It may fairly be said that only a writer who knew nothing about them
would propose, in a half-hour's paper, to talk about the English books
printed abroad, in some forty different places, during the last four
centuries. But a consideration of the earlier of these books forms a
necessary part of the Society's contribution to the Bibliography of
English Literature up to 1640, and the subject, as a whole, has for a
long time seemed to me an interesting one; since, either in the state of
the printing trade at home, or in the circumstances of the author, or
the nature of his subject, in every case a special reason has to be
found why the book should have been printed out of England. I have,
therefore, light-heartedly endeavoured to map out the broader outlines
of the subject, in the hope that I may persuade other members of the
Society to give their help in filling in the details, and I must ask you
to remember that my paper is put forward only as a means of provoking a
discussion much more valuable than anything I can contribute myself.
[11] Read before the Bibliographical Society, April 1896.
I have said that the subject we have before us this evening is the
English books printed abroad during the last four centuries. It would
have been more accurate to say during the last four centuries and a
quarter,[12] for the latest book I shall have to mention was printed in
Florence in 1895, while Caxton began printing English books at Bruges in
1474 or 1475, and even earlier than these we have a Sarum Breviary
printed at Cologne, and assigned by Mr. Gordon Duff to the year 1473.
These Sarum Service-books, with which so many foreign printers busied
themselves during the next eighty-five years, lie on the outskirts of
our subject, as the greater number of them are wholly or mainly in
Latin, and we are obliged to limit ourselves at present to English
books, and may not take in the very considerable number of Latin works
written by Englishmen, and intended mainly for the English market,
though printed abroad. It is necessary, indeed, to remember that for
some generations after the invention of printing, our country, for many
classes of books, was wholly dependent on the enterprise of continental
printers, and that, to some extent, this is still the case. A single
oration of Cicero and the plays of Terence were the only Latin classics
printed in England during the fifteenth century. No Greek book appeared
here until 1543, and several of the great Greek classics did not find an
English printer until the second half of the seventeenth century. Even
now, for the obscurer classics, and for the bulk of Oriental books, we
are content to rely on Germany, and in the fifteenth century this
reliance on the continental presses extended to every variety of learned
book. It would be absurd to attribute this state of things to any lack
of enterprise on the part of Caxton and his fellows. Our President has
lately shown how carefully, even in Italy, the first printers felt the
pulse of their market, and whereas Venice was a great trade centre for
the whole of Europe, in England a publisher who produced a book too
learned to find purchasers here would have had little chance of
appealing to the book lovers of other countries. Thus it may be urged in
defence of the Act of Richard III., which permitted books to be imported
into England from abroad and freely sold here, that by encouraging
English printers to confine themselves to the popular books for which
there was a safe market, it saved them from any temptation to risk the
fate which Sweynheym and Pannartz had incurred at Rome; at the same time
it greatly helped forward the cause of education. Only three foreign
printers, Gerard Leeu and Jan van Doesborgh at Antwerp, and Antoine
Vérard at Paris, abused the liberty granted to them by competing
needlessly with our native printers in books they were capable of
printing equally well themselves. The four popular English books printed
by Leeu, who had a special fount of type cut for the purpose, were 'The
History of Jason,' 'The History of Knight Paris and the Fair Vienne,'
'The Dialogue of Salomon and Marcolphus,' and 'The Chronicles of
England.' These were all issued in 1492 and 1493, and all with the
exception of the 'Marcolphus,' were reprints of editions issued by
Caxton. Even the 'Marcolphus,' according to Mr. Duff, who has edited a
facsimile reprint of it for Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen, may possibly
have been reprinted from a Caxton now entirely lost, though this, of
course, is a mere conjecture.
[12] An important extension to the subject, but one which I have
not the knowledge to deal with, would treat of the Service-books
prepared especially for the English market in Flanders and the
north of France during the two centuries preceding the invention of
printing. These are often claimed as of English origin, owing to
their having English saints in their calendars, but their real
provenance is indisputable.
