Good afternoon and welcome to this second 20-20 Lyle lecture.
Today, we will be discussing the life cycles of writing books and I will explain what that means in a moment.
For the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, we have more or less detailed national bibliographies of writing books from England,
Ambrose Hill, 1931, Germany, Spain, Portugal to some extent, and Italy mainly for the 16th century.
We also have catalogues of various collections covering all Western Europe and mostly put together by private individuals,
but later required by public institutions. In France.
We mainly have to catalogue's by an antiquarian bookseller on the HISHEM, published respectively in 1992 and just a few months ago,
which cover different areas but mainly, mainly French material with about 100 items up to the early 19th century.
In both cases, the biographies of writing books are mostly done and presented in the same way as for other books,
which works fine for the basic identification of first and subsequent editions based on conspicuous changes in title pages.
Pagination signatures or dates printed in various places within the volumes.
But as I mentioned on Tuesday, writing books are mostly not produced and marketed in the same way as letterpress books, but rather as images.
And some differences between copies can only be observed by methods closer to the study of prints.
That ambiguity is also reflected in collections. Libraries treat them mostly as books and museums as prints.
In the BNF they are in the view of technician.
They'll defrost. They are almost evenly split between the two relevant departments, which probably has consequences on on my corpus to sets.
Library catalogues are now much easier to access through international online portals, much more so than those of museums.
I can't exclude that. I've missed a number of items in the print collections of museums embarking on a catalogue of French writing
books from the mid 16th century to 1815 without being a bibliographer or a book historian in the first place.
I have only gradually become aware of many issues that reflect the peculiar nature of writing books and accordingly had to adapt to my method.
I will start with a few conclusions I have been able to draw from directs
observation before returning very briefly to principles of cataloguing as such.
Those conclusions can be summarised as notions precisely on the long and sometimes
curious life cycles of writing books from their creation to their current resting places.
The lessons I have learnt by examining French writing books also apply to those of other nations naturally,
and I hope they might be of some interest to scholars in other fields.
Only an extremely limited number of writing masters ever produced writing models in print.
Few felt the need to do so, and few could afford the expense.
Those who did were mostly leading figures in the Corporation of Parisian writing
masters established in fifteen seventy or for some of the royal secretaries,
teaching was normally done with handwritten models and some writing masters.
Tell us of the tricks played by some of their colleagues based on the difficulty of telling print and original apart for their customers.
When the originals were still darker than they are now, before the ink faded,
the similarity must have been much greater between the originals and reproductions.
And so some masters were accused of presenting their customers with engravings instead of the original handwriting.
We have cases such as that of Louis DPF why in sixteen nineteen whose whose models were confiscated in Oleo because he was accused of using prints.
It seems they were actually originals because they were handed back to him after a moment.
In sixteen forty four, we have another master, Pyar Mohle, who we will meet again soon.
Published in. Or public to sold off the key.
We fenice it, hopefully the comment comments only. This book is in large part about the tricks of dishonest writing.
Masters is rutile. To circulate is often very useful for anyone who has a child that he would like to send to writing master.
An essential aspect of the history of writing books is the history of reproduction techniques,
and I will give you a brief outline of the chronology of those means of reproducing handwriting.
The first writing books that we can call the writing book published in Italy in 15 14.
The Tory Kate Patika by Sigils, Mondo Fanti, Venice,
15 14 contains diagrams for Gothic texts and Roman capitals, but only blanks for Chancery cursives.
So you have the instructions. He must have planned to have illustrations too, but could not find a wood block cut able to produce them.
All subsequent writing books published in Italy were published from writing books for a few decades,
starting with the vehicle Redivision, Tinos, Mordo, Mauduit, regular these cumulated.
That of course you etc. dated 15 22 and all the way to.
All right, this to driven Francesco Quraishi, who published this, implied in 50, 60 and other books later.
And this is all the more striking since Grace.
She was the inventor of a new script, a new kind of Italian cursive that was much finer written with a sharper quill.
And here we are reaching the limits of what you can do with reproductions in woodblocks.
In Germany, we have this early example.
This earliest example printed fifty nineteen for your Hanoi deafer of Nuremberg, which was essentially, it seems, a hand out for his own students.
You can admire how the extremely high quality of the reproduction. That is typical of the extremely high level of German block cutters.
At the time. In a subsequent publication, no duffer experimented with a bold innovation, which was the use of etching.
So copperplate printing. In this case, he wrote the text directly, it seems onto the plate, then print.
So the right way round then printed it, obviously in reverse.
