A Serious Game of Hide and Seek

[Amsterdam about 1600]

The year is 1609 and the place is Amsterdam, a city that has arrived on the threshold of what we now call the Golden Age. The VOC – the Dutch East Indies Company – has been functioning for seven years, but its greatness is still something for the future and the riches of the East are – as yet – nothing but a tempting promise. By now, the eighty years struggle of the Dutch with their Spanish overlords is halfway its lifespan. The Dutch have been fighting the Spaniards for 41 years, but a truce has finally been declared. A truce that was designed to bring twelve years of peace to the tired and war-weary contestants.
 
In fact the Spanish government turned against a part of their own population that had long been suspected of heresy. The expulsion of the moriscos, christians of muslim extraction, was an action that would in time have grave economical consequences, as the most productive and successful members of the population were banished to Afrika. A few years later the Spanish Empire also became embroiled in the bloodiest conflict of the seventeenth century, the German 30 years war that started in 1618.
 
Only a few relatively quiet and peaceful years had passed, when the Dutch went after each other’s throat in a social conflict that has been called a ‘cold civil war’. The religious background of this conflict is too abstruse to expound on here. Although religious differences were at the core of the conflict that almost destroyed the state, it was actually fueled by fundamental disagreements about the future of the young republic. How was the government to be organized? Should it be centralized from The Hague, where the Stadtholder held court? Or, alternatively, should it be decentralized in a typical Dutch way with local oligarchs taking charge, like they had done for centuries?

[Counterremonstrants attacking their opponents in 1617]
 
The champions of decentralized government were the States of Holland, dominated by Amsterdam. Until 1618 the States with its pensionary Johan van Oldenbarneveldt were in charge, together with the more liberal minded oligarchs who preached religious tolerance. Stadtholder Maurice was the servant of the Republic, but also a hereditary Prince of Orange in his own right. In 1618 Maurice sided with the intolerant diehard Calvinists, changed the government and had Van Oldenbarneveldt beheaded. This amalgam of feuds is of great interest to the bookhistorian, since printing played a major role in spreading conflicting ideas and arguments.
 
Pamphlets informed an increasingly engaged public on current affairs and swayed the public opinion of the high and the low in an unprecedented way. Hundreds of these pamphlets appeared each year. Many of those were written by articulate authors who knew how to entertain and to persuade their readers at the same time. Booksellers published most of them without the name of either the writer or the printer, although the government forbade this in a virtually endless series of placards that promised to punish the culprits and pay handsome rewards to those who turned them in.

One of the peculiarities of the Dutch governmental system was its particularism. A city like Amsterdam was a city-state. The seat of the government, The Hague, was divided into two jurisdictions that were each jealous of their prerogatives. The city of Delft is located just an hour’s walk from The Hague. From there William of Orange and the States had ruled the free provinces in the late sixteenth century. A printer living and working in Delft was outside the jurisdiction of the burgomasters of The Hague, but he could send his apprentices with recently printed pamphlets right into the heart of the government buildings without impediment, and no questions asked. Cities were jealous of their privileges and the rights of their citizens.

 
The decentralized system of government in the Netherlands made the placards futile. More often than not they were published by the central government in The Hague to please an ambassador or a foreign prince or government. Placards can certainly not be considered as acts of a government that was ready to apply a vigorous censorship. The States General knew that their words carried little weight in a city like Amsterdam. Placards had in fact the effect of an advertisement: ‘get this pamphlet.’

 In the seventeenth century Amsterdam presses churned out hundreds of books and pamphlets each year. Although every town, whatever their size, counted some booksellers, most of them lived in Amsterdam. Their output dwarfed the combined work of all others in the Netherlands and later in the century they would indeed publish about a quarter of all books published in Europe. They formed a well-defined community where each had its role: Christian books of different denominations were published by two big booksellers. To one of them, Marten Jansz Brandt, I will return later. There were publishers of maps and travelogues, specialists who catered for the lovers of poems and plays, and there were a few publishers who produced the very first newspapers, setting an example soon to be followed in Britain and elsewhere.

[one of the most popular pamphlets of the truce. Printed in Delft in 1612 this allegory was printed time after time] 

There were outsiders as well, who were shunned by the traditional community of printers and publishers: Willem Jansz Blaeu, now of international fame, was one of them. This nephew of an Amsterdam burgomaster was parachuted into the world of the book by his uncle to become the foremost printer of his time. Blaeu was a loner, without any of the traditional contacts with his colleagues. Most publishers that were comparable to him had extended networks reaching all over the Netherlands and beyond. Blaeu had no such thing.
 
Blaeu was also a printer of catholic books. He published these under the false name of Van Egmond, a printer that was supposed to live in Cologne. The whole city knew about this and it is easy to see why: Blaeu used the same initials and ornaments in those imprints that could be found in the books that he published under his own name. The same goes for the works of Hugo Grotius that were supposed to be printed in Paris.

[One of the more than 100 woodcut initials Blaeu used in his catholic books]
 
Next door to Blaeu the printer Joannes Janssonius or John Johnson ran his shop. He too published Catholic books using the imprint of Van Egmond. He is now famous – or notorious – for the editions he pirated from Blaeu, including a book on sea-faring that Blaeu wrote himself. Janssonius also published anonymous pamphlets. He was one of the great publishers of pamphlets who broke the law year after year. His output is easy to recognize, again by the initials and ornaments he used. In the conflict that broke out during the truce he played a dubious role, publishing the propaganda of both sides, although in public he posed as a Calvinist.
 
