placing him in charge of the Department of Special 1. Editions. He worked there until 1911, experimenting From Jenson to Rogers: with the designs of over sixty books whose publi- Typographic Connect ions cation he supervised. It was during this period at across Six Centuries Riverside Press that Rogers saw a copy of Jenson’s Eusebius (as the book came to be known) in an Jill Gage exhibition at the Boston Public Library. Rogers Reference Librarian was immediately taken with its design: not only was Newberry Library, Chicago the volume one of the earliest to feature a roman  typeface, but it was also the first to be designed using typographical principles as opposed to old Eusebius of Cæsarea. manuscript models. The design features flowing De evangelica præparatione. forms, understated contrasts, and bracketed serifs, [Venice]: Nicolas Jenson, 1470. all meant to help the eye move across the page. Rogers studied the book intensely. Working from photographs he had taken of it, he designed a type he called “Montaigne,” which he used in a three- hile the Newberry Li- volume edition of Essays of Michael, Lord Montaigne, brary, Chicago, owns overW two thousand fi ve hundred published in 1902–04. Although Rogers employed specimens of pre-1500 printing, its copy of one Montaigne occasionally, he was never particularly book — Nicolas Jenson’s edition of Eusebius’s De pleased with it and reworked its design. He enlarged evangelica præparatione — has a special association the photographs of the Boston Public Library’s copy with the iconic typeface Centaur, created by one of Eusebius, as well as those he took of one he had of the twentieth-century’s greatest book designers, acquired, and copied the letters repeatedly, until he Bruce Rogers. was satisfi ed that he could re-create them. Rogers’s Born in France, Nicolas Jenson (1420–1480) was type, however, was not an exact iteration of Jenson’s sent by King Charles VII to Mainz, Germany, in 1458 original; while it paid homage to its fifteenth- to learn the art of printing. By 1468 he had relocated century predecessor, it was an independent design in to Venice, where he set up a workshop, producing many ways. Rogers sent his designs to the Chicago his first books in 1470. One (and most likely the engraver Robert Wiebking, whom he trusted to fi rst) of the four books he printed that year was by cut the type based on his drawings. Th e type was Eusebius of Cæsarea (c. 260–c. 339), an early Church fi rst used for the 1915 Montague Press translation historian whose writings encompassed every fi eld of of Maurice de Guerin’s Le Centaure, and so Rogers Christian literary activity. Jenson went on to publish renamed his type “Centaur.” In 1928 he oversaw the over ninety works before his death. He greatly infl u- creation of a Monotype version of Centaur for type- enced typography in his own lifetime and is widely setting machines.2 acknowledged as the father of the roman typeface. In In the 1920s, Rogers struck up a friendship with the late nineteenth century, William Morris revived Ernst Detterer (1888–1947), head of the Printing Entry 1. interest in Jenson when he used his typeface as a Arts Department at the School of the Art Institute pattern for the Kelmscott Press type.1 of Chicago, and later custodian of the John M. Th e label (top right) is located inside the book’s From his youth, Bruce Rogers (1870–1957) dis- Wing Foundation on the History of Printing at the back cover. played an interest in artwork and lettering designs. Newberry Library. In 1921 Detterer was asked to After graduating from Purdue University, he moved create a version of Jenson’s typeface for the Ludlow to Boston to work as a freelance book designer. In Typograph Company. Wishing to immerse himself 1896 George H. Miffl in, of Houghton, Miffl in and in fifteenth-century type design, Detterer made Company, hired Rogers to work at the Riverside extensive use of the Newberry’s collection. He stud- Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, eventually ied a copy of another Jenson-printed book, Leonardi

Other People’s Books 1. Gage: From Jenson to Rogers 20 21 Aretini De bello italico adversvs Gotthos (1471), as Lakeside Press. A label inside the back cover reads, many dedicatees in the Decades, awarded him the well as a fifteenth-century Italian manuscript (such “This binding was designed by Bruce Rogers in 2. honorific of “Abbot of Jamaica” in 1524. Martyr’s as the early printer may have used for a model for memory of his friend Ernst F. Detterer 1948.” In a Richard Eden’s Annotated Copy Decades would appear throughout the first quarter his original type), and over the next several years letter dated May 4, 1948, Newberry president Stanley of Peter Martyr’s of the sixteenth century in ever longer and more produced various drawings and punch patterns Pargellis wrote to Rogers: Decades of the New World expansive accounts of Spanish discovery, exploration, in consultation with Wiebking. In 1928 Detterer, and conquest in the West Indies and Central and along with a former student, the Chicago printer TheEusebius is back from Tribolet — in such Earle Havens South America, beginning with the issue of three and designer Robert Hunter Middleton (1898–1985), splendor and beauty that it becomes the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts separate editions of his first Decade (editio princeps, finished the typeface, which they called “Eusebius.” show-piece of our collections, as well as a Sheridan Libraries 1511), followed by a further five that terminated in While working on Eusebius, Detterer corresponded masterpiece for Donnelley’s. Tribolet has The Johns Hopkins University the definitive edition of 1530, which was produced frequently with Rogers. On August 27, 1927, Rogers asked to have it back for an exhibit of bind-  under the direction of the leading Spanish gram- wrote, “I congratulate you heartily on your suc- ings later this month. . . . This makes me feel marian Antonio de Lebrija. cessful adaptation of Jenson’s letter, a fragment of that you have been wasting your talents, sir; Peter Martyr d’Anghiera. By the appearance of the 1533 Basel edition that is which I have just seen in the ‘Inland Printer.’ It will you should have been designing bindings Petri Martyris ab Angleria Mediolanen[si] the subject of this essay, a version that included only prove to be, I predict, the most admirable Fifteenth long, long since. Oratoris Clarissimi . . . De Rebus the first threeDecades , as many as eight different edi- Century type-face we have any of us produced.” Ernst, I believe, would be more pleased by Oceanicis & Orbe Nouo Decades Tres. tions of Martyr’s major work had already appeared in Rogers offered Detterer some constructive criticism, this work than by anything else that might be Basel: Johann Bebel, 1533. Latin, Italian, and French. For its part, the English- suggesting that he “reconsider the weight of several done to preserve his memory in this library. speaking world would have to wait a quarter century letters” and complaining, “the drawing of the curve It has in it the twin perfections of design longer for its own vernacular introduction to the of ‘U’ is inferior to the drawing of the other capi- and craftsmanship which he tried to put into massive achievements of the Spanish, a lag in time tals.” He concluded, “I hope you will read these few everything he did himself.4 hough it is unlikely that that might well reflect English indifference, or at criticisms in the spirit in which I write them. You any book can reasonablyT be called a “national monu- least a kind of insular inertia, toward the prospect have produced such an admirable thing that I can The Newberry’s copy of Jenson’s Eusebius, then, ment” in its own right, it will be argued here that of colonization on the Spanish model. The relative not refrain from trying to help make it what would is not merely a specimen of one of the most beauti- Johns Hopkins University’s copy of Peter Martyr’s dearth of accessible accounts of the New World dis- seem to me even more perfect. I have long thought ful and influential fifteenth-century typefaces. It is seminal work, the De Orbe Nouo Decades (Basel, covery and exploration was a fact much bewailed, and of recutting my old Montaigne type, or revising and also a significant part of the story of the creation 1533), surely comes close to the mark.1 Not only is ultimately remedied, by Martyr’s energetic translator cutting a larger size of Centaur, but now your new of not one, but two classic, twentieth-century type this book an early and influential copy of the first into English, Richard Eden (c. 1520–1576). type has made both ideas obsolete.”3 designs and their designers’ aspirations to “give to the major history of the Americas, but it can also be The influence of his mentor at Cambridge When Detterer died suddenly in 1947, Rogers pre- printing world the best possible type and books.”5 rightly described, quite literally, as one of the first University, Sir Thomas Smith, his service to the future sented the Newberry with some of his photographs Moreover, the volume represents the camaraderie intellectual planks in the ship of state that would Elizabethan secretary of state William Cecil and and drawings for Centaur, as well as his personal copy of the design community and the Newberry’s place become the British Empire. John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Lord of Eusebius in a special binding produced by Harold within that community, and it stands as a testament Protector of Edward VI, and his friendships with Tribolet (1911–1993) in the bindery of R.R. Donnelly’s to two friends and typographic innovators. Peter Martyr and Richard Eden: the Renaissance magus John Dee and the explorer Heralds of the New World Sebastian Cabot, all proved formative for Eden. He eventually ranked highly among the first generation 1 Martin Lowry, Nicholas Jenson and 2 See Charles Zarobila, “Bruce Rogers,” 3 Bruce Rogers Papers, Midwest the Rise of Venetian Publishing in in John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, Manuscript Collection, Newberry Though he would never cross the ocean himself, of Renaissance Englishmen who would conspire Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Basil eds., American National Biography, vol. Library Archives, Chicago. Peter Martyr d’Anghiera (1457–1526) soon emerged toward the expansion of the English commonwealth Blackwell Ltd., 1991). 18 (New York: Oxford University Press, 4 Newberry Library Archives, Chicago. as a leading figure at the Spanish court with his well beyond its traditional borders, an effort that 1999), pp. 748–49; and Bruce Rogers, appointment in 1518 to the royal “Council of the finally culminated in the first official English expe- The Centaur Types (Chicago: October 5 Rogers Papers (note 3). House, 1949). Indies” of the king of Spain. It was in this capacity dition to find the Northeast Passage, piloted by the that Martyr won permanent fame as the official navigator Richard Chancellor, in 1553. Within two chronicler of the Spanish imperial enterprise in years, Eden’s English translation of Martyr’s first the New World. Indeed, so admired was Martyr three Decades appeared in two separate 1555 editions. during his lifetime for his eight serialized Decas, In them he forcefully exhorted his countrymen to or “Decades” — composite accounts of the New empire following the example of Spain, asking a rhe- World discovery, each comprising ten separate torical and patriotic question: “How much therefore chapters — that Pope Clement VII, one of Martyr’s is it to be lamented, and how greatly doth it sound

Other People’s Books 2. Havens: Richard Eden and Peter Martyr 22 23 to the reproach of all Christendom . . . that we have often keyed into particular portions of the printed no respect neither for God’s cause nor for our own text with additional detailed interlinear notes, as commodity to attempt some voyages into these coasts, well as less elaborate manuscript underscoring of to do for our parts as the Spaniards have done for the printed text. Entry 2. theirs.”2 In the end, it was the Decades that secured Eden’s reputation not only as a translator but also Life Imitating Art: right Title page with ownership inscriptions as a promoter of New World imperialism at a time The Trans-Atlantic Voyage of of Richard Eden, John Wibbersley, John when the western hemisphere was still truly “new” Richard Eden’s Peter Martyr Moultrie, and John Davis. to Europeans. Eden’s copy of the 1533 Decades is made all the Any bibliophile, particularly one contributing to a below Fols. 3v–4r, with extensive more intriguing by the extent, and the many imagina- volume dedicated to important association copies manuscript and marginal notes tive qualities, of the Englishman’s copious marginal in great American libraries and private collections, in Richard Eden’s hand. manuscript notes, which cover nearly every single must pay close attention to those who owned and page of the book. What emerges even within the enjoyed their books over the centuries before passing fi rst few pages of Eden’s largely Latin annotations is them on to subsequent generations. Th is temptation a very distinct interest in the practical circumstances, is especially in evidence with this fascinating jewel frequent serendipities, and occasional horrors that of early Americana, for recorded on the title page constituted the life and daily bread of the earliest and the front endpapers is evidence of no fewer conquistadors. A palpable mood of caution emerges, than nine of the ten known owners of the book for example, inspired by the explorers’ frequent accompanied, often enough, with specifi c dates of reports of hazards natural, animal, and mineral. Eden purchase and prices paid, from the sixteenth to the seemed especially interested in lands known to have nineteenth century and onward, down to the fi nal been inhabited by cannibals, carefully noting the known owner, John Work Garrett, to whom it was islands where they were said to reside, particularly passed down by his father. those with a penchant for lobbing poison-tipped Th e earliest of these was, of course, Eden him- arrows at their European enemies (fol. 2r). Naturally, self, whose autograph appears simply at the central Eden matched these with various notes on local top portion of the title page: “R. Eden.” A con- medicinal herbs that might be used as antidotes temporary ink inscription in the upper right-hand (29v, 32v). So too did he express a monitory interest corner of the initial front free endpaper indicates in areas populated by multitudes of crocodiles, bats, that a sixteenth-century owner, ostensibly Eden lions, and tigers (40r, 50r, 51r, 57r). himself, paid a full six shillings for this 1533 copy, not Eden’s jungle fevers were leavened throughout, an insubstantial sum at the time. No evidence exists however, by just as many wondrous annotations of the book’s subsequent owners following Eden’s on the native fertility and fecundity of the islands, death in 1576, at least until the appearance of the their superabundance of fruits and vegetation (39v, bookplate of the late seventeenth-century church- 59r), and their riches. On page after page, he cited man and theologian John Milner (c. 1651–1705). the discovery of precious gems (54r) and much- As the bookplate notes, Milner received his M.A. repeated references to lodes of pearls (45v, 65r–65v). from Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1675, at Hispaniola was Eden’s Eden, an earthly paradise, which time he proceeded to several ecclesiasti- the very Elysian Fields (58r, 59r).3 Th e annotator was cal posts at Durham Cathedral and surrounding explicit in calling attention to especially provocative parishes.4 Milner is interesting on several levels, purple passages in the Decades, whether by quickly most notably as a conservative religious controver- drawing typical fi nger-pointing “nota bene” marks sialist who published tracts against several leading beside particularly inspiring lines or, at the passages lights of the early Enlightenment, including Isaac of greatest moment, writing out in long-hand the Vossius, sometime librarian to Queen Christina of word “NOTA” in especially large capitals. These Sweden; the biblical scholar and philosopher Jean fl ashes of imaginative enthusiasm were in turn very LeClerc; and LeClerc’s close friend John Locke.

