Early Printed BooksDuff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
History
Early Printed Books
Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
Incunabula -- Bibliography; Printing -- History -- Origin and antecedents
Wynkyn de Worde, and we find them used in the first book he printed at
his new address, the _Golden Legend_ of 1503[4], and in it also are
to be found some very curious metal cuts in the ‘manière criblée.’ An
undated _Sarum Horæ_, in which the calendar begins with 1503, should
most probably be put before the _Golden Legend_. From 1504 to 1510
Notary printed about thirteen books, and in that latter year (as we
learn from the imprint of the _Expositio Hymnorum_) he had, besides his
shop without Temple Bar, another in St. Paul’s Churchyard, of which the
sign was also the Three Kings.
[Illustration: PART OF A PAGE FROM GOLDEN LEGEND.
(_Printed by Notary, 1503._)]
Between 1510 and 1515, Notary issued no dated book, but in the latter
year appeared the _Chronicles of England_, and in the year following
two _Grammars_ of Whittington. The old printing-office ‘Extra Temple
Bar’ seems to have been given up, for at this time Notary was printing
in Paul’s Churchyard, at the sign of St. Mark. After 1518 there is
another interval of three years without a dated book; but between 1518
and 1520 several were issued from the sign of the Three Kings in Paul’s
Churchyard, and after that Notary printed no more. His movements from
place to place are difficult to understand. In 1497 he is in London at
the sign of St. Thomas Apostle, in 1498 at Westminster in King Street.
About 1502-3, he moves to a house outside Temple Bar, the one probably
that Pynson had just vacated. In 1510, while still printing at the same
place, he had a shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard at the sign of the Three
Kings. In 1515 he is at the sign of St. Mark in Paul’s Churchyard,
in 1518 again at the Three Kings. It seems probable that some of his
productions must have entirely disappeared, otherwise it is hard to
account for the number of blank years.
The latest writer on Julian Notary conjectures that the sign of St.
Mark and the sign of the Three Kings were attached to the same house;
that Julian Notary, on moving to Paul’s Churchyard, went to a house
with the sign of St. Mark, and after printing under that sign for two
years, altered it, for commercial reasons, to his old emblem of the
Three Kings. This is ingenious, but impossible, for the writer has
ignored the fact that Notary had a shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard at the
Three Kings five years before we hear of the one with the sign of St.
Mark.
CHAPTER IX.
OXFORD AND ST. ALBAN’S.
As early as 1664, when Richard Atkyns issued his _Original and Growth
of Printing_, the assertion was put forward that printing in England
was first practised at Oxford. ‘A book came into my hands,’ says
Atkyns, ‘printed at Oxon, Anno Dom. 1468, which was three years before
any of the recited Authours would allow it to be in England.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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