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BOOKSELLING. BOOKSELLING. sities of Oxford and Cambridge the utationarii began their work some years hiter than in Paris or Bologna. They had, however, the advantage of freedom from the greater portion of the re- strictions which hampered the work of the French and Italian scribes, and their business developed so actively that they soon became the booksellers of the nniversity towns and in large l)art of the scholarly public of the whole country. It was, of course, from the university term that the name 'stationer.s' came at the outset to be applied to the organized book-dealers of Great Britain. The first guild of the British book- dealers (the forerunner of the .Stationers' Com- pany of lo5(!) completed its organization in 1403, nearly sixty years before the introduction into England of the printing-press. Outside of the universities, an important trade in manuscripts came into being with the close of the Fourteenth and beginning of the Fifteenth Century. The headquarters, not only for Italy, but for Europe, of the trade in Greek manu- scripts was for a number of years in Venice, whose close relations with the East gave it an early advantage in connection with this par- ticular class of Eastern products. Among the great manuscript dealers of Ttalv of the Four- teenth Century may be noted the name of Aure- tinus and Vcspasiano of Florence, of Aurispa of Venice, and (ialiotti of ililan. The trade in manuscript books in the Low Countries was dis- tinguished by the beauty of the art work which was associated with the text of the scribes. The manuscripts from Bruges secured, chiefly on this ground, a larger price in the market than is noted for the productions of any other book centre of Europe. The Dukes of Burgundy, dur- ing the first half of the Fifteenth Century, were noted for their literary interests, and did much to further the book trade of Ghent, Antwerp, and Bruges. The first publishers' guild of the Low Coimtries was organized in 1424 at Ghent. The invention of printing (c.l450) revolu- tionized the methods of bookselling, but the revolution extended over a period of nearly half a century. For years after the first printers began their work in Germany, in France, and in Italy, the production of manuscripts went on, and even as late as the beginning of the Fifteenth Century certain of the noble book collectors in Italy took the ground that the printed book was for the u.se of the vulgar reader only, and that the libraries of gentlemen must be devoted ex- clusively to the manuscript form of literature. Gutenberg's first partner, Fust, and his asso- ciate, Schoffer, were the first printers who acted also as publishers and booksellers. Notwith- standing the many difficulties with which they had to contend, they were able to offer their books at prices which to the old dealers in manuscripts seemed so astounding as to give some pretext for the charge of magie. Madden says that a copy of the "forty -eight line Bible,' printed on parchment, could l)e l)ought in Paris in 1470 for '2000 francs, while the cost of the same text a few years earlier in the manuscript fonn would have been five times as great. One of the earlier of the important publishing cen- tres of Europe was Basel. Its most famous name for our purpose is that of Froben, in later years the publisher and friend of Erasmus. The publisher who.se work was, between 147.5 and 1512, the most important in Germany was Ko- Voi,. HI.— 20. burger of Nuremberg, who by the year 1500 was utilizing no less than twenty-four presses, and sending out annually more books than any other publisher of his time. lie had branches or agencies in Frankfort, Paris, and Lyons, and business correspondence in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Himgary, and Poland, as well as throughout Germany. In respect to the bulk of the business done by him and of the commer- cial success secured, he was a greater publisher than either Aldus or Froben, his two most fa- mous contemporaries. The greatest publisher of this period, however, taking into account not simply the commercial returns of his business, but his influence upon the literature and, one may say. upon the civilization of his time, was Aldus ilanutius of Venice. It was to the high scholarly ideals and courageous and unselfish labors of Aldus and his immediate succes- sors, no less than to the imagination, ingenu- ity, and persistency of Gutenberg and Fust, that the Europe of 1495 was indebted for the great gift of the poetry and of the philosophy of Greece. Mainz and Venice joined hands to place at the service of the scholarly world the literary heritage of Athens. The work of Aldus as a printer-publisher (his earlier years had been devoted to teaching) began in the noteworthy year 1492. His first publication was the Greek and Latin grammar of Lascaris. This was followed shortly by the works of Ar- istotle, a Greek grammar, and a Greek-Latin dictionary. From 1480 to 1509, when the Re- public came to be harassed by the war inaugu- rated by the League of Cambrai, Venice was the most active literature-producing centre in Europe. In the organization of his printing and publishing business, Aldus had special ob- stacles to overcome. A large proportion of his undertakings were issued in Greek; and while he could secure the service of Greek editors, his compositors were of necessity Italians. He was obliged, after supervising the founding of the type, to watch typesetting and proof-reading. To the text his contributions as an editor were often important. When the book was printed, the copies had to be disposed of by personal cor- respondence with scholars throughout Europe, to whom the knowledge that Greek classics were obtainable in printed form came but slowly, and w^ith whom grew still more slowly the interest in such classics and the knowledge needed for their study. The delivery of books from Venice to difl'crent points of the Continent, particularly during the years of war (and the.se years were the most numerous), and the securing of the re- mittances in payment, was by no means an easy matter. It is not surprising that Aldus died poor, or that he writes i)laintively in 1510 that "for seven years books had had to contend against arms." His most famous editorial as- sociate was Erasmus, for whom also he pub- lished the first editions of the famous Colloquies and Praise of Follii. A serious difficulty with which the books of Aldus had to contend was the competition of the piratical copies of his editions which promptly appeared in Cologne, in Tubingen, in Lyons, and even so close at home as Florence. In 1589 the guild of the printers, publi.shers, and book.sellers of Slilan was organized. The Stationers' Company in England had secured its