История письма и чтения. Асафова Г.К. - 125 стр.

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their codices. From this grew the printer's colophon, or tailpiece, which gave the

title of the book, the date and place of printing, the name and house device of the

printer, and a bit of self-advertisement. By about 1480, the information of the

colophon began to appear at the front of the book as a title page, along with the

title itself and the name of the author. Advertisements for books, in the form of

handbills or broadsheets, are known from about 1466 onward, including one of

Caxton's of 1477, ending with a polite request not to tear it down, Supplico stet

cedula (“Please let the poster stand”). Publisher's lists and catalogs occur almost as

early. Distribution of books along the trade routes, with their courier services,

appears to have been highly effective. In 1467, for instance a bookseller in Riga on

the Baltic coast had a stock of books issued by Schöffer in Mainz on the Rhine.

Another effective channel for the distribution of books was the regular trade fairs,

especially those at Frankfurt and at Stourbridge in England. Besides the stationers,

who may sometimes have functioned as wholesalers, there were also retailers

known as “book-carriers.”

Early publishing had a profound effect on national languages and literatures–

it began at once to create, standardize, and preserve them. Caxton, in the preface to

his translation of the Aeneid, after telling a story of confused dialects, ended up

“Lo! what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eyren?” By choosing

words “understood of common people” and by printing all he could of English

literature, he steered the English language along its main line of development. The

early printing of great vernacular works, such as those of Dante, Petrarch, and

Boccaccio in Italy, or a vernacular Bible, such as that of Luther in Germany, gave

many languages their standard modern form. The French language owes much to

the early printer-publisher Robert Estienne, who is known not only for his

typographical innovations of the 1530s but also for his dictionaries. His work in

the latter field caused him to be known as the father of French lexicography. Up to

1500, about three-quarters of all printing was in Latin, but thereafter that

proportion steadily declined as books appeared in the vernacular and reached an

ever-widening public.