BOOKSELLING. 300 BOOKSELLING. charter from Queen Mary in 1556, 33 years earlier. Like most of these trade guilds, its object was to restrict the trade to a certain privileged class, the professed aim being "the removal of great and detestable heresies," and the charter ordering "that no man should exer- cise the mysterj' of printing, except he was of the stationers' company, or had a license." The guild of the Venetian printers dated from 1548, and was the earliest association of the kind in Europe. The guild of Milan was, how- ever, in certain ways the most important of these earlier organizations. It gave an impor- tant incentive to printing and to publishing: it secured a high standard for the quality of the work done, and its regulations tended to keep the business in the hands of a good class of men. The guild of printers and publishers in Paris was a direct development of the earlier guild of manuscript dealers, and, as has been stated, constituted a division of the university. The regulations which had controlled the work of the manuscript dealers, and the supervision and censorship of this work, were continued in France for the productions of the Paris printing- Jjresses. The first publishing oflke in Paris was founded in 1469, at the request of two of the in- structors of the Sorbonne, by Gerring, Krantz, and Friberger, from Constance, at that time an imperial city of Germany. The work of these bookmakers was carried on in one of the halls of the Sorbonne. Printed books had. however, been sold in Paris 7 j'ears earlier. It was in 1462 that Fust brought from JIainz a supply of his folio Bible, copies of which he was able to sell for 50 crowns, while the usual price for manuscript work of this compass had been from 400 to (JOO crowns. By the close of the century there were in Paris over fifty printing con- cerns. After Paris, Lyons was the city of France in which the production of printed books se- cured the earliest introduction and the most rapid development. The printer-publishers of Lyons showed themselves enterprising in more ways than one. They were free from the im- mediate supervision and control of the authori- ties of the University of Paris, and, as the his- tory of the Paris press shows, the difficulties placed in the way of publishing mulertakings by the bigoted and ignorant censorship of the theologians must have more than offset the ad- vantages usually to be secured in the produc- tion of scholarly imblications through the fa- cilities of the university and the editorial ser- vice rendered by its members. Paris was, how- ever, fortunate in having among its earlier j)ub- lishers a number of men whose interest in lit- erature was that of scholars as well as of mer- chants. Gourmont (who established, in 1507, the first Greek press in Paris) and Badius As- ccnsius had produced before 15.30 a long series of important classical works. The printer-pub- lishers whose xmdertakings were, however, of the largest importance for the world of scholar- ship were the Estiennes or Stephani. They con- tributed no less than four generations to the publishing business. The work of the Stephani was carried on under exceptional difficulties — • commercial, literary, theological, and political. Their books ere, with a few exceptions, edited and supervised by the publishers themselves. No publisher except Aldus has ever contributed to the issues of his press as much original schol- arly work as is to be found in the books bearing the imprint of Kobert Stephanus. Willem Jans- zoon Blaeu (q.v.) (1571-1038), his sons and grandsons, also deserve honorable mention among the Xctherland publishers. The name of William Caxton holds an honor- able place in the early publishing undertakings, not only of England, but of Europe. The list of the books issued from his press was not very great, and the books themselves were much less important for scholarship or for i)crmanent literature than the first publications of certain of the printer-publishers of the Continent. The fact, however, that through Caxton printing was introduced into England, and that he was the means of first utilizing for English readers the publishing, training, and scholarly interests which had been developed for him in the Low Countries, gave his work a distinctive impor- tance. Caxton's first printing-press was set up in Bruges, and his first seven publications were there issued. The earliest vohune printed in Euro])e in the French language was Caxton's edition of the Burgundian romance Le Kcciieil dcs histoires dc Troijr. It was in 1476 that Caxton migrated to Westminster. His list of publications there was largely devoted to ro- mances more or less similar in character to the book first issued fi'om his press in Bruges. The demand at that time in England, as indicated by the lists of Caxton and of his immediate suc- cessors, for the classical and theological works which constituted so important a portion of the earlier publications of Venice, Paris, ilainz, and Cologne must have been much less considerable than abroad. The period of the beginning of Caxton's publishing business in London was one of political excitement and of civil war, and the times were not favoralile for the selling of literature. A publishing business which, while of no great moment from the conunercial point of view, exercised an enormous influence on public opin- ion in Europe, was that instituted in Witten- berg in 1517, at the instance of Luther and Melanchthon. Luther's first publisher was Johann Weissenberger, from Xiireniberg, who iirinted a tract by him at Lanschott, in Bavaria, in 1517, and later in the same year the treatise on the Seven Penitential Psalms. Issues of the Lutheran press in Wittenberg followed each other with rapidity. The pamplilets that went init from this press, reprinted in other ])laces l)y printers who were in sympathy with Luther's work, secured an enormous circulation. It is diflicult at this time to understand how, with all the obstacles which existed at that time in making announcement of publications issued, it proved to he possible to bring these pamphlets into the hands of so many thousands of interest- ed readers. The question was also not merely one of making known their existence, but of overcoming the impediments i)laced by the (.'hurch authorities in the way of their distri- bution. Thousands of copies were sold in the market-places, not only by booksellers, but by dealers of all kinds, many of whom had never before handled books. Large suii|)lies were dis- tribvited by traveling peddlers among readers out of reach of the book-shojjs and the market- places. These popular tracts met the needs of