Of Doesborgh's English books there is no need to speak at length, since
all Members of the Society have in their possession Mr. Proctor's
exhaustive monograph of this printer's work. As a printer he was very
inferior to Leeu, but as a publisher he showed much more enterprise in
his choice of books, introducing to English readers the stories of
'Euryalus and Lucretia,' 'Virgilius the Magician,' 'Frederick of
Jennen,' 'Mary of Nemmegen,' 'Tyll Howleglas,' and the 'Parson of
Kalenborowe,' in addition to the still more notable book 'Of the New
Lands.' Of the thirty-two books which Mr. Proctor has been able to
assign to Doesborgh's press, no fewer than eighteen were printed for
England, comprising grammars, stories, theology, history, geography, a
prognostication, a medical book, and two books on the valuation of gold
and silver, thus covering nearly the whole range of the popular
literature of the day. The earliest of these books appeared before 1508,
the latest some time after 1520, and they thus came out at the rate of
rather over one a year. They were all, however, of the class of books
which rapidly get themselves thumbed out of existence, and from the
extreme rarity of those which survive it is probable that Doesborgh's
real output was considerably greater. Antoine Vérard, on the other hand,
had a trick of printing a few copies of his books on vellum which has
greatly helped to preserve them, and it is improbable that, besides his
Service-books, he printed any other works for the English market than
the two which have come down to us. These are 'The traitte of god lyuyng
and good deyng,' and 'The Kalendayr of Shyppars,' both printed in 1503,
and both enriched with numerous illustrations, some beautiful, others
grotesquely horrible, mostly taken from his 'Art de bien vivre et de
bien mourir' of 1492. In his choice of a translator Vérard was unlucky,
for he seems to have employed some wild Scotsman, who was no master of
his own tongue and still more ignorant of French. When Robert Copland
retranslated the Kalendar for Wynkyn de Worde in 1508, he was as
scornful of his predecessor's 'corrupte Englysshe' as any one
bibliographer could be of the labours of another, though in saying that
'no man coulde understonde (it) perfectly' he certainly did not err on
the side of exaggeration, since most southern readers must have found
some difficulty in understanding it at all.
To the names of Leeu, Doesborgh, and Vérard, as printers of English
popular books, I ought perhaps to add those of Wolfgang Hopyl of Paris,
and Martin Morin and James Ravynell of Rouen, each of whom printed
before 1500 an edition of the 'Liber Festivalis' or 'Festial,' the book
of sermons with which parsons might regale their parishioners on the
high-days and holy-days of the Church. The 'Festial' was of a
semi-liturgical nature, and the three printers were all printers of
liturgies. We have, thus, an easy transition to the English
Service-books printed abroad to which we must now return for a few
minutes. Of these the immense majority were for the use of Sarum, though
the British Museum possesses a Hereford Missal printed at Rouen in 1502,
and three York Missals printed at the same place in 1516-17. Of Sarum
Service-books printed before 1540, the 'Old English Catalogue' records
no less than one hundred and five as in the possession of the Museum in
1884, and the distribution of these is notable. One Missal was printed
at Basel, by Michael Wenssler about 1486; another Missal by Hertzog, at
Venice in 1494; eleven service-books at Rouen, the earlier ones by
Martin Morin, James Ravynell, P. Violette, and Andrew Myllar; twelve at
Antwerp, of which one is a 'Directorium' printed by Leeu in 1488, and
most of the rest much later books from the press of Christopher of
Endhouen; and lastly no less than fifty-six at Paris, the list of their
printers comprising many of the best firms of the time. Against these
eighty-one foreign editions, of which, it will be observed, sixty-seven
are French, the editions printed in England number no more than
twenty-four, and many of these are printed with cuts borrowed or copied
from France. Obviously this class of work required special
qualifications in the printers, and it was easier and cheaper to import
the Service-books, even the Primers, than to produce them at home.
