Abstract This article aims to delineate the interplay among the establishment of Chinese typography facilities, the Netherlands’ colonial and expansion in Asia and the specialization of sinology as an academic discipline. In recent decades, scholars from China, Japan, Europe, and the United States have diligently explored the history of Chinese metal movable type. The role of the Netherlands in the field of Chinese typography has gradually gained attention as well. However, despite discussions varying in depth, the specific connection between Chinese typography and Dutch colonialism lacks dedicated discourse. Unraveling the extent to which this political impetus is intertwined with the introduction of Chinese typography constitutes a central focus of this research. Another inquiry addresses a technical dimension, specifically exploring other printing options available to the Dutch beyond the Hong Kong Type, and the rationale behind the exclusion of certain alternatives.

Abstract This article is an historical analysis of the changing editorial strategy of Tafelberg, a South African publisher. It aims to shed light on the culture-commerce divide in South African publishing, the changing cultural and social impact of a publisher specialising in a minority language, and the nexus of editorial philosophies, language and nationalism. The research considers Bourdieu’s (1993) conceptualisation of the fields of culture with their associated levels of symbolic, financial and cultural capital, and the notion of poles of restricted and mass production of textual products in its analysis. It was found that Tafelberg has had significant cultural impact in South Africa, particularly with its involvement in the growth of Afrikaans literature and nationalism. Tafelberg is now a smaller part of one of South Africa’s publishing giants, and they remain an important publisher of Afrikaans titles, even though their social and symbolic impact has changed.

Abstract This article considers a Sammelband of the early works of Margaret Cavendish deposited at Leiden University Library in 1658. It examines the context of this donation, taking into account the role played by Cavendish’s acquaintance, the Dutch diplomat and multilingual poet Constantijn Huygens, and the formal letter of acknowledgment supplied by the university’s Rector Magnificus, Antonius Thysius the Younger. The assumption of previous scholarship that Huygens himself prepared the volume’s unique Latin index or table of contents, which gave Continental readers unfamiliar with English some measure of access to Cavendish’s vernacular writings, is further developed, and Thomas Warren is identified as the likely printer. The Sammelband is understood as a testament both to Cavendish’s intellectual ambitions and to cultural connections between early modern England and the Netherlands.

Abstract This article examines a popular French unnotated songbook (1538), that is unique for its material characteristics. Set in roman type and abundantly illustrated with woodcuts, this edition stands out from contemporary unnotated songbooks published in France and neighbouring regions. To investigate this remarkable publication, the songbook is analysed as part of the activities of its printer, who can be identified as Denis de Harsy in Lyon, based on the Orion device. Although unusual for a songbook, the book’s design fitted in exceedingly well with De Harsy’s way of working, for he consciously re-edited the well-known song collection. He did so for three purposes: facilitating the voluminous collection’s use, highlighting Clément Marot’s authorship of some of the songs and characterizing song as offering a space for women’s discourse. Additionally, the absence of any privileges resting on these songs is used to further previous reflections on the objectives of the Orion books.

Abstract In this paper, I discuss the fate of six 15th-century books from the collection of Polish bishop and bibliophile Józef Andrzej Załuski (1702–1774). I aim to trace the migrations of incunabula in the 18th century before the mass movements of books in response to the suppressions of religious convents. An analysis of unexploited provenance materials, such as ownership and reading marks, will make it possible to determine the methods of the bishop-bibliophile and the ways by which he acquired valuable collections for the Załuski Public Library (one of the largest in Europe at the time), which he co-managed with his brother. I will moreover answer the question of what factors caused these volumes to survive to this day, unlike most of volumes from Załuski’s book collection, which were burnt shortly after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

Abstract The lavishly illuminated Prayer Book of Mary of Guelders (Berlin, SBB - PK , Ms. germ. qu. 42) was written in 1415 by Helmig die Lewe in the monastery of Marienborn near Arnhem. During the second half of the 19th cent. this manuscript gradually became known to historians of art in Germany and to church historians in the Netherlands. Its appreciation until c. 1900 depended on the point of view of its observers as well as on the gradual development of an art-historical vocabulary and the introduction of high-quality reproductions in scholarly publications.

Abstract The present article offers the first comprehensive examination of the handwritten corrections attested in copies of Angelo Poliziano’s most important scholarly work, the Miscellaneorum centuria prima (1489). Based on a collation of 32 copies, this study identifies the corrections made by Poliziano’s assistants in Antonio Miscomini’s Florentine printing house. The first part of the article furnishes an overview of the handwritten corrections and indicates their relevance to our knowledge of the work’s textual genesis. The contribution then moves to an in-depth discussion of some specific corrections that reflect, amongst other things, Poliziano’s changing ideas on Latin prosody in some of his Greek-to-Latin translations, as well as on his interpretation of classical texts.

Abstract The impact of Puritan devotional literature on Reformed and Lutheran piety has been well researched in the past decades. Several studies about Dutch religious culture in the 17th century stress the interconfessional readership of devotional writings as a widespread practice. Obviously, the religious cultures were not so self-contained as the paradigm of confessionalization suggests. Until now we don’t have an exhaustive study over the impact and distribution of Johann Arndt’s devotional literature in the Dutch republic of the 17th century. The common opinion is that Arndt’s True Christianity had no noteworthy influence. In fact, it can be shown that there has been a long and intensive literary production and distribution of the True Christianity and other works of Arndt in Reformed circles in the Dutch Republic.