Then pressed the resulting print onto another sheet so that he produced both negative and positive copies of the same example.
And both were included in many copies. You can see here the negative reverse image with the plate impressed into the paper.
Then this is what you get when it is, it is pressed again.
And the plate mark is gone. But mostly after that interesting experiment would probably very difficult, technically.
And German masters reverted to continued using woodcuts until the end of the 16th century with examples of extreme virtuosity as in this page.
These pages from or vis I know you fundamental. Published in fifteen sixty 62.
In the low countries, the earliest printed writing book in 15 40 was by Goude Marcato, famous essentially as a map maker.
Here again we find. A reproduction using woodcuts.
Here's a page spread from inside. And here again.
Woodcuts we used until until 15 69, where we find this extraordinary book by Clear Mount Maultsby from Brussels.
Young master who is who has been up to now credited with producing the first writing book.
Engraved using a burin on copper plates.
Here's a page from inside where you can see the extremely high quality of the reproduction.
Much finer than anything you could hope to do with a in woodcuts.
Peter is credited with this innovation because no one has looked at another marsters books for that question, for that issue,
which is a more secretary to King Charles the ninth, whose first book was produced in 15 61 and is this alphabet.
And I've also wanted it on DVR 62 with pretty high quality.
Woodcuts for the very complex and often very cursive scripts that are typical of French writing masters.
Here we have a letter, Minyard, which you might look at from closer up here.
You can quite clearly see the grain of the wood. So this is typically woodcut.
And those blocks remained in use for much longer than we might have thought, because very recently a new copy of this book came out,
was acquired by a small local library in the north of France, which bears the surprising date, 16 13.
We find the woodblock still in pretty good shape at that date.
But the the role of PR more in the adoption of engraving handwriting on copper plates has been totally overlooked.
Here is his Alphabeat. Your soft. Do let this copy is from the 15 73 edition.
But the earliest edition is 50 and 60 615 67 and so predates by Short-time.
The publication of Kliment Beauty. Here again, the. We see the typical complex and cursive French scripts.
Very well rendered by by the engraver.
Not quite as precisely and delicately as we will see in later examples.
But surely it was much easier to work in this medium than to produce that kind of writing in woodblocks again as a close up,
because he the plate has not been perfectly wiped. And so there are traces of ink smearing the handwriting.
And here's the last plate in the French section of Ammos book,
which gives you an idea of how cursive French handwriting could become not only in everyday life, but also as a formal model.
This is the only such such cursive plate in any French book I know before the end of the 18th century.
And it shows that cursive city, when it reaches that level, is not only carelessness.
It was actually an ideal that the professional should strive for.
The engraving was probably done by one Felipe Dolfi, Philip Dolfi, who was an engraver,
also famous for making scientific instruments, of which you have an example here, including calligraphy.
And it was also a business associate of ammos.
In other editorial and typographic ventures, the spread of copperplate engraving from that date on,
especially for maps and writing, was largely connected to German and Flemish artists travelling south.
And we find them engraving writing books in the south of France and in Italy.
The first Italian writing books engraved in copper.
Was this book by Jewel Antonio Kilani, 15, 71 percent bloody, et cetera, which for some time was believed to be the first writing book in copperplate,
but then was replaced by Pele and now by by the advantages,
the advantages of the Burin were actually disputed by Kureshi against Kilani in defence of his own woodblocks.
But still, Italians did switch to the new technique.
The burin remained in use for handwriting, the reproduction of handwriting until the early 19th century.
Then we find a new technique being used.
The recently invented technique of lithography, which around 1815 is used for the first time in a few modest writing books of this kind,
which are essentially a new editorial zahoor that is more modest schoolbooks instead
of the grander writing books of the masters of the old of the Assad regime.
And until the mid 19th century, you find both copperplate engraving and lithograph used.
For writing books. So how was it done reproducing handwriting, using copperplate?
There's an excellent article on the topic by Amy Worthing called Calligraphic Inscriptions on Dutch Mannerist Print's 1992,
which tells us much on the topic.
The explicit sources we might use are later the first explanations we have on the process, our English late 17th century.
Then there are others in the 18th and the process essentially uses ungoverned ink.
You write on paper with ink that contains contains no gum Arabic.
Then you press your writing on two white wax that has been applied to the copperplate.
Then you have your image in reverse, which you can follow and engrave so as to have your reproduction.
So despite the later date of these explanations, it is very plausible that the same process was already applied in the later 16th century engraving.
Having your book engraved required quite an investment in copper.
You needed to buy the copper first and labour.