During the last few years of Henry VIII.'s reign the number of
Service-books, which had previously shown some falling off, again
increased, and under his daughter Mary there was, of course, a great
revival of them. The English printers were now better able to cope with
the demand, and of the forty-five Service-books in the Museum printed
during these years, twenty-four were printed in London, against ten at
Rouen, five at Paris, and six at Antwerp. Of course, the Museum
collection, both of these and of the earlier Service-books, is by no
means complete, but it is probably representative, and there can be no
doubt that during the period when liturgies are most interesting
bibliographically, four-fifths of those printed for use in England came
to us from abroad.
One other small class of books, printed like liturgies for the most part
in Latin, but with lapses into English, must be noticed before we
proceed further--the Latin Grammars for the instruction of English
school-boys. The earliest of these is an edition of the Grammar of
Perottus, printed by Egidius van der Heerstraten at Louvain, about 1486,
and other grammar-books by Anwykyll and Joannes de Garlandia are said to
have been printed during the fifteenth century at Deventer, Antwerp,
Cologne, and Paris. If any Member of the Society can give me a list of
these dreadful little books I shall be very grateful to him, but they
have always filled me with so much compassion for the unfortunate
children who had to learn them, that I am afraid I have taken no notes
of the few I have seen.
In order to give an idea of the way in which the English books printed
abroad reflect the changing phases of our national life I propose now to
trace with a little more particularity the history of the classes of the
English books printed at Antwerp, where throughout the sixteenth century
they are specially plentiful. We begin in the quiet days of Gerard Leeu
and Jan van Doesborgh, who, good honest men, could have had no other
object in their English publications than the making a little profit out
of some popular subjects which our native printers were neglecting. The
three grammar-books printed by Thierry Martens for Jacobi and Pelgrim in
1507 and 1508, are not very interesting. Christopher of Endhoven, who
calls himself with equal frequency Ruremondensis, followed in 1523 in a
higher branch of the trade, competing with the printers of Rouen and
Paris who produced the Sarum Service-books in such numbers. From 1523 to
1531, the succession of Missals, Processionals, Manuals, Psalters,
Hymnals, Breviaries and Horae, which were printed by Endhoven at
Antwerp, and sold in London, mostly by Francis Byrckman or Peter Kaetz,
is broken only by an edition of Lyndewood's 'Provinciale.' In 1531 we
hear for the first time a different note, three books being printed in
that year for William Tyndal, which are ascribed to the press of Martin
Lempereur, viz.: 'The prophete Jonas, with an introducciõ before,
teachinge to vnderstonde him'; 'The exposition of the fyrste Epistle of
seynt Jhon'; and 'The praier and complaynte of the ploweman unto
Christe'; the latter an old book which the title assigns to not long
after 1300. The next year the widow of Endhoven printed another Sarum
'Hymnal,' but in 1534 she was employed by the Reformers, printing George
Joy's revision of Tyndal's New Testament, while Joy's English Psalter,
and Tyndal's own New Testament were printed by Lempereur. Antwerp
editions of the same year of the 'Rudimenta Grammatices,' originally
drawn up for Wolsey's school at Ipswich, and of a 'Prognostication,'
show that the Dutch printers did not quite forget the existence of
untheological English readers, but for a long time to come theology was
paramount in English books printed abroad. Several editions of Tyndal's
New Testament were printed at Antwerp in 1535, 1536 and 1538, and though
the attribution of the Coverdale Bible of 1535 to the press of Jacob van
Meteren (a point which I leave to our Bible experts) is not undisputed,
it seems generally agreed that the composite version known as 'Matthew's
Bible,' brought out by Grafton and Whitchurch in 1537, was really the
work of an Antwerp printer, probably Martin Lempereur.
After 1538 there seems to have been a break in the English printing at
Antwerp for just a quarter of a century, during which no English work of
any importance was issued, the fugitive Reformers finding Switzerland a
much safer refuge at this time than the Low Countries. But in 1563
Aegidius Diest printed two books (Vincentius Lirinensis 'On the
Antiquity of the Catholick Faith,' and the 'Buke of Fourscore three
Questions proponit to the Protestants in Scotland), for Ninian Winzet, a
Scotch Catholic in exile for his religion. The times we see have
changed, and it is now the Romanist Refugees who seek printers abroad,
and the Protestants who answer them in comfortable safety at home; and
for several years the Romanists kept the Dutch printers pretty busy.
From 1564 to 1569, Diest and Laet at Antwerp, Bogard and Fouler at
Louvain, printed between them forty English books, by Harding, Rastell,
Martiall, Stapleton, Allen, and Saunders, all more or less called forth
by Bishop Jewel's 'Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae,' which naturally
roused the ire of the Catholics, more particularly of Harding, whom
Jewel had ejected from his prebendship.
The ill-health which preceded Jewel's death in 1571 caused him to weary
of controversies, and his opponents at last wearied also, the next few
years being very unproductive of English books in the Low Countries.
When activity revived, Antwerp no longer maintained its supremacy. The
majority of the Catholic books were printed now either at Louvain or
Douay, while the new refugees, the extreme Puritans and Brownists, took
up their quarters at Middleburg, where their books were mostly printed
for them by J. or R. Schilders. Whether Middleburg was also the real
place of imprint of the editions of Marlowe's 'Epigrammes and Elegies,'
the first of which appeared in 1599, is one of the difficulties which
still await a final investigation. Mr. Charles Edmonds preferred to
assign it to the press of W. Jaggard, with whose edition of the
'Passionate Pilgrim' it is bound up in the Isham collection. In 1589 and
1590 we hear of another Puritan refugee press at Dort, where several
works were printed for Barrow and Greenwood, while in 1597 Henoch
Clapham found a local printer for two theological works which he had
compiled for the benefit of the 'poore English congregation in
Amsterdam'; one or two books were also printed for English students at
Leyden, and some English medical works at Dort, so that by the end of
the century the earlier monopoly of Antwerp was completely destroyed.
We must turn back now to glance at some other places where English books
were printed, and first we may note that even in this most theological
of centuries a few miscellaneous works demand our attention. Thus in
1551 J. Gryphius of Venice found it worth his while to print a
'Compendious Declaration,' by Thomas Raynalde, 'of the vertues of a
certain lateli invented oile,' called 'Oile Imperiale,' and a little
later on, when William Turner was tired of 'hunting the Romische wolfe,'
Arnold Birckman printed for him, at Cologne, the two parts of his
'Herbal' and his treatise on 'Baths.' Frellon's English edition (Lyons
1549) of Holbein's 'Images of the Old Testament' had no theological
import, but is an early example of the printing of the explanatory text
of an illustrated book in more languages than one, so as to secure a
larger sale. Lastly we must not forget one very important work, Theodor
de Bry's 'Briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia,'
printed by J. Wechel at Frankfort in 1590. The great bulk, however, of
the English books printed abroad during the sixteenth century were
theological, and the presses of Augsburg, Basel, Cologne, Geneva,
Munster, Nuremberg, Strasburg, Wesel, Wittenberg, and Zurich, besides
the famous one of 'Marlborow in the land of Hesse,' all testified to the
activity of the English Reformers.
The difficulties which beset the history of these English books printed
in Germany and Switzerland are well known. We are not often, in dealing
with them, pulled up so sharply as when we find a book of Knox or Bale
professedly printed 'at Rome before the Castell of S. Angel,' but there
are other imprints in original editions the authenticity of which has
been suspected, and the question is immensely complicated by the
existence of London editions in which the old imprint has been
sedulously preserved. A very large number also of the most interesting
books contain no indication whatever of their origin, and the rash
attempts to place them, which have been made in catalogues and
bibliographies, are often the reverse of helpful. I hope that the
Society may eventually help to put the subject on a better footing, but
all I can do now is to mention a handful of books, rather with a view of
showing the haunts of the reforming authors at various periods than with
much bibliographical intention. Thus the edition of Tyndal's New
Testament was printed for him by Peter Quentel, at Cologne, in 1525.
