by Gertrude Burford Rawlings
New York D.Appleton and Company 1901
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, Augsberg,
Nuremburg, 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,
Ulrich 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:
of John Mentelin, a Strasburg printer, issued about 1470, and of Antony Koburger, of Nuremberg, issued
about ten years later. In 1495 Koburger advertised the Nuremberg Chronicle.
Early printed books exhibit a very limited range of subject, and were hardly ever used to introduce a new
contemporary writer. Theology and jurisprudence in Germany, and the classics in Italy, inaugurated the
new invention, and lighter fare was not served to the patrons of printed literature until a later date. Italy
made the first departure, and took up history, romance, and poetry. France began with the classics, and
then neglected them for romances and more popular works, but at the same time became noted for the
beautifully illuminated service books produced at Paris and Rouen, and which supplied the clergy of both
France and England. England, who received' printing twelve years after Italy and seven years after France,
made more variety in her books than any. Caxton's productions consist of works dealing with subjects of
wider interest, even if less learned and improving-romances, chess, good manners, Æsop's Fables, the
Canterbury Tales, and the Adventures of Reynard the Fox.
From what sort of type the Bible, usually considered to be the first printed book, was produced is not
known. Some competent authorities think that wooden types were used. Others are in favor of metal,
and, like the late Mr. Winter Jones, scout the notion of wooden types and consider them "impossible
things." But Skeen, in his Early Typography, declares that hard wood would print better than soft lead,
such as Blades hints that Caxton's types were made of, and to illustrate the possibility of wooden types
prints a word in Gothic characters from letters cut in boxwood. The objections made to types of this
nature are that they would be too weak to bear the press, could never stand washing and cleaning, and
would swell when wet and shrink when dried. Some have thought that the early types were made by
stamping half-molten metal with wooden punches, and so forming matrices from which the types were
subsequently cast.
As we have already noticed in connection with the Mazarin Bible, the forms of the types were copied from
the Gothic or black letter characters in which Bibles, psalters, and missals were then written. When
Roman type was first cut is uncertain. The" R" printer of Strasburg, whose name is unknown, and whose
works are dated only by conjecture, may have been the first to use it. It was employed by Sweynheim
and Pannartz in 1467, and by the first printers in Paris and Venice. It was brought to the greatest
perfection by Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman working in Venice. Caxton never employed it, and it was not
introduced into England until 1509. In that year Richard Pynson, a London printer and a
naturalised Englishman, though Norman by birth, used some Roman type in portions of the Sermo
Fratris Hieronymi de Ferrara, and in 1518 he produced Oratio Ricardi Pacaei, which was entirely printed in
these characters.