I have made some passing remarks on the initials and ornaments that can be used to trace the printers of almost any book. It is time now to take a closer look at them. Almost every printer from 1480 up to 1750 used ornamented letters that can be used to identify their output. From the beginning these were cut in wood, but early in the sixteenth century they were also cast in lead. Most, if not all of these are interesting in themselves as they reflect the art of the time in which they were created. But they can also be used to find printers.

[ a beautiful initial of Van Ravesteyn, also used in his 'anonymous' work. It shows that wood engraving was invented long before Bewick]
 
A few fellow bibliographers have – with some justification – argued that identification with the help of ornamentation should be carried out with caution. Printers used to lend each others materials. Although I have never observed this in seventeenth Dutch printing I have noticed that sixteenth century Venetian printers and printers from Cologne in Germany were in the habit to do so, making the identification of their output an interesting puzzle for some and a nightmare for many of my colleagues.

And then there are the cast initials. These are small slabs of lead, cast in sand or in some kind of matrix and nailed to a piece of boxwood. They were common in the seventeenth century and in fact any printer in the Netherlands could buy the same initials and ornaments. Lucky enough for the bibliographer they are nailed to the wood in different places and the rough handling of the presses made the nails come up through the lead in different ways.

[a nail sticking through a cast initial. This is one of Willem Jansz Blaeu]

The identification of printers with the help of their material was tried as early as the sixteenth century. The well-known specialist Paul Valkema Blouw noticed that printers who published controversial texts – and this were the days when the inquisition burned its victims on the stake – took great care to hide their traces. They did not use any ornamentation and when Margaretha of Parma had printer’s shops in Brussels and Antwerp searched no proof could be found. From the early sixteenth century on printers tended more and more to use the same typefaces so these could not be used to trace the culprits.
 
Back to Amsterdam and the crisis brought on by the temporary peace. As I mentioned before, the controversies spawned thousands of pamphlets without the printer (or the author) bothering to put their name on them. I have studied these in detail and I have established some patterns in the publishing which I will now put before you.
 
I mentioned Blaeu and his Catholic books. When in 1672 one of Blaeu’s printing houses burned down – causing damages of the staggering amount of at least 70.000.000 euro in today’s currency – people were saying that this was God’s punishment. Everybody in Amsterdam knew that he published catholic works and indeed these books are easy to recognize for nowadays researchers. 
 
When I researched anonymous pamphlets published in the years 1600-1625 I was able to trace about 80% of them to a printer without much difficulties. All of them were of course ornamented. Some of them with cast initials that were a little bit more difficult to trace to their owners, but often with wooden initials and ornaments that are unique. Soon it became clear that there was a publisher hiding behind some of these printers who printed virulent attacks on remonstrant preachers but also on the head of the government Johannes van Oldenbarneveldt himself.

[a virulent attack on the head of the state, Johan van Oldenbarneveldt]
 
I already made a passing remark on Marten Jansz Brandt. He was a staunch Calvinist with a populist streak who published any attack on his adversaries, how far fetched or even outright crazy they might be. His opponents seem to have been well aware of his activities were and answered him in kind, often poking fun at his fanatisicm. As a publisher he employed Amsterdam printers of different creeds. All of these also published anonymous pamphlets that were more in line with the opinions of Brandt than with their own inclinations. Some printed pamphlets for his opponents too and if you take a look at their normal output it seems that this was more in line with their point of view. The overall picture seems to show us a publisher who orchestrates attacks on his adversaries using the printers who printed the books that bore his impressum.

 I identified 80% of all anonymous printed pamphlets and that leaves us with 20%. Let me confess immediately that I have not tried to identify those leftovers. Most printers in the Netherlands used the same typefaces and these are thus almost unusable for identification. Almost: the time-honored practice of looking for broken type would probably tell us who the printers were of some of them. The study of lay-out and printing house practices will turn up a few more. But this kind of research fell beyond my scope. I will say something about them though and then pass on to the point I wish to make today.
 
The 20% or about 400 pamphlets that have not been traced have something in common – apart from the obvious absence of initials and ornaments. They were, for instance, rarely if ever reprinted. It is also clear to me that most of them did not come from the great Amsterdam presses, but were printed in the provinces. This is a notion that yet has to be formalized in research – through study for instance of the lay-out. And then there is the most interesting group: pamphlets by writers who were critical about the the East Indian Company or about the kings of Britain and France and their kin.
 
In fact, it seems that the authorities cared little about the slandering of parsons, university professors, or even themselves. They cared a lot however about the sensitivities of foreign allies – and their own purses. And so it has the appearance that early seventeenth publishers, their public and the authorities were in fact playing a game of hide and seek. Authors and publishers were hiding, but – at the same time – they were easy to find. The many satirical poems that were published as broadsheets bear this out. The activities of publishers like Janssonius who published everything controversial as long as it sold, point in the same direction.