We have a few scraps of evidence on the on the expense in sixteen twenty nine ninety five plates by Guillaume Luganda, who are already 30 years old.
They had been engraved in fifteen ninety nine, were sold for 390 leever in 16 48.
An inventory of the plates produced by Bob Bedau by Louis Barbato.
We will also meet later on plates that had just been made and that were twice as large as those of Luganda were valued at 10 Leveritt each.
Much suspicion has been expressed against the excessive perfection of the Burin and its supposedly
nefarious influence on the perception of good handwriting and even its development in the 18th century.
Calligraphers had to defend their art against the idea that their hands were made to look better by the engraver in 1714, the engraver,
George Becan, himself acknowledged publicly that good handwriting was more beautiful than any engraved reproduction in the 20th century.
After the revival of calligraphy in the form essentially of broadening calligraphy,
we see the rise of the term copperplate applied to what was previously known as English
round hand that the English hand English script typical of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Copperplate being in this case clearly pejorative. It means calligraphy perverted by the influence of the engraver.
But in fact, as Amy Worthen proves quite, quite convincingly.
The Burin is suddenly able to produce very thin strokes, which is what is usually mentioned in this context.
But thick strokes of the pen are much more difficult to engrave and require very dense crosshatching to obtain perfect blacks.
This is a book Sixteen Thirty One prayer book engraved by Pyar Moore, who I mentioned earlier.
This is a close up where you can see, I hope, the crosshatching inside the thicker parts of these letters in a few cases.
In the 18th century, at least, we are able to compare the original with its direct reproduction with the engraving.
The manuscripts have often lost much of their former impact because the ink has faded.
But even so, it is possible to see how subtle and delicate the quill could be compared to a common burin only.
Yes. Here's the original from close up and reproduction.
Only the very best engravers. We're able to make the lines sing like a great Masters original.
Writing masters themselves were extremely fastidious about engraving for their reputation would depend on it.
Some, like Louis Barbe Adore in sixteen forty nine, even specified they have avoided publishing anything before finding a good enough artist.
And even then, yes, sorry, this is another one. The original on the right and the reproduction on the left.
Which also raises the question to what extent could a engraver,
could engraver modify the model and try to make it better either on his own initiative or in agreement with the master?
And you can see there are some slight differences here, as in the final L a visual note here,
for instance, which is rather more refined in the engraving than in the the original.
Even then, yes, even when the writing master had found the perfect the perfect engraver.
There were difficulties. There were arguments over artistic property in a robe in fifteen, twenty will go the carpet.
Who had cut a Régis or Petina obtained a copyright in that book but could not get the blocks
back and so cut his own and publish them again under another title is out of this great story.
Fifteen twenty five. Fifteen ninety nine. There is an interesting case,
very well documented between Guillaume Luganda and his engraver Seamon freesias who went to court as the Parliament to the
Parliament of Paris ruled in favour of Luganda as the main principal author of the of the plates included in his book,
but also ruled that he could keep them for a period of ten years and they then should hand them over to freesias.
Which again, you never did, in part because in the meantime,
freesias had begun to produce his own calligraphy at first and then gone back home
to the low countries where he also worked for the greatest Dutch writing masters.
Yeah. A few pages from Logan Yael's book.
A book? It's a book in three parts that Dick know. Gadhafi. Gadhafi in a candy Gadhafi.
Which is the first use of the word calligraphy for a title in French.
The techno Gadhafi being French handwriting. He's like Gadhafi, Italian and like calligraphy Greek.
Here are a few pages in the French style with a close up of phrases work a page of abbreviations in the French style.
Also extremely delicately done.
The page in the Italian style example of the late Cossey like vaunt and a close up, brilliant engraving by by Seaman Freesias.
And a page in Greek. And in this case, we are able to compare it directly with the same text copied in a manuscript by Luke Enu himself.
We could dwell on this for some time, examining the differences,
the delicacy and the softness of the of the strokes in the original and the way they rendered very delicately,
but slightly more partially in the in the engraving.
And this is an example of freesias work in the low countries.
Once he went back for a young Vandevelde, the greatest master of the time.
And in the same book, here is an interesting page that is clearly the sign that London,
Velda wanted to honour his engraver by including this plate with this absolutely
splendid illustration of the quill and the quill writing the name freesias.
The interesting thing here, amongst other, are the amongst others being that phrase, this is written not by Burin, but by a quill.
So Fizziness himself qualifies as a calligrapher.
The books themselves sometimes bear traces of those conflicts between the master and his engraver in ways that offer precious,
bibliographical evidence as to relative dates. This is just one example.
