Scriptum in logica sua. // Explicit scriptu Antonii in sua logica veneciis correctum. // Scriptum super logica

[St Albans]: [St Albans Press; Schoolmaster Printer], 1481. Fragment of four incunable leaves. The leaves are mounted on the rear flyleaf of a copy of the facsimile edition of The Boke of Saint Albans (London, 1881) by a narrow paper stripe. The custom made half vellum binding was made in the workshop of Gustav Hedberg (Stockholm), his vignette is on the front pastedown. Some pages of the book were omitted by the binder, and its parts follow a different order. With Per Hierta's ownership inscription on a front flyleaf, dated in 1901. Bibliographical notes in pencil probably in Hierta's hand on the front and rear endpapers. Edward Gordon Duff's short letter (signed, undated) with bibliographic information mounted beneath the incunabula leaves. Find the detailed condition report of the fragment in the description.. Fragment of four incunable leaves. The leaves are mounted on the rear flyleaf of a copy of the facsimile edition of The Boke of Saint Albans (London, 1881) by a narrow paper stripe. The custom made half vellum binding was made in the workshop of Gustav Hedberg (Stockholm), his vignette is on the front pastedown. Some pages of the book were omitted by the binder, and its parts follow a different order. With Per Hierta's ownership inscription on a front flyleaf, dated in 1901. Bibliographical notes in pencil probably in Hierta's hand on the front and rear endpapers. Edward Gordon Duff's short letter (signed, undated) with bibliographic information mounted beneath the incunabula leaves. Four leaves fragment: I1, I6, I3, I8. 32 lines; Size: ca. 100 × 165 mm.

A four-leaf fragment from the scarce 1481/2 edition of the St Albans printing of Antonius Andreae's Scriptum in logica sua.

Scriptum in logica sua, a collection of Antonius Andreae's philosophical works, is one of the only eight books that the St Albans Press produced during the short period of its activity between 1479 and 1486 and it is the longest book (336 leaves) printed by the Schoolmaster Printer. Exceedingly rare incunabula, only one complete copy of the work is recorded by GW and ISTC, which is held at the Norwich Public Library. Further two imperfect copies are at the Wadham College (Oxford) and the Jesus College (Cambridge), and six (according to ISTC only five) fragments of 1 to 28 leaves could be found in the following collections: Oxford, Merton College (1 leaf); Cambridge UL (28 leaves); St Andrews, University Library (2 leaves); Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium (14 leaves); Princeton UL (2 leaves bifolium, cropped with severe loss of text) (Green, 2015).

The Wadham College-copy (which lacks gathering "L") was discovered and described first in 1885 by Edward Gordon Duff (Duff, 1885), at the time an undergraduate student of the College, soon an eminent bibliographer and librarian, known for his works on early English printing (Hunt, 1990). His short, handwritten letter of bibliographical identification is attached beneath the fragment, which was probably sent to one of the former owners, Per Hierta (1864-1924), a Swedish bibliophile, whose collection was sold in 1932 by Björck & Börjesson (Katalog Nr. 272).

The present four-leaf fragment was supposedly extracted from a bookbinding, which explains the punched holes at the edges (some with tiny losses of text). I1, I3, and I6 are rubricated in red. The paper of each leaf is tanned, some letters are faded. I1 is the most heavily punched, and some of the tiny holes are affecting the text. It is damaged at the inner margin with some small loss to the paper. I3 bears four punch holes at the inner margin with no effect on the text, and two holes on the other side with a tiny loss to a few letters. The outer edge is chipped and there is a three cm tear with no effect on the legibility. The print space on the recto is very slightly cropped at the top, barely shaving the first line of text. A tiny trace of old marginalia on the recto remained to be seen. I6 is turned the wrong way round here. It is punched with tiny holes with an insignificant loss to a few letters, damaged at the inner (here outer) margin with some small loss to the paper. A watermark, probably the lower part of a bull's head, is visible in the inner (here outer) margin. I8 is also punched with two tiny holes and has some small losses to the inner edge. It is cropped at the top and the outer edge. On the verso the two top lines are trimmed, on the recto the top line is shaved, and both sides suffer a minimal loss to the text at the outer edge.

The great abbey of St. Albans had for centuries been an important center of book production and was famous for its library (Baker, 1979). The Abbey's printing press became the third to set up in England after William Caxton's in Westminster (mid-1470s), and the workshop of the Printer of the 'Expositio in symbolum apostolorum' in Oxford (1478). The first book of the St Albans Press was printed in 1479, whose printer is referred to as the "Schoolmaster Printer", however virtually nothing is known about his identity, and it is also uncertain whether there was only one printer or two. The press was active until 1486, and produced only eight books, six of them in Latin for grammar schools and university students, and, after an interval of about four years, two English titles were issued for a more general audience, of which one is the earliest known example of color printing in England, while the other is the first to feature a printer's device. Because of the facts that one of an earlier St Albans book, Traversanus' Rhetorica nova (1480), was a reprint of Caxton's edition of 1478, and two later books, the Chronicles of England and the Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Heraldry (or the Book of St. Albans) were reprinted by Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde, furthermore the likeness of the types, and other similarities between the two workshops, some experts suggest that the St Albans press was a provincial branch of Caxton's (Barker, 1979), however, others deny any connection.

Provenance: Per Hierta's ownership inscription on a front flyleaf, dated in 1901.

GW 1674; ISTC ia00593500; STC 582; Duff 27; Oates 4211

Literature: Barker, N. (1979). The St Albans Press: The First Punch-Cutter in England and the First Native Typefounder? Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 7(3), 257-278. Retrieved February 5, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41154572; Duff, E. G. (1885). Discovery of a St. Alban Book. The Academy, no. 663: (1885): 45.; Duff, E. G. (1912). The English provincial printers, stationers and bookbinders to 1557. Cambridge: University Press, pp. 34-39.; Green, D., 2015. Where we find new old books, chapter 2: a new 15th century fragment joins a fragmentary history - University of St Andrews Special Collections blog. [online] Special-collections.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk. Available at: [Accessed 5 February 2021]; Hunt, A. (1990). E. Gordon Duff and the Bibliography of English Incunabula. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 9(5), 409-433. Retrieved February 5, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41154791

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