[Oldenbarneveldt on the scaffold]

It was a game indeed – until 1619. When Van Oldenbarneveldt was beheaded, it became clear that the stakes were higher than many had thought. From then until the death of Stadtholder Maurice in 1626 the number of pamphlets dropped significantly. The percentage of publications that cannot be traced rose sharply. The tone changed too – for a while. An author who did not see the change in time was in danger of losing his head. Pastor Henrikus Slatius was the only Dutch writer who lost his life on the scaffold, in 1622. He was condemned for plotting against Maurice, but the accusations were a fabrication and his confession the result of torture.

[pastor Henricus Slatius tried to escape from the Netherlands dressed as a farmer but his soft, white hands betrayed him. Anonymous broadsheet, printed by Govert Basson in Leiden]
 
After the death of Maurice the Dutch Republic slowly returned to the more tolerant course that has been its trademark almost ever since. But perhaps indifference is a better word for what defined the Dutch stance. The Dutch were merchants. They were hardly interested in the habits or thought of other peoples, let alone that they would ever put any effort in trying to change these. This pragmatic view of the world shows in the way they handled censorship. When a writer threatened the peace or the economic status quo the authorities stepped in. Otherwise writers, publishers and booksellers were more or less free to do as they liked. And that is exactly what they did. Sometimes booksellers were partners of the inteprid authors they published. They were facilitators, activist dreamers who went into publishing to promote their own ideas or those of others, and some were prepared to sell their souls if necessary in order to make a profit.

Pamphlets have been compared to modern newspapers for the impact they had on public opinion, but that is a false comparison. To print a newspaper one needs machines that cost millions. A writer will have to convince an editorial board of his ideas, and if he is lucky he will find them edited if not emasculated on the backside of an advertisement somewhere at the back. In early modern Amsterdam all you needed was twenty guilders in cash to have 300 pamphlets of some 5,000 words printed. This was the normal size of an edition for this type of publication. For a printer it was an afternoon’s work. Knowledge of a certain pamphlet could spread like a wildfire. Some pamphlets were printed time after time and copied by a dozen other printers. For that reason, the comparison with a blog, or even facebook, is a better one.

PD

Pamphlet and Petrol Bomb

A pamphlet is a short piece of polemical writing, printed in the form of a booklet and aimed at a large public. The character of a pamphlet is oppositional, its contents more often than not politically subversive. Pamphlets are circulated for their impact upon public opinion. The English word pamphlet entered the vernacular in the fifteenth century. Early printers used black-letter (or Gothic) type for news pamphlets, a typeface generally reserved for ballads, proclamations, and other publications intended for a wide audience. Pamphlet writing rose in importance with the growth of the letterpress. Pamphleteering thrives in an atmosphere of controversy. During the mid-seventeenth century French Fronde more than 5,000 political pamphlets appeared (called ‘mazarinades’ after their usual subject, Cardinal Mazarin). One legacy of the French Revolution is a substantial body of pamphlet literature. The most effective political pamphlet ever produced was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776). This passionate plea for American independence sold 100,000 copies within a period of three months. Until the emergence of the mass media, the pamphlet remained an important vehicle for shaping public opinion and expressing political dissent. In the history of censorship, it was the pamphleteers who suffered the most vicious attacks on both work and body.

Queen Elizabeth never married. Until bearing a child became impossible, she considered several suitors. Her last courtship, ending in 1581 at the age of forty-eight, was with François, Duke of Anjou, who was her junior by twenty-two years. In August 1579, Cambridge-educated Puritan pamphleteer John Stubbe wrote The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereunto England is like to be swallowed by another French Marriage, in which he objected to Elizabeth’s proposed marriage with Anjou. He argued that it was against God’s law for a Protestant to marry a Catholic. Moreover, English values, customs and morality would be undermined by mixing with the French. National identity is a serious matter – then and now. The book was printed by Hugh Singleton. Elizabeth was incensed by the publication and a proclamation was issued prohibiting its circulation. Copies of the pamphlet were publicly burned. On 13 October 1579, writer and publisher were arrested. Elizabeth wanted to hang them both by Royal prerogative, but agreed instead to their trial for felony. The jury refused to convict. The accused were charged with conspiring to excite sedition. They were sentenced to have their right hands cut off, though it appears that Singleton was pardoned because of old age. The sentence was carried out at the market place in Westminster. It took three blows to chop off Stubbe’s hand. Surgeons were present to prevent him bleeding to death. He subsequently signed his name ‘John Stubbe, scaeva’ – the left-handed.

Why were punishments so severe for pamphleteers who responded critically to public or political affairs? The authorities lived in fear of the ‘lethal power’ of the printing press. Writing rebellious pamphlets was a criminal act to be punished by public humiliation and physical marking. The aim of punishment in general was to set a disturbing example to others to restrain from criminal or subversive activity. The legal spectacle was designed to shock and prevent. The law was about impact. Early descriptions of hell gave precise descriptions of punishments for specific sins. These were detailed catalogues of crime and its consequences. Temporal and ecclesiastical courts followed a similar line of proceedings. Every potential criminal knew exactly what to expect if he/she was caught. Punishment was a public affair. It was a spectacle, a drama, attended by large crowds who were there to witness that justice had been done. To the pamphleteer, writing controversial documents was a serious and dangerous undertaking. It did not stop authors from expressing their criticism or concern in print. Far from it. The seventeenth century was the age of the pamphlet. London was the centre of printing activity. There, during the time when censorship laws were enforced, twenty formally licensed printers were the only authorized publishers. Of course, there were far more than just twenty printers at work. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the capital housed several hundred unlicensed printing presses, and by the middle of the century, printing facilities were to found in a range of locations outside London. However, the cost of printing remained relatively high. It was not until the 1620s that less expensive type-face technologies reduced the cost of production. This coincided with the revolutionary unrest that would lead to the Civil War. The printing press played a significant role in the outbreak of armed conflict.

