| Library home | Catalogue | Resources | Services | Help | Libraries | About us |
| Staff directory | A-Z index | Site map |
| Library home | Catalogue | Resources | Services | Help | Libraries | About us |
| Staff directory | A-Z index | Site map |
Chosen by:
Dr Brian Gerrard,
Rare Books, Matheson Library
P. Virgilii Maronis Opera / varietate lectionis et perpetua adnotatione illustrata a Chr. Gottl. Heyne ... Editio tertia. (Londini : Typis T. Rickaby; impensis T. Payne, B. et J. White, R. Faulder, et J. Edwards, 1793) 4 v. in 8, plates, 30 cm. (4to)
The simple examination of an item in the Swift Collection at the Monash Universiy Library turned into a puzzle, when I looked into a rather grand-looking and typical late eighteenth-century quarto entitled P. Virgilii Maronis opera (Londini, Typis T. Rickaby, 1793). The Monash copy is *SW f 870.1 V497 A1/He. The work was edited by the German editor Christian Gottlieb Heine and is in 4 vols. bound in 8 and is printed on wove paper with a single watermark J WHATMAN, in each gathering.
A cancellation was called for when there was an error that the printer wished to correct in a leaf. A cancellation means, generally, the removal of one leaf and its replacement by a corrected leaf. These cancellations are common in the Eighteenth Century and bibliographers spend time trying to find original or uncorrected leaves, cancellanda.
Thomas Rickaby decided to cancel leaves in the Virgil using the same paper that the rest of the work had been printed with. In this way it follows that some gatherings with cancellations hold an extra watermark, some none.
In the copies of the Virgil at Melbourne University’s Poynton collection, it was odd to find that the leaves cancelled in that copy seemed to have no fixed relationship to those cancelled in the Monash copy. After all, if we wish to cancel a particular leaf in one copy surely we wish to cancel the same leaf in any other copy. Why would this gathering have a cancellans in this copy and not in another? The problem was solved when it was realised that the cancellantia applied not to words, which had then always been the reason for cancellation, but to illustrations. The Virgil, being a grand library book was illustrated with engravings of classical scenes and for reasons which have never yet been found, Rickaby decided that he did not like the appearance of some illustrations and replaced them with better examples.
Photo album created with Web Album Generator