In 1583 Lodewijk Elzevir produced the first publication of the House of Elzevir in Leiden. The firm later became one of Europe's great scholarly publishing houses. Its rise was tied to the Dutch Republic's universities, religious pluralism and international book trade.

Elzevir publishing helped circulate classical texts, political works and scholarly editions in compact forms. For poets and readers, such presses made the republic of letters more mobile, multilingual and commercially connected.