HISTOIRE DE L'ORIGINE ET DES PREMIERS PROGRES DE L'IMPRIMERIE

Marchand, Prosper

Verlag: La Veuve le Vier et Pierre Paupie, La Haye (The Hague), 1740

Beschreibung

4to. contemporary mottled calf, five raised bands gilt on spine, all edges speckled. Frontispiece; xii, 118; 152 pages. First and only edition. (Bigmore & Wyman II, 22). Some wear to the spine ends, with some loss to the head of the spine. The leather in the second compartment on the spine is loose along the front hinge. Front and rear hinges worn (more so with the front hinge). Some shelfwear. Ownership inscriptions in ink on the front free endpaper, the page opposite the half-title page, and the half-title page. Some minor dampstaining to the first few pages in the gutter margins. Marchand, probably a Paris native born near the end of the seventeenth century, was a bookseller and editor who wrote numerous important literary works. Bigmore & Wyman say that "This work is, from an historical, literary, and typographic point of view, of high interest." Marchand's theory on the history of the first printers is given excellent coverage in Bigmore & Wyman; Marchand believed that Gutenberg thought of the idea of printing in about 1440 and completed his work in Mayence and that Gutenberg with Fust and Meydenbach printed three books before 1450. Illustrations include: an elegantly engraved frontispiece by J. van Schley, dating to 1739 and depicting, according to the legend, The Apotheosis of Printing, attributed by Minerva and Mercury to Germany. Female figures holding medallions of Caxton, Aldus Manutius, Robert Stephens, and Laurent Koster, represent respectively the countries of England, Italy, France, and Holland, which are stated to be the four first countries in which the art was practised. Titlepage engraving is a vignette of printing, represented as a matron, holding an ink-ball in one hand and a composing stick in the other, with a printing press and a letter case in her immediate vicintity, with the motto 'Rerum tutissima custos'. At the beginning of the text, there is another fine allegorical copperplate with an inscription, La Fonderie dirigée par Minerve, de même comme l'Imprimerie. In the center is Printing - a female figure descending from the clouds, a putto holding a medallion, on which are the words 'Ars artium conservatrix.' Brunet V, 1398/99. contemporary mottled calf, five raised bands gilt on spine, all edges speckled. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 4466

Bibliografische Details

Titel: HISTOIRE DE L'ORIGINE ET DES PREMIERS ...

Verlag: La Veuve le Vier et Pierre Paupie, La Haye (The Hague)

Erscheinungsdatum: 1740

Einband: Hardcover