Recent Books
The Albion printing press, which together with the Stanhope and the Columbian had a ubiquitous status among British printers of the nineteenth century, was the subject of an important article by Reynolds Stone in the second issue of the Printing Historical Society's journal that quickly went out of print and has since become much sought after. It is here reprinted together with addenda from two later issues and a brief introduction by James Mosley explaining what has since happened to the presses illustrated in the article: several are now in Tokyo and one dated 1824 is now in the St Bride Printing Library.
This cumulative index usefully supplants Judith Butcher's index to the first ten issues of the journal.
Germany
Wolfgang Harms, though probably best known for his monumental multi-volume Deutsche illustrierte Flugblätter des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1985– ), has in fact been an immensely prolific scholar working in the fields of medieval and early modern German literature. This well-produced volume, published to mark his seventieth birthday, presents a judicious selection of seventeen of his scattered essays, dealing with emblems, broadsides, epigrams, Stammbücher, libraries, title-pages, and the early modern reception of medieval literature. It is to be regretted that the book does not have an index.
Not a narrowly bibliographical study, but rather a closely argued Warburgian enquiry into the function of title-page illustrations and frontispieces in mathematical books by mostly Jesuit authors in the scientific revolution of the Early Modern period. Topics investigated include Catholic Bible exegesis and the roots of the Galileo affair, with particular reference to the Opera mathematica of Christoph Clavius (1538–1612); the Copernican debate, with reference to Johannes Kepler, John [End Page 473] Wilkins, Christoph Scheiner, and Giovanni Battista Riccioli; the links between the mathematical sciences and warfare and commerce; Tycho Brahe and the legitimation of modern astronomy in the seventeenth century; and Jesuit authors and the role of visual elements in their search for patronage. The study affords many valuable and unexpected insights into what lies behind paratextual illustrations in seventeenth-century scientific books and should serve to stimulate further studies of this type.