From 1528 to 1530, we find him employing Hans Lufft 'at Marlborow in the
land of Hesse,' to print his 'Obedience of a Christian Man,' 'Parable of
the Wicked Mammon' and 'Genesis.' In 1531, as we have seen, Martin
Lempereur was working for him at Antwerp. John Frith's 'Pistle to the
Cristen Reader' was printed by Lufft, his 'Answer' to More, written when
he was a prisoner in the Tower, by C. Willems of Munster. Of the next
generation of Reformers, John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, appears first as
employing Michael Wood to print his 'Mystery of Iniquity,' at Geneva, in
1545; in 1546, his tract on the 'Examinacyon of Anne Askew' bears the
imprint Marburg, and his 'Actes of English Votaries' that of Wesel. His
best known work, the 'Illustrium Majoris Britanniae Scriptorum
Summarium' (1548), was apparently begun at Wesel by Theodoricus
Plateanus and finished at Ipswich by John Overton. After the accession
of Mary, Bale seems to have had a hand in one or two books which appear
with the imprint, Roane or Rouen, which perhaps is no more authentic
than that of 'Rome, before the Castell of St. Angel,' which appears on
his account of his 'Vocacyon to the bishopric of Ossory,' in 1553. A
correspondent has suggested to me that this last may have been printed
at Strasburg; but Knox's book with the same imprint, 'A godly letter
sent to the faythefull in London, Newcastell and Barwyke' is attributed
in the British Museum Catalogue to the press of Hugh Singleton, in
London, and this may have been printed there also. Knox's other books
with foreign imprints are mostly Genevan, 'An Answer to a great number
of blasphemous cavillations' being printed by Jean Crespin, and 'the
copye of a letter sent to the Lady Marye' by J. Poullain and A. Reboul.
His 'Faithful Admonition unto the Professours of God's Truths in
England,' professedly hails from 'Kalykow,' its real origin being
doubtful.
We must hasten on now to the supporters of the other side of the
religious controversy, who, on the accession of Elizabeth, in their turn
had to seek refuge abroad. As we have seen, they at first congregated at
Antwerp, but in 1568 William Allen, afterwards Cardinal, founded the
English College at Douay, and thereby made it the headquarters of the
English Catholic Press during the next century. Important, however, as
Douay is, cataloguers have, perhaps, worked its printers a little too
hard, and the tendency to ascribe to them every English Catholic book
with a foreign appearance is unfortunate. We must remember that for
fifteen years from 1578 the English College was transplanted to Rheims,
which thus had the honour of producing, in 1582, the first Roman
Catholic version of the New Testament, completed twenty-seven years
later by the issue of the Old Testament at Douay in 1609-10. The New
Testament was printed by J. Fogny, the Old by Laurence Kellam, and it is
needless to say that the versions of both books were vigorously
attacked by the Protestant experts. The absence of the English College
from Douay, from 1578-93, of course diminishes the probability of
English books having been printed there during these years, and the
foundation of the Seminary at S. Omer, in the year of its return, soon
provided a formidable rival. It appears, however, from the town records
that printing was only introduced into S. Omer in 1601, when the town
made a grant of 100 livres to F. Bellet for his expenses in bringing
thither his press. According to Dr. Oliver, the biographer of the
English Jesuits, a book entitled 'An apology for the Arch-Priest,' by
the indefatigable Father Parsons, was printed at S. Omer in this same
year, 1601, so that Bellet must have got to work very quickly, unless
the College had a separate press of its own. Fitzherbert's 'Defence of
the Catholic Cause,' dated 1602, is also assigned to Saint Omer, as are
the majority of the books mentioned by Oliver as having been printed
during the next twenty years. The earliest names I find connected with
the Saint Omer press are those of C. Bocard, and John Higham, the latter
of whom printed simultaneously at Douay, just as, at an earlier period,
J. Fouler had done at Douay, Antwerp, and Louvain. These two latter
places were not unproductive of English books during the seventeenth
century, and others were printed at Brussels, Ghent, Paris, and Rouen,
so that wholesale attributions to Douay are eminently unsafe. It is
noteworthy, indeed, that Duthillceul in his 'Bibliographie douaisienne'
(second edition, 1842), mentions only just over twenty books as having
been printed in English at Douay up to the close of the seventeenth
century. This, of course, is ludicrously below the mark, Duthillceul's
failure to discover English books being, no doubt, due to their having
found their way to the country for which they were intended. As I have
said, however, everything points to the English press at Douay having
been considerably less prolific than is generally believed.
We must pass on once more and enter the trackless wilderness of the
period after 1640. No doubt the enormous increase in the output of the
press makes its history during the last two centuries and a half
dishearteningly difficult, but when I see all our bibliographical
stalwarts so sedulously engaged in crossing the 't's' and dotting the
'i's' in the work of their predecessors in the early history of
printing, I cannot help regretting that at least a few of them will not
turn their attention to the later period in which everything still
remains to be done. As far as I can judge, the Civil War did not leave
many traces in English books printed abroad, but I have come across a
few of some little interest. Residence in Roman Catholic countries seems
to have caused a good many cavaliers to reconsider their religious
position, and some of them found it necessary to explain themselves in
print. Several books of this kind were printed in Paris. Thus in 1644
Sir Kenelm Digby put forth 'Two Treatises,' one of which was concerned
with the 'Immortality of reasonable souls,' while in 1652, Peter Targa
published for him 'A Discourse concerning Infallibility in Religion,'
which was reprinted in the same year at Amsterdam. In 1647 there was
published at Paris an English work called 'Exomologesis,' recording the
conversion of Hugh Paulin de Cressy, and this went into a second edition
six years later. In 1649 we come across 'A Lost Sheep returned Home, or
the motives of the conversion of Thomas Vane,' and in 1657,
'Presbyteries Triall, or the occasion and motives of conversion to the
Catholic Faith of a person of quality in Scotland.' We find also several
English works of devotion printed in Paris about this time, and in 1659
we have an anonymous 'Answer to the Provinciall Letters published by the
Jansenists.' The impatience of the Royalist Colony in France could not
wait for the importation of copies of the 'Eikon Basilike' from England,
and at least one edition was published in Paris in 1649, as to which Mr.
Almack's book (No. 28 in his list) gives full information. At the Hague
the King's execution produced a very curious work, a translation of the
'Electra' of Sophocles by C. W. (Christopher Wace), 'presented to her
highness the Lady Elizabeth; with an epilogue, shewing the parallel in
two points, the Return and the Restauration.' This was the first English
rendering of any part of Sophocles, but I see that I wrote of it some
years ago that it was 'beneath contempt,' and, I daresay, this unkind
opinion had good foundation. In 1653 we have at Bruges an echo of the
Lilburne controversy, in an answer to his pamphlet, 'John Lilburne
revived,' written by Captain Wendy, under the title 'Vincit qui patitur,
or Lieutenant-Colonel John Lylburne decyphered.' Lastly, at the Hague in
1660, Sir William Lower published a 'Relation in form of a Journal of
the Voiage and Residencie which Charles II. hath made in Holland,' and
this is the last book of the Civil War period of which I have a note.
During the reign of Charles II., we have the usual sprinkling of
devotional and theological books printed abroad, with a few traces at
Ghent and Paris of the controversies of Friar Peter Walsh. I have
recollections of one or two pamphlets printed by the ministers of
English Puritan Congregations in the Low Countries, but the only one of
which I have a note is, 'The Interest of these United Provinces, being
a Defence of the Zealanders' Choice,' in which the Rev. Joseph Hill,
Pastor of the Scotch Church at Middleburg, where the book was printed,
advocated in 1673 an alliance between England and Holland. Such a book
would have some interest in itself, but the consequences of its
publication give it additional importance in the history of book-lore.