As a consequence of the conflict between, again, you and freesias,
you see the signature of freesias on the title page in the first state of that
engraving of that plate and later removed by suddenly by decision of Luganda himself.
There are other cases. There's another early 17th. French master called Morehouse's was the home D who was active at Avignon.
His plates were engraved by a local man called DeJohn Birth.
You can see the name here at the bottom of the plate. The year Berzon birth having unit, here's a close up.
And in subsequent. Printing's, the name is blocked out and removed from certain plates where it was.
Visible in the corner of the plates and then suddenly disappears. You can see traces of the name here on.
Some masters found that the only solution to have their way was to engrave their own wax Pyar More Hope.
I mentioned earlier, is an early example.
In the 16 twenties and sixteen thirties, you can see him learning calligraphy and engraving at the same time and gradually becoming better at both.
Here's one in sixteen twenty six. And here is one of the plates inside the book.
Barnbougle, the also engraved was also the first calligrapher engraver to produce brilliant
little prayer books like the one we saw earlier with the one with the crosshatching.
After more, we find Sunil, the most brilliant calligrapher and engraver of the late 17th century,
who engraved dozens of books of his own and a couple for other people.
In this case, you can see look at the full page on the right and the detail of the script.
No. No engraved handwriting was ever finer than that in France.
And so Noah's reputation continued for centuries.
He also taught his daughter the art of calligraphy and engraving, and after his death, she produced her own books.
Just a few. The printing process and the role of block cut as an engravers are essential
aspects of the chronology of writing books and of the development of a market.
A sudden outburst of writing books by various masters at times coincides with the availability of an exceptional engraver.
That was the case with Simon Freesias. In 16, Simon Friz.
Yes, in sixteen hundred around sixteen hundred worked not only for Luganda but also for various competitors of his.
And later, in the mid 17th century, the case of a Haubegger called Ye,
who engraved amongst others this book by Barbados that we will look at in further detail later on.
Hoback called Year, who is mainly an engraver of maps that have.
That's how he became known and was spotted by the Paris writing masters and produced a great number of
books within a few years for Paris writing Masters from the 17th century and more clearly in the 18th.
We see the rise of engravers actually specialising in lecturing as a distinct profession.
Again, there is the obvious connexion here between calligraphy and mapmaking.
And in the production of maps themselves,
we find a division of labour between engravers specialising in lettering and other engravers who do the rest of the map or all the geography.
In some cases, they are distinguished by signatures that say so in so scoop's it on one side and Scripps it on the other,
which has caused some confusion. With scholars believing that grips it meant the name of the calligrapher who had made
the original that was then rendered by the engraver for the whole map would in fact,
both signatures are for engravers, one doing the writing, one doing the rest in the 18th century.
Yes, we can. Yes, sorry. Here are a few plates by Bach by called Year for Barbados.
Here in a large format here and a much smaller format in a more elementary book.
And here are a few plates by famous lettering.
Engraver called Chilidog used to behave in the late 17th in the 18th century.
Here's a map by Betty. And here are the other kinds of work that such an artist could be asked to produce,
titled Pages for Prestige Publications of Artistic Reproductions in this case.
They also produced his own calligraphy books.
Was it in such demand that he was also asked to produce to engrave writing books for an Italian writing master in Turin?
And you can see in this case, looking at the Italian book, that he not only executed copies of something he was provided with,
but also exerted quite an obvious influence on the end product itself,
which is in pure French style and very much similar to his own way of one hundred, also writing books printed during the Revolution and first empire.
Most were engraved by a handful of engravers like d'Avignon or D Zombo.
John do need an engraver of maps for the Napoleonic Army or the Bow Blay family,
father, sons and daughter daughter Sophie, who is also in demand for musical scores.
All in all, publication was based on potentially complex relationships involving up to four individuals, depending on the technology.
The author writing Master, an artist or sometimes several, the publisher, printer, print seller with frequent overlap between these three roles.
The author of Sometimes Being Also The Artist and very often his own publisher.
Plus a fourth person, a different printer for any type setting that was needed in the 16th century.
As long as wood blocks were used. Writing books were marketed essentially through printers.
Publishers of books because they were the ones who had the printing presses as soon as copperplate engraving was adopted.
Authors tended to become their own publishers.
A copperplate Pless press is clearly more affordable and easier to work at home and a printing press in sixteen hundred.
We know that Jarda Bug Höss spent eight it to have one installed for him.
The technical and economic independence thus acquired may have been part of
the reason for the preference shown by writing Marsters for the new medium.
