Printing the Classical Text by Howard Jones

Abstract

MLR, IOI.2, 2oo6 50I R. Reimer argues that a hypertextual edition of a hagiographical poem by Lydgate, which reunites the text with images and music, as well as contextualizing itwith a sacred geography, will restore its popularity. Joan Grenier-Winther concludes the volume with a justification and description of her electronic edition of La Belle Dame qui eut mercy. The volume successfully brings together essays from a variety of disciplines to discuss a topic that will be valuable to medievalists from both historical and liter ary disciplines. Comprehensive indexes make it easy to browse through, although those new to the field would benefit from more context to editorial debates in the editors' introduction. The suggestions for exploiting information technology will be particularly welcome given the relative novelty of themedium. However, it isperhaps precisely this novelty which gives rise to the fact that, although token reference is made to the numerous practical difficulties associated with working with electronic editions-arising from the fact that very few of us are experts in both codicology and computers, and from questions of copyright, data protection, and so on-none of the contributors is able, or willing, to hazard any solutions. UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS RHIANNON DANIELS Printing the Classical Text. By HOWARD JONES. (Bibliotheca humanistica & refor matorica, 62) 'tGoy-Houten: HES & De Graaf. 2004. x+225 pp.; II illus. EI32.50. ISBN 90-6I94-279-9. Howard Jones sets out to chart the place of classical Latin and Greek texts in printing from their first appearance in I465 to the end of the incunableperiod in I500. Much of the book is literally charts, or rather tables, of editions produced in five-year periods, as derived from the records of the Incunable Short-Title Catalogue (ISTC). These show in general the predominant place of Italy in classical printing throughout the period and an early concentration there on classical Latin authors. After a crisis of overproduction, observable at Rome and Venice in particular, this gave way to amore catholic range of texts from about I473 onwards. Jones promises to examine 'the range of books with which the classical text competed' (p. viii), but this point isnever really developed. Of the total number of incunable editions (c. 26,550), less than 6 per cent are classical by Jones's count (I,50i editions of 'the original texts of Greek and Latin authors' who lived before the end of the fifth century), though that count is disputable. Why did Nicolas Jenson retreat from the classics to law, theology, and liturgy? Many of the lists are open to challenge in detail. The micropatterns discerned by Jones between different places of printing, authors, and periods are vitiated by insufficient care in handling the evidence. He does not realize that many undated books (a good proportion of the whole) are assigned to round-figure years. The older volumes of the Gesamtkatalogder Wiegendrucke (Leipzig: Hiersemann, I925- ) regularly assigned undated Paris books, for example, to 'um I500'. These conventional peaks are observable to anyone with access to the ISTC database-anyone with a computer and modem. Indeed, all Jones's listings can be readily compiled, and more accurately, by informed interrogation of ISTC. As to books that are in the view of experts datable only within a range of years, Jones has taken itupon himself to assign a definite year to each edition. Since there is no evidence that he has handled any of the books, let alone that he is acquainted with the technical literature (the British Museum catalogue of incunabula is never mentioned), one wonders at his temerity. The totals for individual printing towns are systematically too high because Jones has not applied the filter in ISTC called 'preferred attributions', with the result that 502 Reviews all books that have been assigned tomore than one place are counted at least twice. This does not account forRouen being given more than ten times asmany books as it produced. Westminster, and with itCaxton, isomitted altogether. Another pitfall: the synoptic table facing page I I8 gives io6 incunable editions of Seneca, yet fewer than a third of them have any genuine work of that author. At the end of all Jones's lists, there are no...