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
Among the documents used by Strype when writing his life of Archbishop
Parker was a catalogue of the books bequeathed to Corpus Christi
College by the archbishop, in which was an entry: “Rhetorica nova,
impressa Cantab, fo. 1478.” This entry was communicated by Strype to
Bagford, then collecting materials for a history of printing, and
Bagford in his turn wrote about it to Tanner. Tanner’s brother passed
on the information to Ames, who inserted it at the head of his account
of Cambridge printing, and from him it was copied by other writers,
including Herbert.
In the meanwhile Conyers Middleton in his _Dissertation concerning the
origin of Printing in England_, had turned the error into a new groove.
Describing the edition printed at St Alban’s in octavo in 1480, he
remarks: “The same book is mentioned by Mr Strype among those given
by Archbishop Parker to Corpus Christi College in Cambridge; but the
words, ‘Compilata in Universitate Cantabrigiæ,’ have drawn this learned
antiquary into the mistake of imagining that it was printed also in
that year at our University, and of doing us the honour of remarking
upon it; so ancient was printing in Cambridge!”
If the University Librarian, as Middleton then was, in place of being
facetious, had stepped down the street and examined the book for
himself, much subsequent confusion would have been avoided. He must
have had a poor opinion of Strype if he supposed that that learned
antiquary would describe as a folio printed at Cambridge in 1478 an
octavo with a printed colophon, “impressa apud Villam Sancti Albani.
1480.”
But Middleton’s plausible suggestion seems to have gained ground, and
the Corpus volume was passed over as a copy of the St Alban’s book
until 1861, when Bradshaw, at work on the manuscripts in the library
accidentally met with it, and saw at once that it was not the St
Alban’s book, but an unknown Caxton edition. It has no colophon, so
that the concluding words “Compilata in Universitate Cantabrigiæ,” and
the date 1478, might well deceive a casual observer into thinking it
was printed at Cambridge in that year.
Printing was introduced into Cambridge at the beginning of the year
1521 by John Lair of Siberch or Siegburg, a town a few miles south-west
of Cologne. Like most of the foreign printers settled in England, he
made but little use of his proper surname, but used the place name
instead and called himself John Siberch.
Nothing is known as to the date of his settling in Cambridge, but it
was probably in 1519 or early in 1520, for in May of the latter year
an edition of Richard Croke’s _Introductiones in rudimenta Græca_ was
printed for him by Eucharius Cervicornus at Cologne.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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