Even when the author was self published after he died, the plates were often acquired by a print seller who would exploit them further,
immediately inscribing his own imprint at the bottom of the title page.
And I have already mentioned the sale of the plates by Uma again to a publisher.
The plates would then follow the same fate as the rest of that. Print sellers work prints at a stock.
Sorry was sometimes handed down with the family business or acquired by competitors for sometimes a century or more.
There are fundamental differences between books and prints, letterpress books, when a better press book is out of print.
It needs to be entirely reset before it is reprinted, whereas prints are kept as they are and can be reprinted as often as you like.
You can produce at least hundreds of copies, some say thousands, if the plates are used carefully enough.
This is true both of wood woodblocks. We've seen the late impression of animals, wood blocks and of copper plates.
The consequences of this are not always fully realised by bibliographies or booksellers making catalogues.
The biography makes distinctions between. Editions, every time a book is reset, at least in large part issues where very little is reset,
usually just the title page says to market an old book is something new and more subtly different states within editions or issues.
Considering that in pre-industrial publishing, printing, every copy potentially has something different.
Even a correction on a single word, prints practically are print on demand.
In modern terms, if you have a press, it's no use keeping vast quantities of ready printed material inscribed.
Date only informs us of the date of the first printing.
But there is no chronological limit.
A 100 year old plate could still be reprinted for a collector who were who walked into the shop and asked for a copy.
When you have both type and plates in the same book, the pages of type are set all at once.
And that is where the printer comes in and he provides the print seller with letter press pages.
When the author publisher runs out, he has them reprinted usually later.
A print seller with large quantities of material to manage might be less careful
and just continue selling the plates alone and drop the letter press apart.
So the book, the writing book containing both plates and letter press is a Highbridge object,
which is part the result of continuous production and part the result of discontinuous production over the generations.
These stocks of important print sellers absorbed thousands of plates from their predecessors.
Miraculously, we have catalogues of available prints for some of the most important shops,
such as those of Jubei in 1797 wrong in age, you know, three Bassett in 1822, plus the final sale of the plates of Rome in 1846.
These lists contain dozens of references to writing books, some dating back over a century,
including many titles of which no copies have yet to come to light.
Over time, writing books were not only preserved and reprinted, but also modified accidentally or intentionally,
with plates sometimes added or lost or eliminated, replaced with another.
The plates could essentially become warned. Woodcuts cracked and lost fragments until they became unusable and thrown into the fire.
Copper plates could, when they'd become too too worn, be reinforced with a burin or simply with acid.
The title page was often changed with a new imprint. Imprint's could change up to three or four times in a century.
Even names the names of writing masters could be changed either on the tape, on the title page or in single plates inside the book.
Old plates were sometimes re attributed to a greater master to make them more saleable
or to a younger master who was interested in having his own writing book published.
But too lazy or incompetent to produce one.
And so just recycles plates from an older book by a great master and slapped his name on it.
This is a book that says hookey.
Does it keep your home, etc. He sha Juden.
In fact, everything in this book is not by Charlottes, by a Hocine, you're in the whole who are working two generations earlier.
So it wasn't quite up to date either in style, but the style hadn't changed that much during the 18th century.
So it was still something he could get away with. The marketing of writing books also happened in different forms.
You could buy whole sets or sometimes subsets and different combinations of plates.
The imprint is sometimes repeated on single plates, on specific plates that could be of interest to a customer even sold on their own,
such as a plate on cutting your quill or full page alphabets.
And so it's quite clear in these cases that people could just walk in and ask for an alphabet or or a plate of instructions.
In a late 18th century print seller named Kippy is an interesting case.
He created three variant sets for several titles, sets called ABC a being the full collection be set with fewer plates and see even more reduced.
Different title pages were produced specifying the set you are buying and the price.
That is what we also see on this same plate.
You have be one at the top, so set to be plate one and the price at the bottom three pounds, three leever and twelve sukh twelve shillings.
And so each plate within the book had numbers potentially in three corners.
And so plate a plate number. A six might be also numbered.
B four. And C, three being the fourth in the subset named B on Pippy's.
Production was just generally mediocre in quality. But he certainly had a sense for business.
And he was particularly unscrupulous with reac tribulations. As we see in this case.
The chronology of publication is, of course,
the main bibliographical challenge and catalogues are often exceedingly vague or incorrect on printing dates,
dates on title pages, not always present and not always reliable.
The date 15 22 printed in Low Petina by Righi, has been the subject of much debate in the 16th century.
Discrepancies between Title Page and Colla often sometimes appear, for example, in a more fifteen sixty six sixty seven.
