Early Printed Books — Key Ideas to Explore

Movement Between Towns

Duff's narrative is built on the physical movement of printers and their materials. He tracks how type and woodcuts traveled: Bellaert of Haarlem obtained his materials 'for the most part from Leeu,' while Thierry Martens moved between several towns. The chapter on the Low Countries notes that of twenty-two towns printing before 1500, all but three started within the first ten years. Duff also records printers who appear only briefly—a 'wandering printer' like Matthæus Flandrus, who printed at Saragossa in 1475 and may have resurfaced in Barcelona and Gerona. These itinerant figures show that early printing was a craft carried by individuals, not institutions.

Recurring Evidence: Colophons and Dates

Duff repeatedly returns to the colophon as the key piece of evidence. The Sallust printed at Valentia on 13 July 1475 is considered the first dated Spanish book because the year began on Easter Day, making it earlier than the Comprehensorium of February 1475. A Bible of 1478 is known only from four leaves, 'one of them fortunately containing the colophon.' Duff notes that Lambert Palmart's name appears in that single colophon, while his partner Alonzo Fernandez—a known astronomer—may not have been a printer at all. These careful readings of paratextual clues define Duff's method: he builds history from the physical traces left in surviving copies.

Structure by Geography and Chronology

The book's organization is straightforward: each chapter covers a country or region, moving from the earliest press to the end of the fifteenth century. Within chapters, towns are treated in order of printing's arrival. Duff often notes when a press failed quickly—Haarlem's two presses 'disappear after that year'—or when a town produced only a handful of books. The chapter on Spain begins by acknowledging uncertainty: the first book is 'said to have been printed' in 1474 but 'has never been fully described.' This honesty about incomplete evidence is consistent throughout. The structure allows readers to follow the spread of printing as a series of local experiments, not a single wave.

Recurring Images: The Book as Object

Duff's descriptions emphasize the physical book: a 'small quarto, printed in Roman letter, without signatures or catchwords,' known from only two copies. The Mozarabic Missal and Breviary printed by Peter Hagembach at Toledo is singled out as 'celebrated.' A book from Schiedam, printed about 1498 by an unknown printer, is called 'very remarkable.' These brief characterizations hint at the material qualities—size, type, rarity—that Duff values. He also notes when a printer's output was 'all in the vernacular,' as with the Canons of St. Michael's in den Hem. The book is never abstract; it is always a specific object with a known printer, date, and often a surviving copy count.

Duff's preface warns that 'small books on large subjects are for the most part both superficial and imperfect,' yet his own work avoids that fate by staying close to documentary evidence. Readers interested in the spread of printing will find a methodical, town-by-town account that privileges the colophon over conjecture. The book is best read alongside a map of Europe and a willingness to follow the movements of obscure printers. It offers not a sweeping story but a network of documented arrivals, departures, and the occasional remarkable book.

Duff’s Early Printed Books taught me to listen for the quiet fingerprint of a press—the worn sort, the stubborn colophon. Years later, I still find that same patient devotion in The printers, stationers and bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535 — Inside the Classic, a ledger of working hands. It feels less like history, more like overhearing old friends.