silent” reading practices, Hoff gives material form to otherwise elusive acts. Marginal annotations, bookmarks, and print and manuscript supplements become interpretive touchpoints for reconstructing ephemeral encounters between person and page. Her reading of these traces is both imaginative and grounded, avoiding the temptation to overgeneralize from exceptional copies. The cumulative effect is a model for how to bridge the gap between intention and use, prescription and practice.

Stylistically, the book is well organized and clearly written, with technical terms and historical references thoroughly contextualized. Hoff’s command of the scholarship on paratext, reader studies, and early modern Bible publication is evident throughout, and the bibliography reflects wide engagement across disciplines. One of the most impressive aspects of Involving Readers is its methodological transparency: Hoff frequently pauses to explain the limits of the material record and to justify interpretive choices. She gestures toward future research directions, proposing other studies that could further illuminate patterns in early modern reading of religious texts. 

A few minor typographical errors are present, though none detract from the argument. Given the book’s depth and clarity, it would be a worthy model for any researchers working on user interaction, paratextual theory, and reading practice. More obviously, it will be vital reading for scholars of Bible history or Dutch print culture. 

Involving Readers is a meticulously researched, eloquently argued, and beautifully illustrated contribution to the study of early modern book culture. Hoff shows that Bibles were not simply containers for Scripture, but sites of engagement, adaptation, and identity formation. This book will be indispensable reading for those interested in the social lives of books and the hands that have held them.

Sarah McElroy Mitchell, Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington