M. Val. Martialis. Ex museo Petri Scriverii. Sumptibus Societatis.

24mo. 310,(2 blank) p. Calf 12 cm (Ref: Willems 1344, & 1448; Berghman 2096 & 2092; Rahir 1392 & 1535) In october 2013 it was reported in the ‘Daily Mail online’ that in a book just published, ‘Mad about the boy’ of Helen Fielding, 40 pages had been swapped with another title that was printed on the same day, Sir David Jason’s autobiography. The Mail observes: ‘The printers have had a Bridget moment. Only early editions of this new novel contain chunks of Sir David’s book. A kind of error that would have left Bridget Jones herself feeling very embarrassed and resolving to try harder. Readers of the latest instalment of the hapless singleton’s diary were astonished to discover Bridget’s reflections on life and lover interrupted by 40 pages of Sir David Jason’s memoirs’ (Details: Binder’s error. When the binder of this Martialis of 1664 took the plano 24mo sheets in order to cut and fold the gatherings, he had his ‘Bridget Jones moment’, and erroneously picked parts of a Lucan edition of 1671 which he was working on at the same time. Both books were published by the Amsterdam printer Daniel Elsevier, and have the same format and typeface, lay-out and paper. As the sheets of these small formats were cut before folding, mistakes could occur. This lapse happened two times, in gathering I and in M, both consisting of 16 pages, as they should. In these gatherings the leaves signed I1 and I8, and M1 and M8 are from the Martialis pile, the remaining leaves, signed I2 to I7 and M2 to M7, came from Lucanus’ pile. So these gatherings begin with 2 pages Martialis, followed by 12 pages Lucanus, and end with 2 pages Martial. (See for the cutting and folding of 24mo: Ph. Gaskell, ‘A new introduction to bibliography’, Oxford 1974, p. 86 & 107) Owners of this Martial must have been astonished to discover that the author’s saucy and witty epigrams were interrupted two times by 12 pages of Lucan’s dull reflections on the Civil War. § Back with 4 raised bands and with a red shield in the second compartment. Marbled endpapers. Engraved title: in the centre a pedestal with on it a winged putto riding a dolphin, a well known motiv in Renaissance art. The pedestal is flanked by 4 actors, who hold a mask before their face. One of them is a naked women. The naked truth?) (Condition: Binding scuffed. Head of the spine slightly damaged. The right margin of the frontispiece has been infilled expertly with fibered paper. Three leaves of the first gathering, which once were torn out, have been expertly repaired with a strip of paper in the gutter, with on the tear some loss of letters at the beginning of a few words. Owing to the above mentioned binder’s error this Martial edition lacks 24 pages, p. 131/142 (VI,44-VII,26) and p. 179/190 (IX,3-57)). These leaves were swapped with part of the books VII & IX of Lucan’s Civil War, picked by mistake from ‘M. Annaei Lucani Pharsalia, sive de bello civili Caesaris et Pompeii libri X. Ex emendatione V.C. Hug. Grotii, cum eiusdem notis’. Amstelodami, Typis Danielis Elsevirii, 1671) (Provenance: On the front flyleaf: ‘K.E. Geoges, 1857’. Every classical scholar knows the German lexikographer and classical philologist Karl Ernst Georges, 1806-1895. He is the compiler of a huge Latin-German lexicon: ‘Ausführliches Lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch’, an indispensable standard work until this day. (Neue Deutsche Biographie 6 (1964), p. 241)) (Collation: A-T8, V4 (leaf V4 blank) (See above for the construction of the gatherings) (Photographs on request)