Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
While the name of Robert Estienne is thus connected with these royal
Greek types he was himself distinctly a Latinist, and his own personal
contribution to scholarship was a Latin Dictionary (_Thesaurus Linguae
Latinae_) published in 1532, which remained a standard work for two
centuries. He published, too, as did also Simon de Colines, many very
pretty little editions of Latin classics in sextodecimo, some in
italics, others in roman type, thus carrying a step further the
triumphant march of the small book, which Aldus had only taken as far as
octavos. Simon de Colines, while sharing in work of this kind, did not
neglect other classes of literature, and, as has already been noted,
joined with Geoffroi Tory, another scholar-printer, who was also a
scholar-artist, in producing some remarkable editions of the Hours of
the Blessed Virgin.
This scholar-artist, Geoffroi Tory, was a native of Bourges, who had
been a professor at several of the Paris colleges and was at one time
proof-reader to Henri Estienne. His career as a printer began in 1522
and ended with his death in 1533, after which his business was carried
on by Olivier Mallard, who married his widow. Tory printed a few
scholarly books and wrote and published a curious work, to which he gave
the name _Champfleury_, on the right forms and proportions of the
letters of the alphabet. It is, however, by his Books of Hours that he
is now chiefly remembered.
While all this good work was going on in Paris the printers at Lyon were
no less busy. At the beginning of the century Aldus had been justly
annoyed at the clever counterfeits of his italic octavos which were put
on the market at Lyon. But in Sebastian Gryphius (a German, born in 1491
at Reutlingen) Lyon became possessed of a printer who had no need to
imitate even Aldus. After printing one or two works in the four
preceding years his press got into full swing in 1528 and, by the time
of his death in 1556 he had issued very nearly a thousand different
editions, mostly in Latin, and many of them in the dainty format in
sextodecimo which Estienne and de Colines were using in Paris. In 1534
the luckless Etienne Dolet, soon to be burnt as a heretic, arrived at
Lyon, and with some friendly help from Gryphius printed between 1538 and
1544 some seventy editions. In 1546 Jean de Tournes, who had been a
journeyman in the office of Gryphius, started business for himself, and
soon proved a worthy rival to his master. Meanwhile excellent popular
work was being done by other printers, such as Francois Juste, Claude
Nourry, Mace Bonhomme, and Guillaume Roville. From the old Lyonnese firm
of Trechsel proceeded in 1538 two books illustrated by Holbein (the
_Dance of Death_ and _Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones_, see p.
192), and numerous other Lyonnese books were charmingly illustrated and
also, it may be added, charmingly bound, a very pretty style of trade
bindings being just then in vogue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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