Hill's work, which was also printed at Amsterdam in Dutch, gave great
offence to the States; he was ordered to leave Zeeland, to which he did
not return till 1678, and it was during this enforced absence that he
introduced into England, after the death of his friend Dr. Lazarus
Seaman, the Dutch practice of selling books by auction. But for that
unlucky pamphlet, Sotheby's and Puttick's might never have existed.
Two other Dutch printed books of this period are just worth noting, a
reprint, in 1680, at the Hague, of 'Two Speeches made in the House of
Peers,' by the Earl of Shaftesbury, and a 'Sermon of Thanksgiving for
the delivery of Charles II.' from the conspiracy of 1683, printed at
Rotterdam. As the Revolution approaches, we get a warning of it in the
appearance, at the Hague, in 1687 and 1688, of the 'Citation of Gilbert
Burnet' and of 'Dr. Burnet's Vindication of himself,' while after the
flight of James, we may note the publication at Cologne of 'The Great
Bastard, Protector of the Little One,' 'done out of French' in 1689, a
Paris edition of the King's 'speeches' in 1692, under the title 'Royal
Tracts,' and in the same year at Amsterdam, a 'Letter' written under the
name of General Ludlow, defending his comparison of the first four years
of Charles I.'s reign with the tyranny of the four years of James II.
Six years later, quite in the modern manner, the old regicide published
his 'Memoirs, finding a printer in Switzerland 'at Vevay, in the Canton
of Bern,' where also a continuation was printed the next year.
The paper is already much longer than I had intended, and it is
therefore, perhaps, as well that of English printing abroad during the
first half of the eighteenth century I have found no trace, except in a
few devotional books published at Douay. There _ought_ to be some
Jacobite tracts, and I need not say that any notes of them will be
heartily welcomed. But there is a last phase of the foreign printing of
English books of which I may be allowed to quote a few instances. For
various reasons during the last hundred years or so, a good many English
men and women of letters have lived abroad, and though most of them,
like Byron, Beddoes, Landor, and the Brownings, have sent their books to
be printed in England, their foreign residence has occasionally left
interesting traces in books and booklets with foreign imprints. Thus Sir
William Hamilton, while Ambassador at the Court of Naples, had two books
printed for him there, one 'Campi Phlegraei' (or) 'Observations on the
Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies' in 1776, the other a series of
collections of 'Engravings from Ancient Vases' found in Sicily, between
1791 and 1795. Gibbon's long stay in Switzerland doubtless had something
to do with the publication at Berne, in 1796-97, of a reprint of his
'Miscellaneous Works' which had then only just appeared in London.
Shelley's 'The Cenci' appeared in 1819, with the imprint Italy, and his
'Adonais' was printed 'at Pisa with the types of Didot' in 1821. At
Parma, several English works obtained what used to be considered the
honour of Bodoni's types, and the English ventures of Galignani at
Paris, though far surpassed by the later enterprise of Baron Tauchnitz,
deserve a chronicler. The employment of foreign presses by wandering
Englishmen has not yet died out. At Davos Platz, Stevenson did
better--he set up a toy press of his own. A year or two before the paper
was read, Mr. William Sharp gave local colour to his 'Sospiri di Roma'
by employing a Roman printer, and in 1895 an important English
historical work, 'The Life of Sir Robert Dudley' was printed at
Florence.
When the Bibliographical Society takes up the history of English books
printed abroad, I hope that, if only in a small print appendix, room may
be found for a record of these later books, and that we shall not stop
at 1600, or at 1700, or at 1800, but recognise that our own age is as
worthy of our attention as any of its predecessors.