Page 70 - Virtual Research Lab flip book

of printing the market for Greek books was much smaller than for works in Latin, but it was growing. The main problems with printing in Greek were many technical problems in creating Greek type fonts, which had to be based on non-standardized Greek manuscript hands, with their ligatures and esoteric abbreviations, unlike Roman fonts which derived from stone inscriptions and legible Carolingian minuscule. One of the great challenges was to develop graceful Greek fonts that could be fit into standard matrices for casting type.
Prior to the printing of long Greek texts these problems had been solved on a small scale and not very successfully; small amounts of Greek were included in the Lactantius printed by John and Wendelin de Spira, and the Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius printed by Nicholas Jenson in Venice. Both editions were published in 1472. Compared to a total of 1475 editions of Latin classics printed in the fifteenth century, there were only 26 editions of classical Greek texts, and they were produced only in five Italian centers: Brecia (1), Milan (3), Florence (10), Venice (11) and Reggio Emilia (1).42 On the very specialized topic of early printing in Greek two works have become classics: Robert Proctor’s The Printing of Greek in the Fifteenth Century (1900) and Nicolas Barker’s superbly written and produced Aldus Manutius and the Devel- opment of Greek & Script in the Fifteenth Century (1985). The first edition of Bark- er’s work, limited to 200 copies with four original leaves from Aldine press books, was designed by Stephen Harvard and printed on excellent paper in small folio format at the Stinehour Press. In my opinion this edition, and to a slightly lesser extent, the revised second edition from 1992, which was limited to 350 copies, are among the best designed and printed books on the history of printing issued during the last quarter of the twentieth century.
Compared to printed books, electronic books delivered over the Internet have the advantages of lower manufacturing cost, and assuming that the e-reader is already paid for, usually lower sales prices, freedom from ship- ping cost, and virtually instantaneous wireless delivery. Though they lack
42 Jones, op. cit. (2004), p. 22.
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