Correspondence

To the Editor of The Library

Sir,

I should like to add a little information to Travis D. Williams’ interesting article on ‘The Earliest English Printed Arithmetic Books’ (The Library, VII, 13 (2012), 164–84).

In his commentary on the 1537 and 1539 versions of An Introduction for to Learn to Reckon with the Pen (STC 14117.7 and 14118), Williams cannot be blamed for the errors in the long-outdated guesses on which both he and his more recent sources have had to rely. The book-trade careers of the printer John Herford, the abbot Richard Stevenage/Bourman, and his brother Nicholas Bourman (a Merchant Taylor quite distinct from the name sake freed as a Stationer in 1547 and listed 27th in the charter) are revised in some detail in my book, The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501–1557 (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, 2013–14), so the evidence for the following statements need not take up space here. Having been born somewhere in the emperor’s dominions hardly proves Herford ‘a Flemming’ [sic], and his earliest work was printed at the request of Robert Catton (the abbot before Stevenage). There is no reason to suppose that Richard Bourman was ever associated with Herford’s press in London, whither it must have migrated before the monastery was dissolved in Nov ember 1539. Only two of its books of that year (one extant, one lost) can plausibly be assigned to St Albans, but it produced six dated ones (and probably an undated seventh) in the capital before the end of the year. Sixteen books printed in London in 1539–42 can be identified as products of that press, only six of which bear the name of Nicholas Bourman. STC tentatively attributes two of the remaining ten to Bourman, offers no attribu tion for a third—and misattributes the other seven (two each to Henry Pepwell and Richard Bankes; three to Thomas Raynald). And while the evidence for Herford rather than Bourman as the actual master printer in those years is rightly described by Williams as ‘substantial’, the record from the Court of Exchequer seems more than merely ‘circumstantial’.

In STC 14117.7 the date ‘1536’ appears at the foot of a1^r, while on s8^r the colophon declares that it was ‘Imprinted in the year 1537’. Williams (167) suggests that ‘The book may have been printed in late March, with the early signatures printed in one year, and later signatures printed in the next.’ But few printers in England ever dated their books by the legal year (from 25 March) rather than the calendar year (from 1 January), and the exceptions usually did so only on official publications. (Williams is therefore right to assume that Richard Faques’s date of 13 March 1526 means what it says.) But I hesitate simply to move his hypothesis back to December/ January, because the earlier date does not claim to be the date of printing. The text was ‘newly corrected and certeyne rules and ensamples added ther vnto in the yere of oure lorde/ 1536’.

There are two errors in Williams’s description of the 1537 edition, one of which is only trivial. What he calls ‘printer’s flowers along the left margin’ of the titlepage is in fact a single woodcut ornament measuring approximately 10 × 67 mm. But the other oversight is potentially of textual importance, because the volume does not collate a–s⁸ as he reports. The formula should read a–k⁸ l^{4 χ}l⁴ m–s⁸.

In the first of the two halfsheet quires only the first recto is signed, with a period both before and after the letter (‘.l.’). The paper has a hand and star watermark and the chainlines are 28–9 mm apart. The wrist is in l3, the fingers (and star) in l4, while part of the thumb can be made out in l2.

In the second halfsheet the first three rectos are regularly signed l.i., l.ii., and l.iii. The chainlines are closer together (ranging from 20 mm to 26 mm) and the watermark is different, with...