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Henri Bouchot’s work is a scholarly survey of the printed book as an object of art rather than a technical manual. Opening with a modest disclaimer, the author explains that the study will not claim to uncover new facts for specialists, but will instead compile the myriad essays, now obscure or forgotten, on the subject. He limits his focus to illustration, design, engraving and etching, relegating paper making, type‑casting and binding to brief chapters. The text proceeds chronologically, beginning with early relief engravings and the St Christopher of 1423, moving through Gutenberg’s innovations, the spread of printing across Europe, and the evolving aesthetics of each century, all supported by unedited engravings and fifteen new illustrations concerning English book history.
The voice is that of a nineteenth‑century historian, earnest and exhaustive, employing a formal, descriptive style that reflects the period’s reverence for systematic scholarship. Readers with an interest in the visual culture of books, art historians, collectors, or anyone fascinated by how illustration, ornament and engraving have shaped the printed page from its incunabula origins to the modern era, will find Bouchot’s detailed narrative both informative and engaging.
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NEW YORK: SCRIBNER AND WELFORD, 743 and 745, BROADWAY. 1887.
PREFACE.
Considering that this short study can claim to be nothing more than a rapid and somewhat summary survey of the history of THE BOOK, it eschews all controversial matter, nor does it pretend to convey much fresh information to those already possessing a special knowledge of the subject. It is rather a condensed, but at the same time, it may be hoped, a useful, compendium of the thousand unknown or now forgotten essays, involving endless contradictory statements, that have been issued on this theme. The mere enumeration of such works would simply suffice to fill a volume. We have accordingly no intention to attempt a bibliography, satisfying ourselves with the modest avowal of having found so many documents in all languages, that the very abundance has been at least as embarrassing to us as the lack of materials may have been to others.
The Book appealing in its present form to a special public interested more in artistic than in purely typographical topics, our attention has been more particularly given to the illustrators, the designers, engravers, etchers, and so forth. Such graphic embellishment seemed to us of more weight than the manufacture of the paper, the type-casting, the printing properly so called. This technical aspect of the subject has been very briefly dealt with in a separate chapter, and has also been enlarged upon in the early section. To the binding also we have devoted only a single chapter, while fully conscious that a whole volume would not have sufficed merely to treat the subject superficially.
At the same time, we would not have the reader conclude from all this that our book abounds in omissions, or has overlooked any important features. The broad lines, we trust, have been adhered to, while each section has been so handled as to give a fair idea of the epoch it deals with. This is the first attempt to comprise within such narrow limits an art and an industry with a life of over four centuries, essaying to describe its beginnings and its history down to our days, without omitting a glance at the allied arts.
The engravings selected for illustration have, as far as possible, been taken from unedited materials, and have been directly reproduced by mechanical processes, while fifteen new illustrations, having special relation to the history of the Book in England, have been added to this edition, which is also considerably enlarged in the text on the same subject.
CONTENTS.
Origin of the Book--Engravers in relief--The St. Christopher of 1423--Origin of the Xylographs--The Xylographs, Donatus, and _Speculum_--The Laurent Coster legend--From block books to movable characters--John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg--The Strasbourg trial--Gutenberg at Mayence--Fust and Schoeffer--The letters of indulgence--The Bible--The "Catholicon"--The Mayence Bible--Causes of the dispersion of the first Mayence printers--General considerations.
The Book and the printers of the second generation--The German workmen dispersed through Europe--Caxton and the introduction of printing into England--Nicholas Jenson and his supposed mission to Mayence--The first printing in Paris; William Fichet and John Heinlein--The first French printers; their installation at the Sorbonne and their publications--The movement in France--The illustration of the Book commenced in Italy--The Book in Italy; engraving in relief and metal plates--The Book in Germany: Cologne, Nuremberg, Basle--The Book in the Low Countries--French schools of ornament of the Book; Books of Hours; booksellers at the end of the fifteenth century--Literary taste in titles in France at the end of the fifteenth century--Printers and booksellers' marks--The appearance of the portrait in the Book--Progress in England--Caxton and his followers.
French epics and the Renaissance--Venice and Aldus Manutius--Italian illustrators--The Germans; Theuerdanck, Schäufelein--The Book in other countries--French books at the beginning of the century, before the accession of Francis I.--Geoffroy Tory and his works--Francis I. and the Book--Robert Estienne--Lyons a centre of bookselling; Holbein's Dances of Death--School of Basle--Alciati's emblems and the illustrated books of the middle of the century--The school of Fontainebleau and its influence--Solomon Bernard--Cornelis de la Haye and the _Promptuaire_--John Cousin--Copper plate engraving and metal plates--Woériot--The portrait in the Book of the sixteenth century--How a book was illustrated on wood at the end of the century--Influence of Plantin on the Book; his school of engravers--General considerations--Progress in England--Coverdale's Bible--English printers and their work--Engraved plates in English books.