The most direct form of expression was the pamphlet. Once printed, a pamphlet would be sold on street corners and in coffeehouses. Pamphlets could easily be transported to more distant locations. The ever increasing level of literacy allowed the messages of printed pamphlets to spread to all corners of the country. It became impossible to maintain the rigid censorship of old. Regulations dating from the sixteenth century required that every prospective publication must be licensed by a censor and then recorded in the Stationer’s register. After 1637 printed materials had to include the name of the person who authorized the publication. Enforcement of these laws went under the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber (a Soviet sounding name if ever there was one) which sat at the Palace of Westminster. The court was set up to ensure the enforcement of laws against prominent or wealthy people who otherwise may escape justice. Court sessions were held in secret and evidence was presented in writing. There was no right of appeal, there were no juries. The court could punish offenders with fines, imprisonment, or corporal mutilation. King Charles I used the Court of Star Chamber as a political tool during the eleven years when he ruled without a Parliament. The Chamber became notorious for judgments favourable to himself and to Archbishop Laud. Their Puritan critics were treated brutally. In his campaign for church uniformity, Laud dismissed nonconformist ministers and suppressed Puritan preachers.

In November 1630, Alexander Leighton was brought before Star Chamber for circulating a petition that demanded the abolition of episcopacy. He was sentenced to be flogged, mutilated and imprisoned for life. Leighton was the first of many Puritans to be punished for their beliefs during the 1630s. In June 1637, lawyer William Prynne, clergyman Henry Burton and physician John Bastwick were prosecuted by the Chamber for publishing pamphlets that criticized Laudian doctrines. All three were sentenced to be stood in the pillory. The letter S and L were branded on William Prynne’s cheeks (Seditious Libeller: he would later say that the letters stood for ‘Stigma of Laud’). So large was the crowd which flocked to see William Prynne branded that Sir Kenelm Digby complained that even the appearance of royalty would bring out fewer people. The Chamber also ordered the physical mutilation of Burton and Bastwick. They had their ears cut off. An account of the execution has been left by John Rushworth, Oliver Cromwell’s personal secretary: ‘The executioner cut off [Burton’s] ears deep and close, in a cruel manner, with much effusion of blood, an artery being cut, as there was likewise of Dr Bastwick. Then Mr Prynne’s cheeks were seared with an iron made exceeding hot which done, the executioner cut off one of his ears and a piece of his cheek with it; then hacking the other ear almost off, he left it hanging and went down; but being called up again he cut it quite off’.

The punishments became the focus for popular demonstrations against Laud and made Prynne, Burton and Bastwick into Puritan martyrs. The practices of censorship and punishment became hotly debated issues. Early in 1641 Parliament decided to dissolve the Star Chamber. From that point until the Royalist regained control over the press in August of 1642, England witnessed a participation in national politics as never seen before. The statistics are staggering. The British Library holds the so-called Thomason Tracts, one of the most important sources relating to the English Civil War. These are a vast collection of printed pamphlets, books, and newspapers, printed in London between 1640 and 1661, originally brought together by bookseller George Thomason. An analysis preserved in the collection shows that although only twenty-two pamphlets were published in 1640, more than 1,000 were issued in each of the succeeding four years. Once censorship was abolished, fear of repression and mutilation disappeared, and all brakes were taken off. The age expressed itself in a flood of hostile pamphlets and an unprecedented violence of words. In contemporary terms, the pamphlet was a petrol bomb of controversy.

On the love of Books

In everybody’s life there are defining moments. The first time one falls in love is such an occasion – the actual moment often being a matter of hindsight and/or nostalgia. I remember sitting on a curb in the dusk of an early summer’s day waiting for a girl who didn’t show up. She told me later that she loved someone else. It is the sudden understanding of feelings that must have been there for months and at the same time the agonizing pain of the heart ‘that even a bullet cannot cure.’

Then there is the first encounter with truly great fiction. In my case it was Joyce’s Ulysses. I took the novel from the shelf in a friend’s study and was bowled over by the first sentence about stately plump Buck Mulligan coming down the stairs. It changed my life forever.

I experienced a similar sensation when confronted with 17th century books. Twenty-five years ago I was not enthused by my master-course in Dutch literature. I was going through the motions of a study I did not appreciate. We were taught analytical bibliography. The teaching up till that moment was limited to the discussion of rather boring texts. However, one day we were each presented with a book in order to do a simple autopsy. The volume on my desk was a play by Joost van den Vondel, published in 1648, and bound in a cover made of white vellum. I had never touched a similar book before.

