Case studies

The various appearances in print of Leeuwenhoek's letters over the course of almost four decades present a challenge for his bibliographers. The challenge is illustrated by the two images on the right from Geschiedenis van de techniek in Nederland (History of Technology in the Netherlands).

The image on the top right (click to enlarge) shows the craft of printing from a century before Leeuwenhoek's birth until a century after his death. Each sheet of paper had to be literally screw-pressed against an inked metal plate. This process produced books with endless variations of binding, gathering, printing, and typesetting.

The image on the lower right shows the state of the industry half a century later, around 1870. The steam-powered machine did all the work and the human just kept the machine running. This process produced books in such large quantities at such a low cost with reasonable quality and so little variation that they became a commodity.

Our need for a complete Leeuwenhoek bibliography of discrete items rests on the standardization of the modern printing industry. Our world, unimaginable in Leeuwenhoek's time, has trouble accommodating what we find when we look at his world of individually crafted books.

A quick look at printed book production in the 17th century provides some context. Bibliopolis.nl has the best concise English-language history of the Republic's printing industry, including its related crafts.

1460-1585: Rise and general dissemination

1585-1725: Hey-day as centre of world trade

The case studies on the right-hand sidebar apply this context to Leeuwenhoek's Dutch and Latin publications.

Roles

The book industry employed people with a variety of skills, beginning with the people who made the paper, vellum, thread, and ink. Once these materials were assembled, one person or one shop could do some or all of the tasks below. The rest would be sub-contracted.

• Publisher
• Typesetter
• Plate engraver
• Printer
• Binder
• Bookseller

The images on the left sidebar were made by Jan Luyken except for the typesetter and the two book sellers.

The publisher was the person who pays for the production of the books. We do not know the extent to which Leeuwenhoek acted as his own publisher.

• Did he pay for the Latin translations?

• Assuming that he paid someone to make the red chalk or ink drawings, did Leeuwenhoek also pay the plate cutter?

• Did he buy each of the services listed above?

• To what extent was the person on the title plate involved? Did his shop do the typetting? What about the printing and binding?

• How were these volumes stored, distributed, and sold?

• How was the purchase price shared back through the production process?

Until the mid-1680's, the title pages show how the merchants presented themselves (several were women, usually widows): bookseller (boekverkoper). The detail above right (click to enlarge) comes from the title page for Leeuwenhoek's Omloop des Bloeds on the top of the left sidebar. Andries Voorstad added his printer's device (logo) and the place of publication, Delft. Under the horizontal rule, it says Printed by Andries Voorstad, Book-printer and Book-seller on the Markt, to the south of the Raadhuis (city hall), 1688.

Styles changed. In Leeuwenhoek's publications after the late 1680's, the title pages have only the person's name and city and year of publication.

Process

A manuscript (or image) went through a process in the 17th century that was at the top level the same as it goes through today.

• A letter or group of letters was typeset and the figures engraved. The pagination and running headers were added.
• A title page was sometimes added to the typeset letter(s).
• This group of pages -- the basic unit -- was printed in large frames of eight pages each. The image on the right is a screenshot from a terrific series of videos Het drukproces in Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp. It shows the lines of metal type being tied together with a string. That page would be added to seven others and be repeatedly re-inked and re-pressed against the paper.

• The process could loop back at this point.
  • The same setting of type could be reprinted under another title page, sometimes with new pagination and running headers. For example, ...
  • The title page could have a new title or a new publisher and date. For example, ...

• That basic unit, a block of printed signatures, was more often than not added to other blocks and became an edition. For example, ...
• Later editions could have the same title but different or rearranged basic units. For example, ...
• This edition was bound by the printer, often in a cheap board with wide margins and untrimmed pages. It was offered for sale, becoming a publication.
• These publications could then be un-bound, trimmed, and re-bound in a different cover, more attractive, durable, and expensive
• The copies were distributed, often wholesaled for foreign markets. Leeuwenhoek's Latin letters would have been more likely to be exported, though we have no evidence of any such commerce on the wholesale level.

Among Leeuwenhoek's published volumes, variations occurred at all of these levels. Especially during the early years, one letter could have been pressed, ink to paper, half a dozen times from different typesettings, or slightly-edited typesettings, with different paginations, in different years, by different printers, in Dutch and Latin, in different Latin translations, for that matter -- and then bound together in different bundles. By the end of his career, by contrast, the 46 letters in the Send-Brieven were printed by Adriaan Beman once in Dutch in 1718 and then in Latin in 1719, with no re-printings or variations that we know of.

The still life with books below was painted by Jan Lievens in 1627 or 1628.