Early Printed BooksDuff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
History
Early Printed Books
Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
Incunabula -- Bibliography; Printing -- History -- Origin and antecedents
The second book, the _Grammar_, is a quarto of twenty-four leaves, made
up in quires of eight and four leaves alternately, a peculiar system
of quiring much affected by Wynkyn de Worde. Below the title is a cut
of a schoolmaster with three pupils, which was used by Wynkyn de Worde
in 1499, and which he in turn had obtained from Govaert van Ghemen
about 1490. (The cut was first used in the _Opusculum Grammaticale_,
Gouda, 13th November 1486.) Below the colophon, which tells us that the
book was printed in ‘blake-strete’ on the 20th December 1516, is the
printer’s device, consisting of a shield hanging on a tree supported by
a bear and an ass, the bear being an allusion to his name Ursyn. On the
shield are a sun and a windmill, the latter referring to his surname
Milner. Below this device is an oblong cut containing his name in full
on a ribbon, his trade-mark being in the centre.
The connexion between the early York stationers and Wynkyn de Worde is
very striking, and has yet to be explained. Gerard Wanseford in his
will, dated 1510, leaves forty shillings to Wynkyn de Worde, which he
(the testator) owed him. The next stationer and printer, Hugo Goes,
was in possession of some of De Worde’s type; and Milner, the last of
the early York printers, used one of his cuts, and copies his peculiar
habit of quiring. Perhaps the type and cuts were originally bought by
Wanseford and obtained successively by the others; at any rate, both
the type and cut were out of W. de Worde’s hands at an early date.
The most important of the York stationers remains still to be noticed,
though he was unfortunately only a stationer and not a printer. John
Gachet appears at York in 1517, and in the same year is mentioned as a
stationer at Hereford. He was in business in the former town at least
as late as 1533, when the last book printed at his expense was issued.
* * * * *
Printing was introduced into Cambridge in 1521, when John Lair de
Siberch, perhaps at the instigation of Richard Croke, who from 1522 was
professor of Greek and public orator, set up his press at the sign of
the Arma Regia. In 1521 he printed six books, and of these the _Oratio
Henrici Bulloci_ is the first. The five other books follow in the
following order: _Augustini Sermo_, _Luciani_ περἰ ὁιψἀὁων, _Balduini
sermo de altaris sacramento_, _Erasmus de conscribendis epistolis_,
and _Galeni de Temperamentis_. In the next year Siberch printed only
two books, _Joannis Roffensis episcopi contio_, and _Papyrii Gemini
Eleatis Hermathena_. It is needless to describe these books more fully
here, for an extremely good and full bibliography of them was compiled
by Bradshaw, and published as an introduction to one of the Cambridge
facsimiles in 1886.[39]
[39] _Doctissimi viri Henrici Bulloci Oratio_ ... reproduced in
facsimile ... with a bibliographical introduction by the late Henry
Bradshaw, M.A. Cambridge, 1886. 4to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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