Early Printed BooksDuff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
History
Early Printed Books
Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
Incunabula -- Bibliography; Printing -- History -- Origin and antecedents
In the Weigel Collection was a specimen of English block-printing which
is now in the British Museum; it is part of some verses on the Seven
Virtues, but it is hard to ascribe any date to it. Another early cut
is mentioned by Bradshaw as existing in Ely Cathedral. It is a cut of
a lion, and is fixed against one of the pillars in the choir, close to
the tomb of Bishop Gray, whose device it represents. This bishop died
in 1479, so that an approximate date may be given to the cut. It is
very probable that these last two specimens of block-printing are later
than the introduction of printing into England, and the only ones that
should be dated earlier are the British Museum and Bodleian Images of
Pity.
A good many single woodcuts were executed in England before the close
of the fifteenth century. They were mostly Images of Pity, such as
have been mentioned, or ‘rosaries’ containing religious emblems, with
the initials I. H. S. A curious cut in the Bodleian represents the
Judgment, and below this a body in a shroud. Above the cut is printed,
‘Surgite mortui Venite ad Judicium,’ and below on either side of a
shield the words, ‘Arma Beate Birgitte De Syon.’
A curious devotional cut is inserted in the _Faques Psalter_ of 1504 in
the British Museum, containing the emblems of the Passion and a large
I. H. S. At the base of the cut are the initials d. h. b., perhaps
referring to the place where the cut was issued. Most of these cuts
were doubtless produced in monasteries or religious houses to give or
sell to visitors, who very often inserted them in their own private
books of devotion, and in this manner many have been preserved. The
Lambeth copy of the Wynkyn de Worde _Sarum Horæ_ of 1494 shows signs of
having contained eighteen of such pictures, though only three are now
left.
After the single leaf prints we come to the block-books, which we may
look upon in some ways as the precursors of printed books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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