Tendencies of the regency of Marie de Medicis--Thomas de Leu and Leonard Gaultier--J. Picart and Claude Mellan--Lyons and J. de Fornazeris--The Book at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Germany, Italy, and Holland--Crispin Pass in France--The Elzevirs and their work in Holland--Sebastian Cramoisy and the Imprimerie Royale--Illustration with Callot, Della Bella, and Abraham Bosse--The publishers and the Hotel de Rambouillet--The reign of Louis XIV.; Antoine Vitré syndic at his accession--His works and mortifications; the Polyglot Bible of Le Jay--Art and illustrators of the grand century--Sébastien Leclerc, Lepautre, and Chauveau--Leclerc preparing the illustration and decoration of the Book for the eighteenth century--The Book in England in the seventeenth century.
The regency--Publishers at the beginning of the eighteenth century--Illustrators in France; Gillot--The school of Watteau and Boucher--Cars--The younger Cochin; his principal works in vignettes--French art in England; Gravelot--Eisen--Choffard--The Baisers of Dorat; the Contes of La Fontaine--The publisher Cazin and the special literature of the eighteenth century--The younger Moreau and his illustrations--The Revolution--The school of David--Duplessis-Bertaux--The Book in Germany; Chodowiecki--In England; Boydell and French artists--Caslon and Baskerville--English books with illustrations--Wood engraving in the eighteenth century; the Papillons--Printing offices in the eighteenth century.
The Didots and their improvements--The folio Racine--The school of Didot--Fine publications in England and Germany--Literature and art of the Restoration--Romanticism--Wood engraving--Bewick's pupils, Clennell, etc.--The illustrators of romances--The generation of 1840--The Book in our days in Europe and America.
The binding of the first printed books--Ancient German bindings--Binding in the time of Louis XII.--Italian bindings--Aldus--Maioli--Grolier--Francis I.--Henry II. and Diane de Poitiers--Catherine de Medicis--Henry III.--The Eves--The "fanfares"--Louis XIII.--Le Gascon--Florimond Badier--Louis XIV.--Morocco leathers--Cramoisy--The bindings of the time of Louis XIV.--The regency--Pasdeloup--The Deromes--Dubuisson--Thouvenin--Lesné--The nineteenth century--English binders--Roger Payne--Francis Bedford.
Origin of the Book--Engravers in relief--The St. Christopher of 1423--Origin of the Xylographs--The Xylographs, Donatus, and _Speculum_--The Laurent Coster legend--From block books to movable characters--John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg--The Strasbourg trial--Gutenberg at Mayence--Fust and Schoeffer--The letters of indulgence--The Bible--The Catholicon--The Mayence Bible--Causes of the dispersion of the first Mayence printers--General considerations.
Like its forerunner, Painting, the Book has ever been the most faithful reflection of the times when it was written and illustrated. Natural and genuine from the first, and simply embellished with crude illustrations, it assumed in the sixteenth century the grand airs of the Renaissance, gay or serious according to circumstances, decked in what were then called _histoires_--that is to say, wonderful engravings--and daintily printed in Gothic, Roman, or choice Italic characters. But at the close of the century it had already abandoned wood for line engravings, heightening its mysticism or its satire at the whim of passing politics and religious wranglings. Then, under the influence of the painters and courtiers of the Grand Monarque, it becomes completely transformed, donning the peruke, so to speak, indulging in allegory and conventionalities, pompous and showy, tricking itself out in columns and pilasters instead of the old arabesques and scroll work of the Renaissance, thus continuing amid the coquetries of the regency, the pastorals and insipidities of the following reigns, until at last it suddenly assumes with the heroes of the Revolution the austere mien and airs of classic art. The Book has always been as closely connected with the manners of our predecessors as art itself. The artist submits more than he thinks to the tendency of his surroundings; and if he at times makes his taste appreciated, it is because he has more or less received his first influence from others.
In the sixteenth century the fashion of emblematic representation placed under the portrait of Gaston de Foix a figure of a young plant in full bloom; and the inscription in Latin was "Nascendo maturus"--"Mature at birth." The Book deserves the same device; from its first day up to now it is a marvel of simplicity and harmony. The tentative efforts which preceded the discovery of printing were but few; it may be said that from the moment that Gutenberg conceived the idea of separating the characters, of arranging the words in the forme, of inking them, and of taking a proof on paper, the Book was perfect. At best we see in following times some modifications of detail; the art of printing was mature, mature from its birth.
But before arriving at the movable type placed side by side, and forming phrases, which appears to us to-day so simple and so ordinary, many years passed. It is certain that long before Gutenberg a means was found of cutting wood and metal in relief and reproducing by application the image traced. Signs-manual and seals were a kind of printing, inasmuch as the relief of their engraving is impressed upon a sheet by the hand. But between this simple statement and the uncritical histories of certain special writers, attributing the invention of engraving to the fourteenth century, there is all the distance of legendary history. Remembering that the numerous guilds of tailleurs d'images, or sculptors in relief, had in the Middle Ages the specialty of carving ivories and of placing effigies on tombs, it can be admitted without much difficulty, that these people one day found a means of multiplying the sketches of a figure often asked for, by modelling its contour in relief on ivory or wood, and afterwards taking a reproduction on paper or parchment by means of pressure. When and where was this discovery produced? We cannot possibly say; but it is certain that playing cards were produced by this means, and that from the year 1423 popular figures were cut in wood, as we know from the St. Christopher of that date belonging to Lord Spencer.
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