This was the first of some 100.000 books I have opened since. For a number of reasons I have been able to read only a few of them. Lack of time, leisure and linguistic knowledge – I know a little Latin, but no Greek or Hebrew, nor am I fluent in the early versions of modern European languages – prevented me from reading more widely. But I have handled the books. The best way to study typography is by trying to understand the structure of books you are unable read. There are no facts, opinions or other challenges to distract the mind from the real subject-matter of typography, i.e. the way information is organized in book form.

It seems at times that we restrict attractiveness to looks, ignoring the fact that the beauty of a face is made up of intelligence and gentleness as well. The same applies good design. My initial love for books was all about the mise-en-page, but it was the underlying content that came to appeal to me just as much, even if I was unable to read the book. I did not know this at the time, just as I did not realize that the design of books was a conscious process, practised by people who had gone to school to study it. Early printers were certainly not educated in that manner. They learned their trade in the workshop by imitating the books that were printed by earlier generations. Historically speaking, all innovation in design came from outsiders, from scholars and businessmen who had turned to printing, questioning the how and why of age-old methods.

On Dutch books
When I started my career as a professional book-historian and bibliographer I worked exclusively with 17th century Dutch books. During its golden age (ca 1625-1670) the Netherlands produced almost half of the total European book-output. Nowadays most of these books are not widely known – with the exception of those printed by the Elzevir-dynasty. The Dutch Republic counted many outstanding printers: Blaeu (world famous as a mapmaker, but little known as a printer) Van Ravesteyn, the Van den Rade family and many others. About 2,000 printers are known to have worked in Holland during the 17th century. They published books for the local market, they catered for an international circle of scholars, and smuggled Bibles to England. Enjoying relative freedom, they printed books that were forbidden elsewhere in Europe. The design and style of books printed in the Netherlands were derived from printers who had fled Flanders out of fear for the Spanish inquisition during the late sixteenth century. These Flemish printers had in their turn been influenced both by the great French masters of their age, and by Swiss publishers who printed the works of theologians like Calvin at Geneva and Basel.

Dutch printers gave the elegant books of the French a twist of their own. Their preferred format was a broad quarto (about 24x20cm), they liked their ornaments big and their fat typefaces well inked. The quality of both printing and paper was excellent, at that time better than the books produced elsewhere in Europe. Their books were cheaper too. Thanks to the foundation of the University of Leiden with its high standards of teaching, the level of scholarship was outstanding. It inspired the quality of academic texts that came from the Dutch presses. The works of Descartes and Spinoza were published in the Netherlands, together with those of all the lesser luminaries who are presently forgotten but who were famous in their own time.

French books
Having studied Dutch books for about ten years, I turned my attention to those printed elsewhere. This initial lack of involvement was not only caused by my professional activities – I catalogued Dutch books for a living – but also by the problems that a different approach of design creates. A different taste has to be acquired. It almost seems that a liking for the subtle and beautiful is more difficult to develop than an appreciation of the simple and crude. Today I love incunabula – the earliest printed books that show the struggle of printers to liberate themselves from the style and methods of the manuscript era – but I remember disliking, almost hating them for their primitive pages and for their lack of such essentials as a title-page, headlines and page-numbers.

The same goes for 16th century French books. Their style is subtle yet bold. In France, printers started out in a medieval mode. Early 16th century French books have the flavour of their cathedrals. They are filled with all the trappings of Catholicism and decorated with the stone gargoyles that have become famous ever since. Within a decade all this changed half way in the 16th century. After the fifties nearly all books printed in Lyons or Paris were in the austere style that we identify with the Estiennes, Vascosan or the De Tournes.

Ornaments became simple arabesques, the severe initials found themselves in a black field dotted with white pinpoints and slightly decorated with some almost abstract plant-forms. The typefaces – still familiar to us – were created by Garamond and the lesser known type-cutters that in time have been absorbed into his great name. The lay-out of the pages had been brought to perfection with headlines that were set in spaced small-caps, the indents that replaced the paragraph-signs and most of all of course the perfect typefaces that were set and printed by masters unsurpassed in their art. In fact a 16th century book of one of the great French printers looks more familiar to us than any book that dates from before or after it. Their style and typefaces were adopted by Stanley Morison in the early 20th century. His work stayed in vogue well into the fifties. And even though the avant-garde has opened up new ways of thinking, mainstream book-design is still done in a way that was first explored almost four centuries ago.

An international style
The first printed books were made to look like the most valued manuscripts of their days. In its first stage, the invention of printing was certainly not as revolutionary as many people think it may have been. Most of the work on a book remained done by hand, especially that on the decorations. Less than 20% of the creation of a book was done by printers. It was not until the end of the 15th century that printing really took off. Nevertheless, the 1,100 printers that were active in Europe in the early days opened up vast domains of knowledge. Their books were often as original as they were beautiful. Those were the days that an expanding printing industry started to find form and style.

Although printing, especially printing in the vernacular brought about a more patriotic awareness among European nations, the printing community of booksellers, printers and type-founders established a truly multi-national trade. With it came an international style. The writers of these books belonged to a cosmopolitan circle of scholars, Erasmus being the prime example of such a thinker. In fact, the Dutch publications mentioned in an earlier paragraph form the epitome of this international style. The works printed by the Elzevirs are the supreme example of this kind of book. Authors and editors of their books were eminent figures in their respective fields, the printing was superb. The same applies to the ornamentation, which in comparison to books produced in France, Germany or Italy at the time, was subdued but effective.

