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
Two copies of the Galen were printed on vellum, both of which are
now in Oxford, one in the library of All Souls College, the other in
the Bodleian. This latter copy possesses a curious pedigree. It was
presented to the Bodleian in 1634 by Thomas Clayton, Regius Professor
of Medicine. In a long Latin note which he has written in the volume
he states that it was given by Linacre to Henry VIII. who in his turn
gave it to Cuthbert Tonstall, and after passing through various hands
it had come into his possession, and he finally has deposited it in
the Bodleian. It is an interesting copy, but whether it ever belonged
to Henry is very doubtful. It is in the original binding, but this is
simply an ordinary stationer’s binding impressed in blind with the two
panels of the Royal arms and Tudor rose used by many of the London
binders of the time. Again one sheet has been incorrectly printed. In
printing the reverse side of a sheet in signature S, the workman has
laid the sheet the wrong way round on the form and consequently the
pages follow one another in the wrong order, a fruitful and common
cause of waste sheets. Finally the ornamental initials in the early
part of the book have not been printed in, and no attempt has been made
to supply them by hand. It does not seem probable that so poor a copy
would have been presented to the King. An early inscription shows that
it belonged to Tonstall, who gave it to Richard Sparchford, archdeacon
of Shropshire, who gave it to the church of Ludlow.
The seventh book is a translation into Latin by Richard Pace of the
sermon preached by John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, in London, to
an audience said to have numbered thirty thousand, on the occasion
of the public burning of Luther’s works. In this book for the first
time Siberch made use of the device with his initials and mark within
a chain work frame showing white on a black background, an uncommon
style of device and one unlike any other used in England at the time.
Of this book only four copies are known, two in the Bodleian, one in
the library of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and one in the Rylands
Library, Manchester.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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