The title page says 66 and the coffin 67 because the title page was engraved earlier,
probably towards the end of 15th 66 and the colour font later on.
In some cases you have updates on the Beauchesne in the first printing book published in England in fifteen
seventy has a date that was set in type within the title woodblock and then reset for new editions.
But the last plate which you see here always says 15 70 and the Dominie Me Lezzy Moquin Jin Daisy Mosaic to add Jaisalmer.
You see, for a long time, the first edition was believed to be 15 71.
Despite this last plate, that was before three copies were identified with the date 15 70 actually in the title page.
And the three known copies are actually from three different editions.
So there were many reprint things of this book as soon as it was published.
Here you see a title page with the date 50 and 70 here.
And here is a title page. The two title pages here from the copy in the Bodleian one with the date fifteen eighty five, but with the same imprint.
Compare this one to my 12 year before the plates were taken over by the Woodblocks were taken over by another publisher.
And here in sixteen 02 you have the imprint of Richard Field where the original
imprint that was part of the woodblock has been replaced by letterpress.
In many cases, dates occur only in the plates somewhere within the text.
They are usually assumed to be close to the date of publication, but can sometimes span several years.
You can have different dates in the same book, whether they correspond to the handwriting more probably to the original examples or to the engraving.
In the late 18th and early 19th century, especially,
many writing books end with examples of dated account sheets that are clearly used as a means of discreetly dating the book.
This is at the last plate in the book and contains two dates eight, you know, six and eight.
You know, seven is a vast number of books, have no dates at all.
And this seems to be intentional as a way of making them always new, especially in the 18th and 19th century.
And so in those cases especially, we need to turn to other sources of information.
In many cases, we have we are able to find data about the authors, the engravers, the occasional deadly katee,
essentially data that helps date the original publication but doesn't tell you much about subsequent printings.
In that case, you need to turn to information about the print sellers, the print sellers, together with the death dates of authors,
which is usually the moment when the plates are passed on from the author's family to to a print seller.
For authors, which number? Almost 100 in my catalogue.
Until now, we essentially had. A few sources, the Register of Parisian Masters from 15, 70 to 1774.
In the late copy, some biographical notes published in the 18th century by Charlotte Basle, a leading writing master himself,
but nothing like the information we have on English masters, thanks to William Massie's Origin and Progress of Letters 1763.
And most importantly, we have a 19th century compilation of data cold by a collectors on Pierre Bouchard from the books themselves.
I have searched for further information in archives, almanacs, commercial address, books, etc. with, I must say, and hoped for results.
And a student of mine, Celia Korban, has also done important archival research, specifically on 17th century masters.
For some 200 engravers, to wit, who often were no more than just a last name.
I have been able to ascertain at least first names except for three that still escapement and plenty of dates.
So that has helped a lot to refine the dating of many of these books.
Daddy Ts are few and their names generally shine in the dark.
Relatively to identify, but some have been more elusive, such as Budweiser,
Miller and look who received the early Monday Kittu of Pure Hindoo in eighteen eleven.
She is now happily identified. I'm happy to say, as to her very obscure teacher and admirer.
I know this young man.
I was able to track him down, essentially thanks to the advertisements for calligraphy lessons that he published in various newspapers of Genoa,
Milan and Venice in the early 80s. Eighteen tens.
Just like a mediaeval itinerant writing master.
As the subsequent printings, information on authors and print sellers lives needs to be complemented mainly by the material examination,
of course, of the paper itself and especially watermarks. There is nothing new here at first sight compared to the study of other books,
except that the watermarks of writing books can tell us whether all copies were actually printed together or over a period of time.
In many cases, there is more than what one watermark in a volume which has raised suspicions of
hybrid copies put together maybe by later collectors from several imperfect copies.
That does happen, of course. The different copies can also share the same combination of watermarks.
So that is how they must have been originally. If the leaves were not printed and put together immediately as volumes,
and especially if anyone could walk in and buy single leaves so that some stacks ran out before others,
they printshop would naturally have had stacks of leads printed on paper from different stock that were then assembled as volumes.
Finally, during the revolution and the first empire, very rapid changes of all sorts in the social context offer plenty of clues to dates.
Within a couple of years, changes in addresses. There were two different systems for Paris street numbers during the revolution,
or one during the revolution, and one the beginning of the first empire.
Changes in the names of institutions or societies mentioned on title pages as affiliations of the authors who were often professors in Parisian,
Lissie's and the choice of texts. When you have declared strongly the other limb, you know more or less where you are in time.
The occasional dedications to Bonaparte or Napoleon or just the political tone have examples.
