Tracing Lost Editions of Parisian Printers in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Jean Bonfons and his Widow Catherine Sergent

摘要

IN THE INTRODUCTION to their French Vernacular Books: Books Published in the French Language before 1601, Andrew Pettegree, Malcolm Walsby and Alexander Wilkinson warn scholars about the quandary of lost editions, explaining that: Around twenty thousand books in this bibliography are known only from one surviving copy; it may therefore readily be believed that many have disappeared altogether. Losses would have been highest among ephemeral classes of literature, such as broadsheets, or small books that might have been used to destruction, such as school books and primers.