ESTIENNE, Henri.

The only publisher’s catalogue issued by Henri Estienne together with the very rare supplemental appendix issued 5 years later. These respectively occupy the second and third parts of the volume. The first part comprises initially Estienne’s letter to his friends concerning the upcoming publication of his great Greek Thesaurus, finally published in 1572 after nearly two decades of effort. He extolls its superiority over its predecessors with some disparagement of other printers, apart from Aldus, Ascensius and his own family, as publishers of classical texts. The section concludes with his poem to Camerarius concerning his plans to exhibit at the next Frankfurt book fair, followed by a catalogue of the Greek authors used in the composition of the Greek Thesaurus. It was Henri’s greatest achievement, still unsurpassed (see Printing and the Mind of Man p.36) but it very nearly ruined him. The following catalogue of Henri’s publications, with a few of his father, Robert’s, may well have been intended to be issued separately as both its pagination and collation are quite independent. The half-sheet appended, inevitably, was as it was published five years later when Henri had added an astonishing 30 further editions and translations, including the Thesaurus to his remarkable output.