Anthoine Verard, Parisian Publisher 1485-1512: Prologues, Poems, and Presentations.

Mary Beth Winn. (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 313.) Geneva: Droz, 1997. 86 ills. + 555 pp. n.p. ISBN: 2-600-00219-7.

What a pleasure to handle, for a change, a beautiful book: Droz's handsome red covers, adorned this time with Verard's device in color; good quality paper and easily readable print, with astonishingly few errors; and over 80 black and white illustrations. Despite its modest subtitle, this is actually a compendium of all that is known about Verard, together with texts of his works, archival documents about him, and a mine of information on French printing at the turn of the sixteenth century.

Verard liked to describe himself as an "humble libraire," but he was much more than that: a book-maker who employed at least 20 printers during his career, an illuminator who often represented himself as the donor of the book to its (usually royal) dedicatee, and a writer of both verse and prose who attached his own prefatory material to a large variety of different works, from Books of Hours and the Golden Legend to Ovid, Boccaccio, Christine de Pisan and Gaston Phebus.

Chapters 1-4, almost half the book, give us the available information about Verard's career in Paris and Tours, the manuscripts and printed books he produced and illustrated, his dedications, prologues and poems, the writers with whom he was associated, and his illustrious patrons (including Henry VII of England). On all these subjects Winn provides abundant information, meticulously footnoted, building up a detailed picture of life and work in the printing trade. Verard differed from most contemporary printers in his exploitation of printing for patronage, and his assertion of the publisher's role (98); many illustrations show him, as kneeling donor, presenting the book to king or princess.

Chapter 5 reproduces all the known texts by Verard, each accompanied by comments on its content, context and style. In cases where Verard took over phrases or whole passages from other authors, Winn reproduces their texts with Verard's borrowings underlined, enabling the reader to evaluate Verard's compositional techniques.

Appendix 1 consists of archival documents concerning Verard and his heirs, and very useful lists: of books he prepared for all his patrons, miniatures in which he appears, later editions which used his prologues, printers he employed, and Verard editions not cited by McFarlane (84 of them).

Winn's scholarly achievement is as refreshing as it is unusual. She has painstakingly gathered enormous amounts of information, and presented it to us in a highly readable form. This will remain the definitive work on Verard for a long time to come.

BARBARA C. BOWEN Vanderbilt University