THE Invention of Printing has always been re­cog­nized by ed­u­cat­ed men as a sub­ject of im­por­tance: there is no mechanical art, nor are there any of the fine arts, about whose early history so many books have been written. The subject is as mysterious as it is inviting. There is an unusual degree of obscurity about the origin of the first printed books and the lives and works of the early printers. There are records and traditions which cannot be reconciled of at least three distinct inventions of printing. Its early history is entangled with a controversy about rival inventors which has lasted for more than three centuries, and is not yet fully determined.

In the management of this controversy, a subject intrinsically attractive has been made repulsive. The history of the invention of printing has been written to please national pride. German authors assert the claims of Gutenberg, and discredit traditions about Coster. Dutch authors insist on the priority of Coster, and charge Gutenberg with stealing the invention. Partisans on each side say that their opponents have perverted the records and suppressed the truth. The quarrel has spread. English and French authors, who had no national prejudices to gratify, and who should have considered the question without passion, have wrangled over the subject with all the bitterness of Germans or Hollanders. In this, as in other quarrels, there are amusing features, but to the general reader the controversy seems unfortunate and is certainly wearisome.

It is a greater misfortune that all the early chronicles of printing were written in a dead language. Wolf’s col­lec­tion p010 of Typographic Monuments, which includes near­ly ev­ery pa­per of val­ue writ­ten before 1740, is in Latin; the valuable books of Meerman, Maittaire, and Schoepflin are also in Latin. To the general reader these are sealed books: to the student, who seeks exact knowledge of the methods of the first printers, they are tiresome books. Written for the information of librarians rather than of printers, it is but proper that these books should devote the largest space to a review of the controversy or to a description of early editions; but it is strange that they should so imperfectly describe the construction and appearance of early types and the usages of the early printers. The mechanical features of typography were, apparently, neglected as of little importance, and beneath the dignity of history.

A failure to present accurate illustrations of early printing is not the fault of modern authorities. Many of them are full of fac-similes bearing the marks of minute and conscientious care; but they are in foreign languages, and are seldom found in our largest American libraries. There are, it is true, a few books in English on early printing which have accurate fac-similes; but high prices and limited editions put them out of the reach of the ordinary book-buyer. They were written by and for librarians only.

Valuable as all these books are, they disappoint the printer. Some of them, though presenting fac-similes in profusion, are not accompanied with proper explanations in the text: others are devoted to one branch only of early printing, such as block-books, or the printed work of one nation only. Two of them are untrustworthy as authorities. Neither from one book, nor from all the books, can a printer get a clear description of the mechanical development of typography. This incompleteness was frankly acknowledged by Dr. Dibdin, when he said that there was no work in the English language which deserved to be considered as a complete general history of printing. This was an old complaint. Nearly a hundred years before, Prosper Marchand had said that the history of printing, voluminous as it then seemed, was but history in fragments. p011

The first attempt to supply this great deficiency was made by August Bernard, in the disquisition published at Paris, in the year 1853, under the title, De l’origine et des debuts de l’imprimerie en Europe. His was the first book in which the printed work attributed to Coster and Gutenberg was critically examined from a typographic point of view. To readers who were not content with the vague descriptions of popular books of typography, the explanations of Bernard were of peculiar value. I had reason to think that a translation of the history of this eminent printer would be received by American printers with some measure of the favor which the original had met with in Europe. Impressed with this belief I began the work.

I found it necessary to consult many of Bernard’s authorities. My admiration of the superior method and forcible style of Bernard, an admiration still unabated, was increased by the reading of the new books; but the esteem in which I hold his valuable work does not prevent the regret that, in his entire neglect of the block-books, he should have overlooked the most significant feature of early printing. The fac-similes of early prints, subsequently shown in The Infancy of Book Printing of Weigel and in The Typographic Monuments of Holtrop, convinced me that the earliest practice of typography had its beginning in a still earlier practice of printing from blocks, and that a description of block-books should precede a description of the invention of types.

Since these books were written, all the old theories about the origin of typography have been examined with increased interest, and discussed with superior critical ability, by many eminent European scholars. Discoveries of great importance have been made; old facts have been set forth in new lights; traditions accepted as truthful history for three hundred years have been demolished. Of the many able men who have been engaged in this task of separating truth from fiction, no one has done more efficient service than Dr. A. Van der Linde of The Hague, whose papers on the traditions of typography are masterpieces of acute and scholarly criticism. His researches p012 and reasoning convinced me that it would be unwise to offer a translation of any previously published book as a fair exponent of modern knowledge about early typography. The newly discovered facts were opposed to early teachings; there could be no sewing of the new cloth on the old garment. I was led away from my first purpose of translation, and, almost unconsciously, began to collect the materials for the present volume.

Until recently, the invention of printing has been regarded as a subject belonging almost entirely to bibliographers. The opinions of type-founders and printers who had examined old books have been set aside as of no value, whenever they were opposed to favorite theories or legends. This partial treatment of the subject is no longer approved: a new school of criticism invites experts to examine the books, and pays respect to their conclusions. It claims that the internal evidences of old books are of higher authority than legends, and that these evidences are conclusive, not to be ignored nor accommodated to the statements of the early chroniclers. European critics do not hesitate to say that the confusing and contradictory descriptions of the origin of printing are largely due to the improper deference heretofore paid to the statements of men who tried to describe processes which they did not understand. They say, also, that too little attention has been paid to the types and mechanics of early printing. Criticisms of this character led me to indulge the hope that I might find gleanings of value in the old field, and that it would be practicable to present them, with the newly discovered facts, in a form which would be acceptable to the printer and the general reader. In this belief, and for this purpose, this book was written.

