Untitled - Monoskop

CHOICE OF POSITION;
IN FULL OR SUMMARY
use by the early printers. We know it as the natural place to look not only for
the author and title, but the place and date of publication, and the publisher's
name - with or without his trade-mark - with notice of copyright tending in a
present-day book to be printed overleaf. At the beginning of the sixteenth
century in France it was still something of a novelty. Accordingly, when
privileges first began (and indeed occasionally afterwards), notice that a book
is published under is privilege often given only at the end, or at some other
point within the volume, and with no mention on the title-page. Pierre
Gringore, the earliest French author to obtain privileges for his works, began
by advertising them in the colophon at the end of the book Lesfolks entreprises
(PR 1505, i) with the following statement on the verso of the last leaf:
1'acteur de cedict liure nomme Pierre
Tf II est dit par 1'ordonnance de justice que
Gringoire a privilege de le vendre et distribuer du jourduy jusques a ung an / sans que
autre le puisse faire imprimer ne vendre fors ceulx a il qui en ballera et distribuera / et
ce sur peine de confiscation des livres et d'amende arbitraire. Imprime a Paris par
maistre Pierre le Dru imprimeur pour icelluy Gringoire le .xxiii. jour de decembre.
L'an mil cinq cens et cinq.
There is no other notification of the privilege, and no other particulars of it.
This is certainly not an oversight. Gringore at this period was an important
figure in the Paris entertainment world, as well as being a trusted supporter of
government policies. He employed Le Dru to print his works, but kept the
publication and sale of them in his own hands, at his house at the Sign of
'Mere Sotte' on the Pont Notre-Dame. He knew quite well what he was doing.
And in 1509 he was still notifying the book-trade and the public of his
privilege exclusively at the end of his books (PR 1509, 2 and 3). By 1516 on the
other hand, in Lesfantasies de mere Sotte, he had the words 'Cum priuilegio regis'
printed on the title-page, and his Letters Patent printed in full on a following
page, with no reference to the privilege at the end (CH 1516, 3).
Antoine Verard first advertised in the Epistres Sainct Pol glosees, of which the
colophon is dated 7 January 1507, that is, 1508 n.s., a privilege for three years
work which he
granted to him by the king, which evidently applied to any
should be the first person to publish (CH 1507, i). There is, however, no
mention of this concession on the title-page. It is summarised, following the
colophon, on the verso of the last leaf. By this time Verard had been in
business for over thirty years and had published eighty-three books. He too
began by ignoring the title-page as a place to draw attention to his privilege. It
was only after four more publications that he or the printers employed by him
thought of it. He seems to have had the words 'Cum priuilegio' printed on the
title-page first in L'hommejuste et I'homme mondain (19 July 1508), and the words
'Cum priuilegio regis' for the first time in the Dialogue monseigneur S. Gregoire
(20 March 1510 n.s.). But he continued up to the last book printed for him, in
August 1512, to summarise his privilege at the end of the volume as well.
Guillaume Eustace had a new printer's mark engraved for himself on
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