Military or police documents under Napoleon, praise for good King Henry, the 4th after 1815 and so on.
Particularly telling is the suppression of any reference to the monarchy after 1792, including censorship enforced on pre-existing plates.
An exciting find based on that parameter is an item I acquired recently after reading.
It's rather perplexing description in a catalogue.
It is actually a copy of the most important late 17th century writing book Laugh Dickey Paris 16 80 by John Batiste Ali,
of which you see an example of the first edition here.
John Batiste, Ali, as you see, made to. But to look where your defrosts this is the abbreviation for.
Please believe me. This unique item has the one I have acquired.
It has met, but like hyperbolic defaults, which came as a surprise.
This unique item proves that the book was still being reprinted some 120 years later.
There is no imprint in the copperplate has been cut. The low part has been removed.
But sure enough, the plates appear in the 1797 catalogue of Zubair.
So he was responsible for the publication.
Just a couple of particularly messy cases, sort of straight, but I've said before in more theoretical terms,
reconstructed from multiple copies in sixteen forty seven, Louis Barbados obtained a privilege for writing book larger than any before.
It's a imply no double folia Lisicki Yoffie last year.
Dalyan best Dhanda etc. engraving. It took some time to be called Who was in Charge and it was first published.
It seems in sixteen forty nine. In the following years, Barbados inserted a few plates from a smaller book of his lip.
Dickie two. Then in sixteen fifty five he added a lengthy introduction with a letter press titled Page Titti de la Dickie,
which is what you see here that was sold either separately from the plates or together.
Presumably if you already had the plates from previous printing, you could buy this alone.
The title page of the whole wants band together could be either Lasic Two or twenty,
and they appear under both titles and catalogues in sixteen fifty seven.
Barbados had a provisional page added with his latest Royal Privilege page containing only the privilege.
Then he removed that and had the last page of the treaty reset instead as a way of replacing the original privilege,
which was still in that sixteen forty seven with the new one.
Then he ran out of copies of the treaty, but continued printing the plates for some time, I believe, without even bothering to reset the title page.
It is a key to then he ran out of dedication plates, dedication pages sorry that oppressed, which he did not reprint since the deadly Katee had died.
In the meantime, anyway, and then he too died. The remaining copies were issued were reissued by a prominent print seller.
Nikola Long grew up with the title page and preface reset in his own name with the publicity at the end of the preface.
After a long Lloyd died, Pierre Dovi, another Princella reissued his remaining copies Just pay pasting his own name on top of long drawers
before resetting the title and preface one more time in some copies that label label with the name.
Delivery is now gone, but traces of it remain on top of Niccola long.
And that is what you see here in the Bodleian copy of that book.
The letter press titled changed slightly every time it was reset, becoming more modern in spelling and style and slightly condensed,
but always undated, except in sixteen forty nine and sixteen fifty nine.
The smaller plates were printed either one or two per leaf, constantly changing the total number of leaves for the same number of plates.
As a result, the bibliography of one of the most famous writing books of the 17th century is in a state of chaos.
Copies are usually described by comparison with a convenient mid 20th century facsimile of a copy that is kept at our how.
In Switzerland, the facsimile gives the publication date as sixteen forty seven based on the privilege.
But as I have said, this is the date of no documented edition.
The copy reproduced in this facsimile is actually of the last state, but one with the name Piaffe Dovi pasted on top of Niccolò.
A long line like this one, a state that is datable to seventeen oh seven.
So 60 years later than the date that is indicated by the facsimile.
In addition, the AHA copy has the smaller plates printed to to leave.
But the assembly was produced.
Separating those plates to make them look nicer one on each leaf so that no indication of how many plates are missing in any given copy.
By comparison with the fixed, amedee can be correct.
Based on most of the approximately 50 located copies, it is now possible to distinguish some 15 different editions,
issues and states of this book and to date them pretty firmly, often within a few years, over a period that covers eight decades and even more.
Complex case, possibly, as that of the nouveau past predicted to published in 1731 by Sebastiao Weli that
eventually became combined with his 1764 Fidele that the blued allowed the clear.
I prefer not to try and explain this one in detail or we would be here all night.
Suffice. To say that throughout the transmogrification, as of that book over four decades,
it retained the same title page, the one you see here with the date 1731.
So never believe those dates on title pages,
which says that either they had made a vast provision of title pages to begin with or his book sold very slowly.
The second interesting feature in a while is Works is the portrait that appears in the Fidelity Blue from 1767, the year in which he died.
This must have been the publisher's mistake. The portrait does not actually show the author, but his son or no.
