Hiroharu ORITA
Foreign Materials Acquisition Division
Acquisitions Department

This is based on the article of the same title
in the NDL Monthly Bulletin No. 554 (May 2007).

This book, which listed printed books in the order of their publication year for the first time, is a forerunner of incunabula studies. The author, Michael Maittaire (1668-1747), was French by birth born in Rouen. When he was in his teens, he moved to England with his parents since they were Huguenot (Protestant). After completing his studies at Westminster School and then at the University of Oxford, he received his master’s degree in 1697. He was a prolific writer in a broad variety of fields including classical scholarship, biblical studies and English grammar. He was also interested in the history of printing, covering a wide range from research on the history of printing in France to the history of European printing as this book. The craze for collecting antiquarian books in England at the time made his research possible.

He associated with book collectors holding a huge number of books such as Robert Harley (1661-1724) and his son Edward (1689-1741), and Thomas Herbert, eighth Earl of Pembroke (1656-1733) as well as being a bibliophile himself. Thanks to these rich private collections, he could carry on his research and published the first volume of Annales typographici ab artis inventae origine ad annum MD. in 1719 with the help of Paul Vaillant (1672?-1739), who, like Maittaire, was Protestant and a bibliophile, and managed a publishing company with his brother Isaac. The sail boat in the picture printed in the center of the title page above is their trademark made by a prominent engraver, Bernard Picart (1632-1721).

Fig. 1: Portraits of Johann Gutenberg, Johann Fust, Laurence Koster, Aldus Manutius, Johann Froben. All of them were made by Jacobus Houbraken after existing portraits.

Fig. 2: Ex libris of John Eliot Hodgkin The monogram combines I, E and h.

Fig.1, portraits of five early printers including Johann Gutenberg, Johann Fust and Laurence Koster, was created by Jacobus Houbraken (1698-1780) for a frontispiece of the first volume. It is put on the fourth volume (1733) from the NDL collection marked as the revised edition of the first volume on the title page. It was the enlargement of the first edition and contains indexes of cities and names of printers. The ex libris on this book (Fig. 2) signifies that it was owned by John Eliot Hodgkin (1829-1912).

J. E. Hodgkin was a collector of incunabula, broadsides, antique documents and other items who published a description of his own collection titled Rariora (3 vols.) in 1902 (Fig. 3). He collected some 80 items of incunabula and many other early printed books on the history of printing (Fig. 4-5), for example, Monumenta typographica (1740) by Christian Wolf (1689-1770). His collection was auctioned in London in 1914.

Although covering not only incunabula but publications from 1501 to 57 in volume 2 to 3 and those issued in Paris from 1558 to 1664 as a supplement, this book is a famous research book of incunabula. The incunabula section was added to it in Vienna in 1789 by Michael Denis (1729-1800).

Fig. 5: Detail of Fig. 4

• Annales typographici ab artis inventae origine ad annum MD. [-MDCLXIV]
  Maittaire, Michael
  1719-1741
  Call no. WF3-37
• Rariora; being notes of some of the printed books, manuscripts, historical documents, medals, engravings, pottery, etc., etc., collected (1858-1900)
  John Eliot Hodgkin.
  1902
  Call no. UM51-B4

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