Books and their makers during the Middle Ages : $b A study of the conditions of the production and distribution of literature from the fall of the Roman empire to the close of the seventeenth century, Vol. IIPutnam, George Haven
History
Books and their makers during the Middle Ages : $b A study of the conditions of the production and distribution of literature from the fall of the Roman empire to the close of the seventeenth century, Vol. II
Putnam, George Haven
Books -- History -- 400-1450; Copyright; Freedom of the press -- History -- To 1500; Manuscripts; Printers
Henry Estienne associated with his imprint the arms of the University,
but he had no exclusive control of such use, as these same arms
appear on the title-pages of the publications of one or two of his
contemporaries. He appears to have been one of the first of Paris
printers to assume a personal responsibility for the typographical
accuracy of his texts, and in securing the services of competent
scholars as correctors for his Press, he made a practice of adding
their names to the title-pages or to the colophons of their editions.
This served at once to secure for them the credit of good work and
to fix the responsibility for work that did not stand the test of
later criticism. Greswell mentions that the celebrated scholar Beatus
Rhenanus was at one time discharged by Henry from the post of press
corrector, because he had permitted certain errors or oversights to
remain in the printed text as passed by him. Henry took the ground
that the publishing imprint should stand as a voucher or guarantee for
trustworthy work and that every typographical error constituted a stain
upon his character as a publisher.
Henry died about 1520. The work of his Press was at the outset
continued by Colines, who married his widow. Colines gave special
attention to the production of impressions of the best Latin classics,
and was the first of Paris printers to adopt for these the italic
type and the more convenient cabinet or sixteenmo form which had been
first utilised by Aldus. Robert Estienne, the most famous printer of
his name, owed to his step-father his typographical education, and
it must have been largely due also to the influence of Colines that
the taste of the young Robert was from the beginning directed to the
dissemination of classical literature.
The editions of Colines included a very full list of the leading Latin
authors, special attention being given (as was the case with nearly
all the printers of the first and second generations) to the writings
of Cicero. In preparing the works of Cicero for the press, Colines
had the advantage of the carefully revised and ably annotated text of
Paul Manutius, the son of Aldus. The most important of the works of
contemporary writers which bore the imprint of Colines was an edition
of the _Colloquies_ of Erasmus, which was issued with the authorisation
of the author, by whom it had been carefully revised. The sale and
perusal of this book were interdicted by the censor of the Sorbonne,
but before it was withdrawn from the market there were printed,
according to the account given by Erasmus, no less than twenty-four
thousand copies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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