Other People’s Books 2. Havens: Richard Eden and Peter Martyr 24 25 Milner’s library was sufficiently large to merit a owner of Eden’s Peter Martyr, Dr. John Moultrie, of the century.12 Davis, like each of the preced- two while visiting Havana, Cuba, one of Columbus’s published auction catalogue, produced in 1715, ten who signed, dated, and priced the title page “J[oh]n ing owners of Eden’s Peter Martyr, was a man of earliest stops during his first voyage of discovery, as years after his death.5 Moultrie, M.D., 1786,” indicating that he paid 2 shil- great intellectual accomplishment, serving in 1788 it happens, and an island described in great detail in Over the course of the eighteenth century, Eden’s lings and 8 pence for the book. If ever there was an as a delegate for Plymouth, Massachusetts, at the Eden’s translation of Martyr’s firstDecade .17 Shortly copy of Martyr’s Decades passed successively through owner of this volume in the very mold of Richard state convention for the adoption of the new fed- thereafter Guild’s collection went on the block and, the personal libraries of at least three owners and, Eden, it was Moultrie, who was born in Charleston, eral Constitution and later as a representative and though we possess no direct evidence of his own- though the sequence of association is impossible South Carolina, in 1729. After earning a medical senator in the Massachusetts legislature. President ership of Eden’s Peter Martyr through autograph to reproduce with complete confidence, the first of degree in Scotland, he returned to his native city in George Washington named him comptroller of inscriptions or bookplates, happily the subsequent them was most likely the Reverend John Wibbersley 1749 and quickly joined the now venerable Charleston the United States Treasury, an office he left when auction catalogue of its next owner, the great early (c. 1719–1782), who signed and dated the title page “E Library Society, which had been founded just two appointed a federal judge for the Massachusetts Americana collector George Brinley, records specifi- Libris 1765.” The book then seems to have remained years earlier to avail Charleston’s professional men district, a position he retained for some forty years. cally that “at the sale of Judge Davis’s library, 1847, in the north of England, moving from Milner in with the latest publications from Britain.9 By 1766 Davis was described in a memoir published shortly it was purchased by Mr. Geo. F. Guild, from whose Durham to nearby Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where the Library Society wrote to Robinson’s bookseller after his death as a deeply committed New England library it came to Mr. Brinley (1817–75) of Hartford, Wibbersley held various ecclesiastical positions, and father-in-law in Oxford, authorizing him to serve as antiquary who amassed a “large and well-selected Connecticut in 1853.”18 where he is perhaps best remembered for having its agent in England for purchasing books, most likely library, which contained many rare and curious Of all the great early Americana collections of published a sermon delivered before the Assizes in because Fletcher had been a partner with the recently books, [in which] he took great pleasure, and of its which Eden’s copy of Peter Martyr formed a part, 1752.6 Wibbersley earned for himself a reputation as deceased Robert Dodsley, who was the organization’s treasures he made diligent use.”13 Brinley’s was far and away the most extensive: a a distinguished book collector in his own right, so former factor in London.10 Fletcher remained in trade While Davis’s biographer noted that the judge truly massive collection of over twelve thousand rare much so that his personal library caught the atten- with the Library Society for at least three years, until a left a “valuable bequest of books” to the library of the books, portions of which were later given to Yale tion of the celebrated London antiquarian bookseller different agent, William Nicoll, was selected to replace Harvard Divinity School,14 it is clear that the Eden University, with the rest offered at a series of auctions Thomas Payne (1718–1799), who is reported to have him. Moultrie went on to a distinguished career as copy of the Decades was in fact sold on the fourth day between 1878 and 1897. Much of the most valuable acquired his collection in 1783.7 both a statesman and planter in South Carolina and of the Davis auction, conducted in July 1847 by the early Americana in the Brinley collection sold in the Though it is not entirely clear, it is likely that was later elevated to the executive council of the pro- Boston auctioneer Joseph Leonard. The copy of the first installment in 1878, including