{"id":2012,"date":"2020-07-22T16:10:41","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T16:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=1602"},"modified":"2025-09-21T18:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T22:21:11","slug":"frans-a-janssen-ed-the-earliest-dutch-imposition-manual-a-facsimile-of-the-manuscript-overslag-boek-by-joannes-josephus-balthazar-vanderstraelen-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2020\/07\/22\/frans-a-janssen-ed-the-earliest-dutch-imposition-manual-a-facsimile-of-the-manuscript-overslag-boek-by-joannes-josephus-balthazar-vanderstraelen-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Frans A. Janssen, ed., The Earliest Dutch Imposition Manual: A Facsimile of the Manuscript \u201cOverslag-Boek\u201d<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Frans A. Janssen, ed., The Earliest Dutch Imposition Manual: A Facsimile of the Manuscript \u201cOverslag-Boek\u201d<\/em><\/h1>\n\n
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Ad Leerintveld<\/a><\/div>\n\n
in <\/span>Book review<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Cover<\/a><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Frans A. Janssen, ed. The Earliest DutchImposition Manual: A Facsimile of the Manuscript \u201cOverslag-Boek\u201d by Joannes Josephus Balthazar Vanderstraelen. <\/em>New York: The Grolier Club, 2014. xl, 162p., ill. ISBN 9781605830537. US $75 (hardback).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cUntil well into the 19th century typographical craftsmanship was passed down from generation to generation in the workshops where printing was practised, in the printing houses,\u201d argued Frans A. Janssen in his monumental 1982 edition of David Wardenaar\u2019s Beschrijving der Boekdrukkunst<\/em> (1801), the oldest Dutch printer\u2019s manual. Apprentice typographers learned the trade on the job; instruction manuals were wasted on them. That such books were made all the same is owing to \u201cthe relative small number of the most educated and ambitious master printers and overseers\u201d (Janssen, ed. Wardenaar, 11). One such man was Joannes Josephus Balthazar Vanderstraelen from Antwerp who, in 1784\u20135, wrote an instruction manual explaining how to place type for different formats into the forme in the correct manner. In 2006 the Grolier Club managed to acquire the manuscript containing Vanderstraelen\u2019s \u201cOverslag-Boek.\u201d Eugene S. Flamm, president of the Club from 2010\u201314 and author of the foreword to this facsimile, is understandably proud of the acquisition and of the present edition by Janssen \u2013 the expert par excellence<\/em> in the field of typesetting and printing in the Low Countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            This bound edition was beautifully\ndesigned by Jerry Kelly. The facsimile proper is preceded by Flamm\u2019s foreword (vii)\nand an introduction by Janssen (ix\u2013xxiii), as well as an \u201cAppendix with Description\nof the Manuscript and Editorial Note\u201d (xxiv), bibliography (xxv\u2013xxvii), translation\nof certain pages of the manual (xxix\u2013xxxii), indices (xxxiii\u2013xxxiv) and information\non the manual\u2019s contents (xxxv\u2013xxxix). The indices consist of two glossaries, one\nDutch\u2013English and the other English\u2013Dutch, while the \u201cContents of the Imposition\nManual\u201d section provides for every page of the facsimile a bilingual overview. Throughout,\ntranslation from the Dutch was in the very capable hands of Cis van Heertum. The\nedition is therefore easily accessible to an international audience who might\notherwise struggle with Vanderstraelen\u2019s eighteenth-century Dutch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The introduction is rich in content.\nJanssen first patiently explains what imposition is, then provides a brief history\nof imposition manuals, discusses the author and describes in detail Vanderstraelen\u2019s\nmanual. Thanks to Janssen\u2019s expertise and meticulousness, the introduction provides\nnot only an introduction to this facsimile, but also to the practice of\ntypesetting in the hand-press period and to surviving instruction manuals from\nthis era. And because Janssen compares Vanderstraelen\u2019s \u201cOverslag-Boek\u201d in such\nan expert way with other surviving imposition manuals, he is able to judge,\nrightly, that it is \u201calike in being different\u201d\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad (xxiii).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Of Joannes Josephus Balthazar\nVanderstraelen, the author of the present \u201cOverslag-Boek,\u201d little is known. He\nmay have been employed by the Antwerp publisher Hubertus Bincken. On the basis\nof manuscripts by Vanderstraelen on the history of arithmetic preserved in the Erfgoedbibliotheek\nHendrik Conscience in Antwerp, Janssen describes him as \u201can aficionado and\nhobbyist\u201d (xvii). I am inclined to agree with these qualifications also on\naccount of the pages preceding Vanderstraelen\u2019s typesetting instruction (4\u20138),\nupon which Janssen offers little comment. By pasting in the portrait of Franciscus\nRosart, a Brussels punch-cutter, as well as by providing a brief history of\nwriting (copied largely from the 1784 Ghent edition of De historie van Belgis<\/em>, by the sixteenth-century Flemish historian\nMarcus van Vaernewyck), Vanderstraelen emphatically places typesetting in an\nhistorical context, thus advancing the practice as an important feature of\nliteracy and of civilisation more generally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            This fine edition deserves a\npermanent place in the literature of typesetting practices in the Low Countries.\nThe world of book history should be grateful to the Grolier Club and especially\nto Frans Janssen for its publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ad Leerintveld, National Library of the Netherlands (trans. Nynke Leistra)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cUntil well into the 19th century typographical craftsmanship was passed down from generation to generation in the workshops where printing was practised, in the printing houses,\u201d argued Frans A. Janssen in his monumental 1982 edition of David Wardenaar\u2019s Beschrijving der Boekdrukkunst<\/em> (1801), the oldest Dutch printer\u2019s manual. Apprentice typographers learned the trade on the job; instruction manuals were wasted on them. That such books were made all the same is owing to \u201cthe relative small number of the most educated and ambitious master printers and overseers\u201d (Janssen, ed. Wardenaar, 11). One such man was Joannes Josephus Balthazar Vanderstraelen from Antwerp who, in 1784\u20135, wrote an instruction manual explaining how to place type for different formats into the forme in the correct manner. In 2006 the Grolier Club managed to acquire the manuscript containing Vanderstraelen\u2019s \u201cOverslag-Boek.\u201d Eugene S. Flamm, president of the Club from 2010\u201314 and author of the foreword to this facsimile, is understandably proud of the acquisition and of the present edition by Janssen \u2013 the expert par excellence in the field of typesetting and printing in the Low Countries. \u261b \u261e<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-post-template-reviews","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888],"tags":[1895,1930,1950,1951],"class_list":["post-2012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-18th-century","tag-europe","tag-print-culture","tag-printing"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2012"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5692,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012\/revisions\/5692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}