Sebastiao is also a calligrapher, and because of that portrait, there has been much confusion ever since between the father and the son.
Lastly, another leading master of the 18th century, Höss, one equal IBG.
In 1770, he first published his demand that the key to your mother.
In 23 plates, 23 leaves some 25 years later.
He started reprinting the same plates under the title Look Hot Off the Cliff, together with a few works by other famous masters.
The total being thirty plates this time, then even replaced his own signature in three plates with those of Hocine Yolanda Wullie,
two masters whom he worshipped so passing off his own work as theirs.
The plates were completely reordered and renumbered for the new book.
Yet at the same time, he continued publishing the original twenty three plates under the original title and in the original order.
So that later copies of Liz actually more published after the Gonta, which only two are known in American collections,
are catalogued as jumbled and lacking seven leaves when in fact they are absolutely perfect.
Once the books had left the print shop, observable traces of their existence,
such as X, Libras or bindings are not very different from those of any other book.
An X library sometimes tell us they belonged to a child or to a writing master bindings.
Tell us how carefully or how carelessly they were kept.
Ink stains tell us that they were used. But relatively few copies actually contain writing exercises.
The transmission of all those books.
The way in which they were handed down to us rests in large part on a small number of private collectors whose names should be remembered.
The first such collector was Michelle de Mahola, who was a print collector in general.
Died 16 81 after having collected 120000 prints which were required for the Royal Library and 16 67 and
were the first brick in what is now the Department of Prints of the Bibliotheque National Divorce.
And he then went on to put together a second collection.
This is one spread from the large volumes assembled by the muckle in which you see the pages of a Libra.
Remember the stability, not all cut up and pasted onto these large sheets of paper,
large pages, which is which can be a problem when you're interested in watermarks.
You can't see through them. The same method was used by famous English collector Samuel Peeps, famous for other reasons.
Also died, 70 No3 said You're not allowed to photograph any books in the library.
Here's a nice picture of the building itself, which, as you all know, is maudlin.
Cambridge in the 18th century. We have probably many collectors, both of manuscripts and of printed writing books.
Difficult to trace.
Mainly, it seems, writing masters themselves, which raises the question concerning the very latest printings of older writing books.
Were they reprinted for collectors rather than for people who wanted who needed instruction in handwriting?
That is, I think, very plausible. Later, collectors.
Later, collectors included important writing masters of the 18th century calligraphy,
teachers of the 19th century and many private collectors of the 20th century,
notably American, and most of these collections have ended up in private in public libraries where they are now the main resource.
We have to study the whole field of early modern calligraphy.
The total corpus, just to give you an idea of the extent of the catalogue.
Numbers, approximately 600 titles.
That is six hundred different French writing books up to 1815.
12 hundred editions, issues or various states, meaning an average two for each title.
Three hundred and two thousand copies either currently located or described in former collections,
including 100, 100 titles, more or less mentioned in the past.
Essentially in print sellers catalogues, but with no physical copies ever mentioned.
After that, the survival rate based on those figures is an average of less than four.
Less than three sorry copies per edition issue or state.
The maximum for one title is around 50 copies for a look at year.
And for Barbados. Notably this being also a consequence of the size and thickness of these books.
That meant they were more often bound of many books.
We have only one or two copies and statistically. By way of consequence, many more must have disappeared entirely without ever being mentioned.
So the only way of sorting out dates and states is a copy by copy plate by plate comparison, together with a survey of watermarks.
Few catalogues have been produced using that method as systematically as I think it should be.
The exemplary catalogue of the Hoefer collection by David Becker does not mention all that information,
but is based on notes by David Becker that do bindings and provenance are an important
aspect that help piece together older collections when there are no other traces,
no Libras in particular.
Part of the game is deciding whether to or more whether to more or less similar descriptions in two catalogues are actually maybe of the same copy.
And I have made some 900 such identifications deciding that two descriptions fit the same book.
In some cases, multiple descriptions of a rare book over a century or more all boil down to a single copy.
So it is not only about the provenance of known items, but about understanding how many have survived and how many had not yet located.
Still, maybe you have a chance of reappearing and worth looking out for.
Without that tedious part of the work, I would have some 4000 copies listed instead of 3000.
Just as a final note, we plan to have the catalogue online,
possibly by the end of next year in the form of a detailed database and a reduced version is
short title catalogue should be printed as part of an exhibition catalogue for a show to be held.
At the end of next year into bigger ticket Mazzarino. That was all for today.
Thank you for listening. And see you again next Tuesday.
Thank you.