The early editions of the Roman de la Rose / by F.W. Bourdillon.

  • Francis William Bourdillon
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The early editions of the Roman de la Rose / by F.W. Bourdillon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/276 (page 14)
    It is, therefore, only by means of the type, the woodcuts, and other indirect evidence that their order can be ascertained. No less than five of the seven, however, are illustrated by the same series of woodcuts, printed from the same blocks, and by the state of these cuts, the gradually increasing breaks and cracks, and the gradual disappearance of a certain number of them, it is a comparatively easy and safe matter to arrange them in chronological order. But this method was not adopted by the earlier bibliographers, no doubt owing to the fadt that all these editions are rare, and that it has been hardly possible to find all the five editions together in any one library, public or private. And there has been till recently a great ignorance of the relation of all the early editions to one another, and especially of the adtual identity of the wood blocks in five of them. Thus in 1878 a type-imitated, so-called facsimile, was issued of one of these five editions, with copies of the woodcuts; copies which were doubtless obtained by tracing, and which in these days of photographic facsimile seem rather poor. But the edition chosen for this expensive and careful reproduction was neither of the two earlier, which contain the complete series of cuts, but the edition of Jean Du Pre, in which two of the cuts are missing; and it seems difficult to believe that the projectors of this facsimile edition knew of its relation to the Lyons Folios, or that they would not have chosen one of those for reproduction in preference, with the full series of woodcuts, had they known of their previous appearance. It was, again, from Du Pre’s edition also, with its incomplete series of cuts, that the well-known edition in the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne got its imitations of these same cuts, also apparently traced.1 Of these woodcuts, the famous Lyons series, I shall have more to say diredtly; but first comes the question, “Which is the first edition of the Roman de la Rose!” Brunet gave up the question in despair. He mentions three2 * 1 Though these two sets of facsimiles appeared in the same year, 1878, they are, as far as I can make out, independent of one another, and not printed from the same blocks. 4 2 These appear to be really only two. See posted, p. 22.