[Opera].

_B3V1582.jpg

Creator

Juvenal & Persius.

Title

[Opera].

Publisher

[Lyons: Bathasar de Gabiano,

Date

ca. 1502].

Description

The volumes in Aldus’s Portable Library, featuring uncommented text, octavo format, and italic typeface, were an instant success. Printers outside the control of Venice and Papal Rome recognized their commercial potential, and began a lucrative program of imitation. The replica typefont, with a noticeable Gothicizing angularity in the shoulders of the type sorts, and showing uneven presswork, was the first of two created for a small coterie of Lyon printers. This first piracy, copying the Aldine edition of August 1501, reflects all the errors, typographic and linguistic, including the absence of Greek, that Aldus cited in his Monitum of 16 March 1503. There is no colophon, and the two blank places in the addendum reflect the lack of a greek typefont to supply the words ἑλώρια and μέλος.

Source

From the collection of H. George Fletcher.