Item 26 - Letter from Edward Heawood to R. B. McKerrow

Royal Geographical Society, Kensington Gore, London, S.W.7.—His notes on the position of watermarks are to be printed in The Library. The format of Voyages de Texeira (1681) is unusual.

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Transcript

Royal Geographical Society, Kensington Gore, London, S.W.7
March 14 1928

Dear Mr. McKerrow

Following your suggestion, I jotted down the substance of my notes on the Position of Watermarks and sent the article to Dr Pollard, who says he will print it in the Library. {1} I fear it is difficult to estimate the proportion of abnormalities to the total at all precisely, but I am working through Briquet & my own collection of later marks to try & get some rough idea.

Shortly after writing before I remembered another undoubted case of a central position viz. a series of marks (letters only) in the 1695 ed. of Camden’s Britannia, on paper which I imagine to be Genoese. Briquet gives quite a number of examples of centrally placed marks from N. Italy in quite early days. In my notes I have quoted a case of a folio book printed on a paper of rather uncommon shape & size (though apparently made fairly often in Italy), so that the shape (& size) of the book resembles that of 4to (O. Magnus: ‘Hist. de Gentibus Septentr.’ Rome 1555).

I have today noticed a case of a 12mo book in gatherings of 8 and 4 alternately, which I take it is not very common (Voyages de Texeira, Paris 1681). This is also interesting from the statement in the Prelim. leaves “Les exemplaires ont esté fournis”. Does this mean that the whole edition (apart from the prelim. leaves) had to be submitted for the privelege†, or to whom would they otherwise be furnished? The precise date of registration in the ‘Livre … de Imprimeurs …’ is also given.

Believe me
Yours very truly
Edward Heawood

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{1} See ‘The Position on the Sheet of Early Watermarks’, The Library, 4th series, vol. 9, no. 1 (June 1928), pp. 38-47.

† Sic.