Sweynheym & Pannartz and the Origins of Printing in Italy. German Technology and Italian Humanism in Renaissance Rome.

Bird & Bull Press for Phillip J. Pirages, 1991. First edition. Hardcover. Fine/fine. Bird & Bull Press for Phillip J. Pirages, 1991. First edition. Fine/fine. Box, book and leaf all fine. This is a beautifully produced leaf book. First edition, 4to, 131pp., one of 233 numbered copies, A Campbell-Logan Co. binding of purple quarter morocco, using marbled papers especially designed for this edition by Iris Nevins. Text with four nine-line initials in red and blue (replicating 15th century rubrication), two pages of typographic facsimiles. Accompanied by a large folio leaf from the 1471 printing of Nicholas of Lyra's "Postilla super totam Bibliam." The book and leaf (which is secured behind a hinged cloth mat and has slight old worm damage at bottom outer blank margin) contained in an impressive (15 1/2 x 11 3/4 inch) navy blue folding cloth box constructed of acid-free materials by Jace Graf of Cloverleaf Studio. Aside from Gutenberg and his immediate associates, there are no figures more important in the early history of printing than Sweynheym and Pannartz, the earliest printers outside Germany. First at Subiaco and later in Rome, they produced an imposing catalogue of first editions of ancient authors, which for the first time systematically exploited the potential of the new technology as a means for disseminating humanistic texts to a large audience. The present scholarly work is the first book to create from the available information a broadly based and detailed picture of the activities of these two printers. The book examines in a full and careful way their lives and achievements within the context of their newly developed craft as well as the humanistic environment they encountered in Rome in the 1460s and 1470s. In the process of his account, Professor Hall challenges a number of widely held assumptions about the origins of printing in Italy. The volume is printed on luxurious mould made Frankfurt paper by Henry Morris at the Bird & Bull Press, for more than 40 years one of America's most distinguished private presses. The 14 1/2 x 10 1/2 inch leaf is in excellent condition, and shows to good advantage the famous and beautiful type Sweynheym and Pannartz first used in 1467, recognised now as the earliest truly roman font. Even though Sweynheym and Pannartz produced more than 50 different editions, their press runs were normally only 275 copies. Consequently, their books are now very rare, and complete copies are extravagantly priced. Hamel 197.