Early Printed BooksDuff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
History
Early Printed Books
Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
Incunabula -- Bibliography; Printing -- History -- Origin and antecedents
Where and when was this book printed? Conjectural dates have been
given to it ranging from 1410 to 1470. The earliest date that can be
absolutely connected with it is 1471-73. Certainly there is nothing in
its printing which would point to its having been executed earlier than
1470. Its being printed only on the one side of the leaf was a matter
of necessity on account of the cuts, and is not a sign of remote
age, while the printing of two pages at a time argues an advance of
knowledge in the printer, and consequently a later date. About 1480-81
the blocks which had been used for the four editions of the _Speculum_
passed into the hands of John Veldener. This Veldener printed in
Louvain between 1475 and 1477, and he was not then in possession of
the blocks. ‘At the end of 1478 he began work at Utrecht, still,
however, without this set of blocks. For his second edition of the
_Fasciculus temporum_, published 14th February 1480, he had a few new
blocks made, some of which were copied from _Speculum_ cuts. At last,
on the 19th April 1481, he published an _Epistles and Gospels_ in
Dutch, and into that he introduced two cut-up portions of the real old
_Speculum_ blocks. This was the last book Veldener is known to have
printed at Utrecht. For two years we hear nothing more of him, and then
he reappears at Kuilenburg, whither he removed his presses. There, on
the 27th September 1483, he printed a quarto edition of the _Speculum_
in Dutch. For it he cut up all the original blocks into their separate
compartments, and thus suited them to fit into the upper portion of a
quarto page. He had, moreover, twelve new cuts made in imitation of
these severed portions of the old set, and he printed them along with
the rest. Once more, in 1484 he employed a couple of the old set in the
Dutch _Herbarius_, which was the last book known to have been issued by
him at Kuilenburg. Thenceforward the _Speculum_ cuts appear no more.’[3]
[3] Conway’s _Woodcutters_, p. 13.
The only place, then, with which the _Speculum_ blocks are definitely
connected is Utrecht, and there they must be left until some further
evidence is forthcoming respecting their origin; nor have we any
substantial reason for believing that when they passed into the
possession of Veldener they had been in existence for more than ten or
twelve years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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