During the early 18th century a new French style ruled supreme once more with a rococo-decoration that was based on marine life and constituted of small ‘fleurons’ instead of the woodcuts that characterized the books of an earlier era. Less frivolous and more in tune with modern taste are the well-known books of Bodoni and the Didots. The style of the Elzevirs returned for a short period in the 19th century when the collector’s craze for their books resulted in a revival of some of their designs.

19th century books and their critics
The demise of modernism has not yet led to a reappraisal of 19th-century book-design. We tend to consider these books over-decorated and lacking in originality. They are the mindless products of early industrialism. This point of view was propagated by William Morris in particular. He wanted to create books that were treated as works of art and handcrafted instead of machine-tooled. A different line of attack was undertaken by modernists who considered all decoration as an almost criminal form of primitivism.

By trying to understand 19th century books on their own terms one will be able to discern their individual beauty. There is undoubtedly an affinity with the magnificence of operas by Rossini or Bellini, or with the novels of writers like Walter Scott or Alexandre Dumas. The 19th century reproduction and printing techniques were used to create books that were as haunting as any story written in those days, their gothic revivals having a singular beauty of their own. In our post-modern days we may perhaps be able to absorb their lessons again. William Morris was a formidable critic of such books, although the work of Stanley Morison in the early 20th century has been more influential. As a designer and theorist the latter has done more to give to the book the face we now consider as familiar. It is a rather austere face, but not as forbidding as the works printed in the late 18th century by Baskerville or Bodoni and their kin. The typefaces designed by Morison were modeled on earlier, and to our eyes: friendlier designs of Garamond and Granjon. The decoration is minimal – a line or a single fleuron is considered sufficient. Lately this is changing again, especially in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Europe.


And now
Opinion makers in our own age tell us that the book as we know it has reached the end of its lifespan. Is this indeed the case? I think not. Perhaps some types of book will expire soon. After all, for our factual information we all check the internet. Then there is the poorly designed paperback we read on the beach. This book will disappear as soon as computers can be dropped in the sand and read comfortably in the full blast of the sun. The well-designed book, whether fictional or academic, will continue for a long time to come. Computerized books on the other hand will continue to be much better designed. The art of design has become more democratic. The instruments we need to make books and typefaces are now available to a broad community of practitioners. To give a single example: in the fifties there were three type-designers in the Netherlands, now there are hundreds of them. Fifty years ago it was virtually impossible to become a type-designer. One had to know the right people to get access to the instruments or contact the specialists who handled them. Learning the trade was restricted to insiders only.

Many beautiful books are produced at present. Each day brings new type-designs and exciting visions of how we can distribute information on the page and throughout a book. Thanks to the revolution in design on the one hand, and to the internet on the other, splendid books from previous centuries have become more visible than ever before and are influential once again. The internet exhibits a wide range of books from different epochs and, in doing so, unites new communities of readers and designers – the people who love and deserve the beauty of books.

Print and Urbanity: Horace ‘Elzevir’ Walpole

The large number of paintings Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first Prime Minister, assembled for his family home at Houghton Hall in Norfolk formed one of the eighteenth century’s most exceptional collections. Rebuilt during the 1720s with work continuing into the 1730s, Houghton Hall required the original house to be demolished and the village of Houghton to be moved (!) to accommodate the new park. The rebuilt Hall was vast in order to accommodate all large-scale paintings and tapestries. The core of the collection included works by Dutch, Flemish and French masters such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Poussin, Murillo and Lorrain. Walpole also commissioned many works from living artists. Busy with political affairs of state, he employed specialists to purchase works of art on his behalf and make recommendations. Members of the Walpole family (his sons Robert, Edward and Horace, or his brother Horatio) travelled on the Continent where they bought for Sir Robert. The organisation of the collection at Houghton Hall was left to his youngest son Horace who wrote a catalogue of his father’s collection entitled Aedes Walpolianae (1747/8) in which he supplied a detailed and scholarly description of the collection which became a model for cataloguing country house collections for the remainder of the century.

When Robert died in 1745, his considerable debts were passed on to his eldest son Robert who set about raising capital through the sale of some 130 paintings from their London properties. The proceeds did not come near to settling the debts. Robert only survived his father by six years. The estate – along with its debts – passed to his only son George who was a wayward character. He used Houghton for wild parties and mixed with unsavoury characters. He then suffered a dramatic mental illness and made various suicide attempts. The house fell into disrepair and it was left to Horace to impose a degree of order on to the household. Once recovered, George decided to sell the entire Houghton Collection. The possibility of a private sale caused outrage. The collection was considered to be a perfect foundation for the establishment of a national gallery which, at the time, was very much an undertaking of national pride. After all, London had to compete with the success of the Louvre in Paris.

