Aldus Manutius

choi

Jennifer Schuessler, The Earliest Roots of the Paperback; A printing pioneer who became plagued by counterfeiters. New York Times, Feb 27, 2015
www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/ ... aldus-manutius.html

Note:
(a)
(i) This review is in the Weekend Arts section, Feb 27 being Friday. The front page (page A1) carries a lede (heading: Sire of the Semicolon) about the review.

sire (n; etymology)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sire
(ii) The German surname Schüssler: "a maker of dishes and bowls, for example a turner, from an agent derivative of Middle High German schüssel(e) ‘bowl’, ‘dish'"

(b) Aldus Manutius
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus_Manutius
(1449-1515; the Latinised name of Aldo Manuzio; His publishing legacy includes the distinctions of inventing italic type, establishing the modern use of the semicolon, developing the modern appearance of the comma, and introducing inexpensive books in small formats bound in vellum that were read much as modern paperbacks are)
(i) Aldous Huxley
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley
(1894 – 1963; English; a 1931 novel: Brave New World [the title came from Shakespeare's 1610-1611 play The Tempest)
(ii) For the pronunciation of both Aldous and Huxley, see Huxley
dictionary.reference.com/browse/huxley
(iii) The English (chiefly East Anglia) surname Aldous: "from the Middle English female personal name Aldus, a pet form of any of the numerous Old English personal names formed with a first element (e)ald ‘old’"

(c) "To state the current business at hand briefly, Aldus is the subject of a new exhibition commemorating the 500th anniversary of his death — and the birth of reading as we know it. * * * The novel 'The Rule of Four' gave his most famous book, the enigmatic 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,' an upmarket 'Da Vinci Code' treatment in 2004. There was also Robin Sloan’s 2012 best seller, 'Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore'"
(i) The "current business" refers to the matter at hand, which is the (NYTimes) exhibition review you are reading.
(ii) Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnerotomachia_Poliphili
(iii) The noun “penumbra” is a kind of shadow.

choi

(d) "The exhibition that opened this week at the Grolier Club in Manhattan, 'Aldus Manutius: A Legacy More Lasting Than Bronze,' [Feb 25- Apr 25, 2015] gathers nearly 150 Aldines, as books from the press [Aldine Press, 1494-1597, at Venice] Aldus founded in Venice in 1494 are known, for a more sober tribute. * * * a paperback owes a debt to Aldus and the small, cleanly designed editions of the secular classics he called libelli portatiles, or portable little books."
(i) Grolier Club
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grolier_Club
(founded in 1884)

its website:
www.grolierclub.org/
(ii) libelli portatiles

Latin English dictionary
* libellus (noun masculine; diminutive from Latin noun masculine] liber book +‎ -lus; plural: libelli): “a little book"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/libellus
* -lus (suffix): "used to form a diminutive of a noun, indicating small size or youth"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-lus
* portatile ( adjective masculine): "portable"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/portatile

(e) Another Aldus legacy: "And then there were the unwitting firsts, like what may be the earliest known version of 'This page left intentionally blank,' preserved in a 1513 edition of the Greek orators included in the show, along with instructions to the binder to remove the extra leaf. 'He printed the instructions in Latin and Greek,' Mr [Grolier Club president G Scott] Clemons said. 'But of course bookbinders couldn’t read Latin or Greek.'”

choi

(f) "Aldus, born in the Papal States around 1452, trained as a humanist scholar and worked as a tutor in aristocratic households before taking up printing in the 1490s. * * * In 1501, he released the first of his small octavo editions of the classics, books 'that could be held in the hand and learned by heart (not to speak of being read) by everyone,' as he later wrote. The show includes 20 libelli portatiles, all bearing Aldus’s printer’s mark, a dolphin curled around an anchor. (The colophon is still used today by Doubleday.)"
(i) Papal States
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States
(754-1870)

were conquered during Italian unification (1815-1871).
(ii) For humanist, see humanism (n): "A Renaissance cultural movement that turned away from medieval scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... an_english/humanism
(iii) Regarding “octavo edition.”
(A) DianneOhio, Book Formats & Paper Sizes. The Art of the book (blog name), Dec 15, 2006.
theartofthebook.blogspot.com/2006/12/book-formats-paper-sizes.html
(Plate XLI)
(B) octavo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavo
(section 2 Size)
(iv)
(A) colophon (n; etymology): "publisher’s emblem or imprint, especially one on the title page or spine of a book"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... an_english/colophon
(B) colophon (publishing
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colophon_(publishing)
(usually located at the verso [qv] of the title-leaf)
(v) Doubleday (publisher)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubleday_(publisher)
(founded by Frank Nelson Doubleday, who had formed a partnership with the magazine publisher Samuel McClure; By 1947 was the largest publisher in the US; Doubleday sold the publishing company to Bertelsmann in 1986[, and presently a division of Random House])

Doubleday's colophon tops the table of the Wiki page.

choi

(g) "The exhibition also includes examples of Aldus’s larger-format work, including the 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili' (1499), sometimes said to be the most beautiful — and the most unreadable [‘ithyphallic’] — book ever printed. The book, a densely allegorical erotic love story attributed to Francesco Colonna, is celebrated for its integration of gracefully shaped typography and elegant woodcuts. But visitors to the Grolier would be forgiven for letting their eyes go straight to the famously excited ithyphallic (to use the scholarly term) god Priapus standing at attention, as it were. The book is displayed cracked open a modest halfway to that page"
(i) ithyphallic (adj, etymology)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ithyphallic

Compare ichthyology (n; [Ancient] Greek [noun] ikhthys fish)
www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ichthyology
(ii) Priapus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapus
(a minor Greek god "marked by his oversized, permanent erection")
(iii) The term "standing at attention" refers to Priapus' penis. See the slide show.

(h) "And then there was the roman typeface devised for a 1496 book by the humanist scholar Pietro Bembo — the inspiration for the modern font Bembo, still treasured by book designers for its grace and readability."
(i) Pietro Bembo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Bembo
(1470-1547; Italian)
(ii) Bembo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembo
(The [type]face was first used in February 1496, in the setting of a book entitled Petri Bembi de Aetna Angelum Chabrielem liber, a 60-page text about a journey to Mount Aetna written by the young Italian humanist poet Pietro Bembo, later a Cardinal and secretary to Pope Leo X)