Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
While there was thus very little secret printing in England, exiled
Protestants, Catholics, and Nonconformists all in turn made frequent
recourse to foreign presses, and apparently succeeded in circulating
their books in England. Religious repression, however, though the chief,
was not the only cause of English books being printed abroad. From a
very early time the superior skill of foreign printers had procured them
many commissions to print service-books for the English market, alike on
account of their greater accuracy, their experience in printing in red
and black, and the more attractive illustrations which they had at their
disposal. Not long after 1470 a Sarum Breviary was printed abroad,
possibly at Cologne. Caxton employed George Maynyal, of Paris, to print
a Missal (and probably a _Legenda_) for him in 1487, and Johann Hamman
or Herzog printed a Sarum Missal in 1494 as far away as Venice. When the
Paris printers and publishers had won the admiration of all Europe by
their pretty editions of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, they competed
with each other for the English market. Early in the sixteenth century
Wolfgang Hopyl printed some magnificent Sarum Missals and also an
Antiphoner and _Legenda_, besides some very fine editions of Lyndewood's
Constitutions. Breviaries, Missals, and Primers were also poured out for
English use by Francois Regnault, and in lesser numbers by nearly a
dozen other Paris firms, and Martin Morin and other printers plied the
same trade at Rouen, while Christoffel van Remunde, of Endhoven, was
busy at Antwerp. The predominance of the foreign editions of these books
over those printed in England may be estimated from the fact that of 105
Sarum service-books printed before 1540 in the possession of the British
Museum, one was printed at Basel, one at Venice, eleven at Rouen, twelve
at Antwerp, as many as fifty-six at Paris, and only twenty-four in
England.[58]
In addition to service-books, a good many of the smaller Latin
grammatical works were printed for the English market in France and the
Low Countries, their destination being occasionally stated, but more
often inferred from the appearance in them of English explanations of
Latin words or phrases. A few attempts were also made to issue popular
English works in competition with those produced at home. The most
formidable of these rivalries was that of Gerard Leeu at Antwerp, who,
after printing three entertaining books (_The History of Jason_,
_Knight Paris and the Fair Vienne_, and the _Dialogue of Salomon and
Marcolphus_), embarked on a more important work, _The Chronicles of
England_, and might have seriously injured the home trade had he not met
his death in a quarrel with a workman while the _Chronicles_ were still
on the press.[59]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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