The loss of 204 outstanding works to the flamboyant Catherine the Great of Russia was a blow to morale and interpreted as a sign of British decline. Horace despaired in private at the prospect at his father’s legacy being destroyed. In the battle of words even some of the more outrageous contemporary rumours of Catherine’s sexual appetite were used to define her as an undeserving recipient of England’s finest collection. Ironically, in 1789, ten years after the collection arrived in Russia, the north wing of Houghton Hall was destroyed by fire. The collection at least was saved for future generations to enjoy.

Horace Walpole was a man of many talents. He was an author, bibliographer, publisher, collector, and a very odd character. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he became MP for Callington (Cornwall) in 1743, held the seat for thirteen years, but never set foot in the place. A confirmed bachelor, he drew about him a circle of cultured ‘dear friends’, a semi-erotic camaraderie of sensitive aesthetes. His biographers have described Walpole as an effeminate, asexual, or passively homosexual character. Horace Walpole does not quite fit the eighteenth century mould, being more akin to Max Beerbohm’s and Oscar Wilde’s late nineteenth century style. Horace was a decadent, given to dramatic and aesthetic indulgence – an eighteenth century Oscar Wilde, a prototype for Huysmans’s fictional hero Des Esseintes. As an author, he is remembered for his extensive correspondence which is of significant historical interest. He was a prodigious writer of letters, corresponding with many outstanding cultural and political figures of his time. His fame rests upon the novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled ‘A Gothic Story’, of which melodrama and parody were to become long-standing features of the style initiated by him. Published anonymously, the first edition of 500 copies sold out quickly. The world was moving on, but fiction turned to the past. The castle of Otranto is riddled with dark vaults, subterranean passages, trap-doors, caverns and ghosts. The novel was published on Christmas Eve in 1764. That same year James Watt perfected the steam engine, thus laying the groundwork for the Industrial Revolution. Literature dripped of medieval blood, while London and the big industrial cities were about to be covered in grease and oil. The gap between fiction and life was widening. Literature became divorced from reality. Escape was the name of the game.

In 1747, Walpole leased a small suburban house in fashionable Twickenham, south-west of London. Built in 1698, it was called ‘Strawberry Hill’ after the area of land on which it stood, known as Strawberry Hill Shot, and in its time had been occupied by the actor and dramatist Colley Cibber. Walpole set about transforming and extending the dwelling into a Gothic castle. He wanted the house to look like a medieval manor, without sacrificing any modern luxuries or refinements. The house became an odd mixture of papier-mâché friezes, fireplaces copied from medieval tombs, a Holbein chamber evoking the court of Henry VIII, traditional Dutch tiles on the floor, contemporary carpets throughout and modern paintings on the walls. Strawberry Hill was built for theatrical effect. The house was a stage set on which Walpole performed his life. To some, it was the manifestation of a gay aesthetic. Strawberry Hill was the most famous house in Georgian England. It fuelled the vogue for all things medieval. For Victorian Gothic purists such as Augustus Pugin, it was a sham. For modernists, it indicated the failure of the age to build anything of stylistic significance.

Strawberry Hill was filled with art, antiquities and curiosities of every period from the ancient to the modern. Walpole wrote and printed his own catalogue, A Description of the Villa of Horace Walpole in 1774, which he revised and enlarged in 1784. His collection of miniatures which included works by Holbein, Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, was one of the finest anywhere and his ceramic collection (over 1,200 pieces) ranged from ancient Greek pots to contemporary porcelain. Not all of the collection was of artistic merit, but Walpole delighted in his eclectic array of objects of historical curiosity from a pair of gloves belonging to James I to the spurs worn by King William in the Battle of the Boyne, and a lock of hair of Edward IV. In the Great Sale held in 1842, described by many observers as the sale of the century, Walpole’s collections were dispersed world-wide. The auction lasted thirty days.

To bibliophiles Walpole is the person who started the first successful private press. The term ‘Private Press’ refers to a movement in book production which flourished at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It started with the founding of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press in 1890. Those involved created books by traditional printing and binding methods, with an emphasis on the book as a work of art and manual skill, as well as a medium for the transmission of information. Morris studied incunabulum from which he drew inspiration for manufacturing his own paper, ink and type design. If Morris turned his personal ambition into a ‘movement’, Walpole had set an early example of the notion of a private press. He founded his Strawberry Hill Press in June 1757. It is the most celebrated of the early English private presses, unique for the importance of the books, pamphlets, and ephemera it produced. Walpole called it the Officina Arbuteana and employed Irishman William Robinson as his printer. Walpole was an admirer of the Elzevier publishing dynasty, referring to his private press as the ‘Elzevirianum’. On 16 July 1757 he wrote to George Montagu: ‘Elzevirianum opens to-day; you shall taste its first fruits’. His cousin Field Marshal Henry Seymour Conway called him ‘Elzevir Horace’. Many of the first editions of his own works were struck off within its walls. The first works printed at Strawberry Hill, on 8 August 1757, were two odes of Thomas Gray, ‘The Progress of Poesy’ and ‘The Bard’. Several books of interest were printed at the press, such as Hentzner’s Journey into England, Mémoires de Grammont, The Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, etc., and several of Walpole’s own works. The emphasis of the press was on the physical quality of the book produced. The publication of Lucan’s Pharsalia is a notable example.

