The Life of Dylan Thomas
Eric Gill Autobiography
Christopher Plantin
The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway
Joyce: the Man, the Work, the Reputation

Colin Clair

Christopher Plantin was indubitably the greatest printer of his time and ranks in the history of printing among the few giant figures who have stamped the craft with the mark of their genius.

This is the first full-scale study of one of the most important figures in the history of printing; the man who in the sixteenth century "turned what has been a handicraft into an industry". From Plantin's presses there flowed books on an immense range of subjects, and the variety of his output was dazzling. It included compact editions of the classics as well as the most brilliant contemporary works on botany, theology and history; grammars and dictionaries in Flemish, German, Greek and Hebrew; Bibles, liturgies and masses.

All his publications were magnificent examples of the typographer's skills. There is no printer who can have left a finer memorial to his art than Plantin did with the famous Polyglot Bible, its parallel texts in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. He laid the foundations for the great business of publishing and showed that books could be well made even when produced in quantity. His work is preserved in the Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp.

ISBN 1-870495-01-2   £16.95