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
The University immediately appointed the three stationers, Nicholas
Speryng, Garret Godfrey, and Segar Nicholson, who appear to have been
themselves instrumental in procuring the grant. Strangely enough the
date of this grant providing for increased activity apparently exactly
coincides with a remarkable cessation of work. No book is known bound
by Speryng printed later than 1533, though he did not die until the
end of 1545, while the latest dated book bound by Godfrey, who died
in 1539, is 1535. After this date we find no more fine bindings. The
beautiful broad rolls and panel stamps went out of fashion and were
superseded by narrow rolls of formal renaissance ornament. As at Oxford
the succession of stationers and binders continued unbroken; but their
work is of little interest.
LECTURE IV.
TAVISTOCK, ABINGDON, ST ALBAN’S SECOND PRESS, IPSWICH, WORCESTER,
CANTERBURY, EXETER, “WINCHESTER,” AND “GREENWICH.”
The next place after Cambridge is Tavistock, where a book was printed
in 1525. It was an edition of the _De consolatione philosophiæ_ of
Boethius, translated into verse and divided into eight-line stanzas.
In most manuscripts of the poem the author is given as Johannes
Capellanus, but at the end of this edition are some verses whose first
and last letters give the names of the patroness, Elizabeth Berkeley,
and the translator, Johannes Waltwnem or Walton, said to have been a
canon of Oseney. The colophon runs: “Enprented in the exempt monastery
of Tavestok in Denshyre. By me, Dan Thomas Rychard, monke of the sayd
monastery. To the instant desyre of the ryght worshypful esquyer
Mayster Robert Langdon, anno d. MDXXV.” It was no doubt produced at the
expense of Robert Langdon of Keverell, a rough woodcut of whose arms
occurs at the end of the book. He was a wealthy Cornish gentleman, who
married an heiress and died in 1548.
The book is printed in a neat and clear black-letter. On the title-page
is a woodcut of the Almighty seated in a diamond-shaped panel, the
outside angles being filled with symbols of the four evangelists.
Copies of this book are not so rare as is generally supposed. There are
two in the Bodleian, and one in Exeter College, Oxford. One is in the
Rylands Library, another in St Andrews University, while Lord Bute, Mr
Christie Miller, and the Duke of Bedford all have examples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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