Hugo Grotius’s text edition of this particular work was published by Raphelengius in Leiden in 1614 with reissues in 1626 and 1627 (and probably also in 1639). A revised edition was published in 1643 by Blaeu in Amsterdam. The house of Blaeu also brought out two Grotius editions of the Pharsalia in small format in 1619 and 1627; these editions were reprinted in 1626 and 1636 by Blaeu’s neighbour Janssonius. Walpole sought the support Richard Bentley, classical scholar and Master of Trinity, Cambridge, to supplement the notes supplied by his Dutch predecessor. After two laborious years of preparation, the volume appeared in quarto, M. Annaei Lucani Pharsalia. Cum notis Hugonis Grotii et Richardi Bentleii, etc. (Strawberry-Hill, 1760). Five hundred beautiful copies were printed on paper marked J.W. (= James Whatman), the outstanding papermaker of his day.

The secret island

German physician and botanist Engelbert Kaempfer, having entered – like many of his countrymen – in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), arrived in Batavia in September 1689. Eight months later he left for Japan to take up the post of physician to the Embassy at Deshima. His diplomatic tact and medical knowledge gained the trust of the population, allowing him to gain an insight in the local culture and customs, and learn the language. He compiled one of the first records of the Japanese alphabet (‘t Japansch ABC).

During his stay he accumulated an impressive dossier of botanical notes, drawings and samples. He returned to Amsterdam in October 1692 and, subsequently, took a medical doctorate at Leiden University in April 1694. His first book Amoenitatum exoticarum was published in Germany in 1712. In it he gave detailed descriptions of plants that had not been seen or recorded in Europe before. When Sir Hans Sloane, whose collections were to form the nucleus of the British Museum, heard of Kaempfer’s death, he purchased the latter’s manuscripts, notes, drawings and maps. Sloane instructed his librarian John Gaspar Scheuchzer to translate this legacy into English, resulting in The History of Japan, a book that has been hailed as a landmark in the study of that secretive country.

Antoine Pluvinel on horses

Anabaptist printer and publisher Crispijn de Passe was born in 1564 in Arnemuiden (Zeeland) in the Netherlands. He was educated in culturally vibrant Antwerp, the outstanding printing and graphic centre of sixteenth century Europe. There he started his artistic career. By 1585 at the latest, he became a member of the prominent Guild of St Luke and worked as an engraver for various publishing houses. When Catholic Spain conquered Antwerp in 1588, reducing this cosmopolitan centre to a stagnant religious backwater, Crispijn de Passe, like tens of thousands other intellectuals, fellow artists and craftsmen, left the city with his family. He went into exile in Cologne where he founded his own publishing house. He specialized in portraits and genre graphics which were destined both for the European and English markets. His work was in demand.

In 1611, Crispijn left Cologne for religious reasons and relocated his studio to Utrecht. There he teamed up with Aernout van Buchell (Buchelius) and continued his highly successful career. His sons continued in his footsteps, working on their own in Paris, London, and Copenhagen, and carrying the international fame of the De Passe studio with them. In 1623, Crispijn II produced a series of outstanding engravings for one of the classic seventeenth century work on the art of horse-riding. The author of the book was Antoine de Pluvinel. In its complete form Le maneige royal was published posthumously in 1625. It was edited by Pluvinel’s friend Menou de Charnizay, and given its definitive name L’Instruction du Roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval (Teaching the King how to ride a horse). The author had been riding instructor to Louis XIII.

Antoine de Pluvinel was born in Crest, Dauphiné, France, in 1555. He learned riding in Italy and was educated according to the Neapolitan school under Giovanni Pignatelli, who introduced the Italian style of horse-breaking with strict and forceful methods. Pluvinel, on the contrary, became a proponent of less brutal ways. His practice was based on understanding the character of the horse and motivating the animal’s cooperation through patience and praise. He applied subtle training methods, insisting that a horse moves more gracefully if he enjoys being ridden. The principles of the Neapolitan school of riding however did persist. One of the English noblemen who studied in Italy was William Cavendish, a nobleman and a royalist, who was obliged to live in exile after the defeat of Charles I. He was to become the first Duke of Newcastle and is credited with introducing school riding in England. Whilst in exile, he taught the schooling of horses in Antwerp and drew on his experiences of the disciplines of the Neapolitan School to publish A General System of Horsemanship in 1658.

In 1594, Pluvinel founded the Académie d’Équitation near to the place now known as the Place des Pyramides. There, the French nobility was trained not only in horsemanship, but also in all the refined accomplishments demanded of a gentleman (dancing, dressing, etiquette). Pluvinel’s influence on the aristocracy endured well into the seventeenth century. Richelieu, the future Prime minister of King Louis XIII was one of those who attended the Académie. Pluvinel’s book was a massive success. It was re-printed several times, and translated into many languages. He died on 24 August 1620 and is remembered and recognized by many as the ‘Father of French Horsemanship’.

Illustrations from Spigelius. De humani corporis libri decem. Venice 1627

This gallery contains 44 photos.

The remarkable engravings in this book are based on the work of Guillio Casseri – who was professor of anatomy in Padua with the shortest tenure ever: he fell sick and died after one lecture. The designs for the engravings were made by the manieristic artist Odoardo Fialetti, a student of Tintoretto. They were copied …