in their earlier works, but they were industrious publishers. Like Jenson, they found it expedient to cut and cast types of the Round Gothic fashion, for the Roman character was most admired by scholars. In 1477, Crantz and Friburger abandoned printing, but Gering continued to print until his death in 1510. He willed a large property to the university.
In 1473, Peter Keyser and John Stol, after a three years' service with Gering, set up a rival printing office, the result of which was a reduction in the price of books.[1] This competition did not prevent other printers from founding offices in Paris, but it did compel some to improve the quality of their work, and to seek a new class of readers. Antoine Verard in 1480, and Phillipe Pigouchet in 1484, founded a new school of printing, when they undertook to make prayer-books and romances in imitation of the style of the miniaturists.[2] Thielmann Kerver, who commenced to print in 1497, was almost as famous as a printer of ornamental books. The growing taste for fine books did not prevent the publication of solid literature. In 1495, Jodocus Badius, a printer of great learning, who had been proof-reader for his father-in-law, Trechsel of Lyons, established an office at Paris, and began to print for men of education. In the following year came the famous Henry Stephens, first of a long line of printers eminent for their scholarship and diligence as editors and publishers of classical and critical text books. Before the year 1500, there were, or had been, sixty-nine master printers in Paris.
Lyons. Lyons must have offered unusual inducements, to master printers, for there were forty printing offices in that city before the year 1500. The printers of Lyons were busy
- ↑ Gering reprinted the books of Keyser and Stol as soon as he could procure copies. Each house boasted of the superior accuracy and greater cheapness of its own publications.
- ↑ In this style the pages were surrounded by narrow pictorial borders in pieces of irregular length. These pieces were repeatedly used on different pages, but always in new combinations, so as to present some feature of novelty. The ground-works of the borders were generally stippled. The large illustrations in the text were in outline, obviously intended for coloring. Red letters were often printed on every page, but the larger initials were painted.
