The Palaeotypography of the French Renaissance: Selected Papers on Sixteenth-Century Typefaces. By HENDRIK D. L. VERVLIET. (Library of the Written Word, 6; The Handpress World, 4.) * French Renaissance Printing Types: A Conspectus. By HENDRIK D. L. VERVLIET.

Abstract

During the sixteenth century, types made by punchcutters in Paris and Lyons, the great centres of printing in France, and in some areas under French influence, entered into use in many countries. The work of Claude Garamond, Robert Granjon, Pierre Haultin, François Guyot, Guillaume Le Bé, and others, cast in different sets of matrices that had reached Antwerp, Venice, Rome, Frankfurt am Main, Amsterdam and London, can be seen in books that were printed across a large part of Europe during the next two centuries. Writing in the Mercure de France in 1756, Jean-Pierre Fournier, the owner of the foundry of the Le Bé family in Paris, which possessed the original materials of Garamond's workshop and the work of some other contemporaries, and could cast their types for sale, claimed, with some justice, that these types had helped to make the reputations of Plantin and the Elseviers. The...