My Dearest Father,

I write to you from the magnificent court of the Great Khan, and I have seen wonders that beggar belief. Among the most remarkable is their method of creating books. Here, they do not have scribes copying texts by hand, a laborious task that takes months. Instead, they possess a technology called woodblock printing. Artisans skilfully carve characters onto a wooden block, ink it, and then press it onto paper. The process is astonishingly fast. In the time it takes one of our monks to copy a single page, they can produce hundreds of identical copies. Books on all subjects, from imperial decrees to stories and calendars, are widely available and affordable. It is a world where knowledge is not confined to the wealthy or the clergy but is accessible to many. I am bringing this marvellous technique back with me, for I believe it could transform our world in Venice and beyond.

Your devoted son, Marco