I would not have begun this work, if I had not felt assured that a thorough revision of the subject was needed. The books and papers on typography which are most popular, and are still accepted as authoritative by the ordinary reader, repeat legends which have recently been proved untrue; they narrate, as established facts of history, methods of printing which are not only incorrect but impossible. It is time that the results of p013 the more recent researches should be published in the English language. But I offer them only as the compiler of accredited facts: I have no original discoveries to announce, no speculative theories to uphold. Nor shall I invade the proper field of librarians and bibliographers. I propose to describe old types, prints and books as they are seen by a printer, and with reference to the needs of printers and the general reader, avoiding, as far as I can, all controversies about matters which are of interest to book-collectors only. The historical part of the record will be devoted chiefly to the printed work of the first half of the fifteenth century. It will begin with descriptions of the earliest forms of printing, as shown in image prints, playing cards and block-books; it will end with the establishment of typography in Germany.

Believing that a verbal description of old books and prints, without pictorial illustrations, would be unsatisfactory, I have provided many fac-similes of early printing. No part of this work will more fully repay examination than its illustrations, which have been carefully selected from approved authorities, or from originals. Reproduced by the new process of photo-engraving, they are accurate copies of the originals, even when of reduced size. As they are printed with the descriptive text by the same method of typographic presswork, it is believed that they will more clearly illustrate the subject than lithographed fac-similes on straggling leaves.

In trying to make plain whatever may be obscure about the mechanics of printing, I have thought proper to begin the explanation with a description of its different methods. An introduction of this nature is not an unwarrantable digression. It is important that the reader should have an understanding of the radical differences between typography and xylography on the one side, and lithographic and copper-plate printing on the other, as well as some knowledge of the construction and uses of the more common tools of type-founders.

I do not propose to give any extended quotations in foreign languages. Wherever an approved translation in English has p014 been found, it has been substituted for the original text; where translations have not been approved, they have been made anew. Writing for the general reader, I have assumed that he would prefer, as I do, in every book to be read and not studied, a version in English rather than the original text. Believing that the frequent citation of authorities, especially in instances where the facts are undisputed, or where the books are inaccessible, is an annoyance, I have refrained from the presentation of foot-notes which refer to books only. I have, in a few cases, deviated from this course where the matters stated were of a character which seemed to require the specification of authority.

One of the greatest impediments I encountered when about to begin the compilation of this work was the difficulty of access to books of authority. I do not mention this in disparagement of the management of our public libraries, for I know that old books are liable to injury in the hands of the merely curious, and that librarians have little encouragement to collect scarce books on typography. To prove that there is small inquiry for treatises of this character, it is enough to say that I have had to cut open the leaves of valuable books after their rest for many years on the shelves of one of the largest libraries of this city. But if these books were ever so abundant, the proper restrictions placed on their use were a hindrance to one whose chief opportunity for consulting them is at night.

Here I am pleased to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. David Wolfe Bruce. He has not only accompanied and aided me in repeated examinations of his very valuable collection of fifteenth century books, but has lent me all the books I desired, and has freely given me unlimited time for their study. This collection—replete with all the books of authority I needed, with specimens of types, wood-cuts, and curiosities of type-founding, which illustrate the growth of printing from its infancy—was more admirably adapted to my needs than that of any library on this Continent. Deprived of Mr. Bruce’s generous assistance, my work would have been greatly restricted in its scope, and shorn of its best features of illustration. p015

I began this work intending to describe only the mechanical development of early printing, but I could not keep the matter strictly within this limit. Hedged in this narrow space, the story would be but half told. The true origin of typography is not in types, nor in block-books nor image prints. These were consequences, not causes. The condition of society at the close of the middle ages; the growth of commerce and manufactures; the enlarged sense of personal liberty; the brawls of ecclesiastics in high station, and their unworthy behavior; the revolt of the people against the authority of church and state; the neglect of duty by the self-elected teachers of the people in their monopoly of books and knowledge; the barrenness of the education then given in the schools; the eagerness of all people for the mental diversion offered in the new game of playing cards; the unsatisfied religious appetite which hungered for image prints and devotional books; the facilities for self-education afforded by the introduction of paper,—these were among the influences which produced the invention of printing. They are causes which cannot be overlooked. My inability to describe them with the fullness which they deserve would not justify their total neglect. I have devoted more space to them than is customary in treatises on early printing, but I have to admit, with regret, that they have been too curtly treated. I have done but little more than record a few of the more noticeable facts—enough, perhaps, to show that the state of education and society, in its relation to the invention of printing, deserves a more extended description than it has hitherto received. If I can succeed in awakening the attention of printers, and those who look on a knowledge of printing as a proper accomplishment of the scholar, to the nature and extent of these influences, to the curiosities of literature hidden in apparently dry books of bibliography, and to the value of the lesson of patient industry and fixed purpose taught by the life of John Gutenberg, the object of this book will have been accomplished.