The English provincial printers, stationers and bookbinders to 1557Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
History
The English provincial printers, stationers and bookbinders to 1557
Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
Book industries and trade -- Great Britain; Printing -- Great Britain -- History
Besides being a bookseller, Dorne was also a publisher on a small
scale. An edition of the _Opus Insolubilium_, a book used in the
schools at Oxford, and printed by Peter Treveris at Southwark for
I. T., has been known for some time from a copy in the library of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The I. T. was considered to stand for
John Thorne, the English form of Dorne. This has been confirmed by a
recent discovery. From the sale in 1906 of the library of the Duke of
Sutherland at Trentham Hall, a most interesting volume was secured
for the University Library. It contained three tracts connected with
Oxford. The first was the _Libellus Sophistarum_ printed at London by
Wynkyn de Worde, of which there were several editions. The second was
another copy of the _Opus Insolubilium_ mentioned above; but the third
was an entirely unknown book, an edition of the _Tractatus secundarum
intentionum logicalium_. This has a clear imprint starting that the
book was to be sold by John Thorne in the year 1527. At the end of
the last two pieces is the device of the printer, Peter Treveris. We
find frequent entries of these two books in Dorne’s ledger of 1520,
so that evidently, finding the sale so good, he determined to have
editions printed for himself. It is only from this recent discovery
that we are able to attach the date of 1527 to these books printed
at Oxford, but this fits in most curiously with an assertion made
by the Oxford antiquary, Anthony a Wood. Herbert, in his account of
Treveris, wrote: “Mr Wood thought he had printed a Latin grammar of
Whitinton’s at Oxford in 1527 as also books about and before that time,
but we have not met with any such.” Wood does not speak of any other
books except the edition of Whitinton’s grammar, and from his giving
the exact date we must either conclude that he was referring to a
genuine book which he had seen, or else had seen a copy of this book
printed for Dorne and had confused it with some other tract. Wood is
also responsible for the assertion that Wynkyn de Worde printed for
a while in Oxford, and asserts that a lane called Grope Lane had its
name altered to Wynkyn Lane as a memorial of his work there. For this
statement there seems no foundation, but it is quite probable that W.
de Worde had more considerable dealings with the Oxford stationers
than we know at present. He printed a book for Jacobi, to which I have
already referred, and when the press was restarted at Oxford in 1517
he supplied some of the material. So much new information has come to
light recently about the Oxford book-trade, that we may fairly hope for
more, and perhaps discover further dealings there of De Worde.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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