Eden’s Decades. Payne sold the ex-Wibbersley copy of Eden’s anno- vincial governor of the new British province of East catalogue at Harvard’s Houghton Library is priced Several surviving copies of the Brinley auction tated Peter Martyr to one of two other known Florida upon its transfer from Spanish control in 1763. in manuscript, revealing not only that the book was catalogue contain prices and buyers’ names marked eighteenth-century owners of the book, both of Following the reversion of Florida to Spanish rule in sold for $150 (with no mention of the Eden associa- in manuscript. These reveal not only that one “M. D.” whom were linked together personally through 1784, Moultrie fled to Aston Hall, his English estate tion in the description), but also that there was stiff purchased Eden’s Peter Martyr for $100,19 but that marriage, despite having spent most of their lives in Shropshire, where he resided until his death in 1798. competition for rarities throughout much of the the competition was, once again, extreme, involving on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The first of these He acquired Eden’s Decades within two years of his sale.15 Other extant copies of the Davis catalogue, representatives of the storied Lenox Library of New was the third successive divine to be associated English exile, in 1786, perhaps even from Robinson which is a rarity in its own right, reveal that several York, Yale, the American Antiquarian Society, and with the volume, the Reverend Thomas Robinson himself through Fletcher’s offices.11 of Boston’s most distinguished antiquarian book a host of other major institutional research librar- (c. 1746–1795), whose bookplate appears just below There would be an intervention of as much collectors attended the sale and competed with one ies, antiquarian booksellers, and private collectors. Milner’s on the front pastedown: “Tho: Robinson as fifty years following Robinson’s and Moultrie’s another for books, including George Livermore, a The Brinley auction catalogue is apparently the first Coll: Mert Socius” (Thomas Robinson, Fellow of deaths in the 1790s before we can again pick up the proprietor of the Boston Athenæum and a trustee publication, as well, to explicitly observe the Richard Merton College, Oxford). The son of an Oxford colorful itinerary of Eden’s Decades, following its first of the Massachusetts State Library, and his friend Eden provenance of the book, with an extensive note banker, Robinson took his M.A. at Merton in 1769 and only trans-Atlantic voyage at some point dur- Charles Deane, who would gather over the course of that must surely have attracted the attention of many and subsequently spent much of his career in Oxford ing the first half of the nineteenth century. Though the second half of the nineteenth century one of the to this particular lot. as headmaster of Magdalen School and as chaplain his title-page ownership inscription is not dated, it finest private collections of early Americana and rare It was with this purchase in March 1878 that at Merton. Yet another antiquarian and bibliophile seems clear that the book was at some point thereaf- books relating to the New World discovery.16 the remarkable travels of Richard Eden’s anno- in the grain of Milner and Wibbersley, Robinson also ter acquired by the well-known Massachusetts judge None of these men were victorious in the Davis tated Decades finally came to a close. Crossing the became linked with the book trade itself upon his and bibliophile John Davis (1761–1847). Davis paid 13 auction sale of Eden’s Decades, however, which was Mason–Dixon line, apparently for the first and only marriage to the daughter of the Oxford bookseller shillings and 6 pence, a significantly larger sum than an honor that fell to a fourth major collector of early time, the volume settled permanently in Baltimore James Fletcher, Jr., in 1776.8 Moultrie had spent for the book — the significant Americana, George F. Guild (d. 1853), about whom upon the shelves of the great private library of T. Fletcher appears to have connected Robinson in difference suggesting, though by no means confirm- much less is known than those who owned the book Harrison Garrett (1849–1888), purchased by him some form of direct association with the third, and ing, that he may have acquired it after an extended before him. Among the few readily detectable facts just one decade before his own early death, at age arguably the most remarkable, eighteenth-century period of price inflation, perhaps closer to the middle about him is that he died at the young age of forty- thirty-nine. T. Harrison’s son, John Work Garrett

Other People’s Books 2. Havens: Richard Eden and Peter Martyr 26 27