What would one show in a series called Fabulous Friday? Well, fables of course! So, for our first set of fables in the series, we present
The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox, Newly Corrected and Purged from all Grossness in Phrase and Matter. When I first encountered this book in our collection, quite by happenstance, I thought I was looking at an early 16th-century imprint, but in fact it was printed in 1701 for Edward Brewster in London. That was a little surprising; why would an early 18th-century book be printed to look like a 15th- or 16th-century book? It turns out there was something of a tradition in printing the English-language Reynard in facsimile and using the same late 15th-century cuts for the following two centuries.
William Caxton, of course, was the first to print an English translation of Reynard in 1481, but it was his successor Wynkyn de Wordewho first used woodcuts to illustrate his own edition of Reynard in the late 1490s. Those same woodcuts appear to have been used in subsequent editions well into the late 17th century. Edward Brewster was the last printer to own de Worde’s blocks, but by his time the blocks were too worn to be used properly. So, Brewster recut a new set based on de Worde’s original, and had his own initials “EB” carved into the image, as can be seen here.
Brewster published his first edition of Reynard with de Worde’s original blocks in 1662. His second edition of 1671 was the first to use the revised cuts, which continued to be used in subsequent editions of
1676, 1681, 1694, and finally our own edition of 1701. There are a few curious idiosyncrasies in our copy. Among them is that the cut in C1 is printed upside-down. This is also true in previous editions at least as far back as the 1681 edition. There appears to have been no attempt to correct the situation. Another is that the main text, set in a Gothic typeface, was printed on small sheets of paper, with little breathing room for margins. However, when marginalia needed to be added in a more contemporary Roman face, narrow strips of paper were adhered to the edge to increase the surface to be printed. In this way, the pages of the book have two different sizes intermixed throughout the book!
