Wherever typography originated, it was from Mentz that it was taught to
the world. The disturbances in that city in 1462 drove many of its
citizens from their homes, and the German printers were thus dispersed
over Europe. Within a little more than twenty years from the time of the
first issue from the Mentz printing-press, other presses were
established at Strasburg, Bamberg, Cologne, Augsburg, Nuremberg,
Spires, Ulm, Lubeck, and Breslau; Basle, Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples,
and many other Italian cities; Paris and Lyons; Bruges; and, in 1477, at
Westminster.
Before the end of the fifteenth century eighteen European countries were
printing books. Italy heads the list with seventy-one cities in which
presses were at work, Germany follows with fifty, France with
thirty-six, Spain with twenty-six, Holland with fourteen; and after
these England's four printing-places--Westminster, London, Oxford, and
St Albans--make a somewhat small show. Some other countries, however,
had but one printing-town. With the possible exception of Holland,
England and Scotland are the only countries which are indebted to a
native and not (as in every case save that of Ireland) to a German for
the introduction of printing.
The early printers were more than mere workmen. They were usually
editors and publishers as well. Some of them were associated with
scholars who did the editorial work: Sweynheim and Pannartz, for
instance, the first to set up a press in Italy, had the benefit of the
services of the Bishop of Aleria, and their rival, Ulric Hahn, enjoyed
for a while the assistance of the celebrated Campanus. Aldus Manutius,
too, the founder of the Aldine press at Venice, though himself a
literary man and a learned editor, availed himself of the help of
several Greek scholars in the revising and correcting of classical
texts. The exact relations of these editors to the printers, however,
is not known. The English printer, Caxton, who also was a scholar,
usually, though not invariably, edited his publications himself.
The first printers were also booksellers, and sold other people's books
as well as their own. Several of their catalogues or advertisements
still exist. The earliest known book advertisements are some issued by
Peter Schoeffer, one, dating from about 1469, giving a list of
twenty-one books for sale by himself or his agents in the several towns
where he had established branches of his business, and another
advertising an edition of St Jerome's _Epistles_ published by Schoeffer
at Mentz in 1470. An advertisement by Caxton is also extant, and being
short, as well as interesting, may be quoted here. It is as follows:--
If it plese ony man spirituel or temporel to bye ony pyes,[3] of two
and thre comemoracios of salisburi vse enpryntid after the forme of
this preset lettre whiche ben wel and truly correct, late hym come
to westmonester in to the almonesrye at the reed pale and he shal
haue them good chepe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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