Holinshed, Chronicles, 1577, pub. Harrison (¶1r)

In some cases, when a group of publishers together paid for a work to be printed, the work would be printed with different states of the title page, each publisher being named separately. Here, although a group of men collaborated to pay for the publication of Holinshed's Chronicles, this state of the title page lists only Lucas Harrison as the publisher (compare to this copy of the work).

James I, By the King, 1611

This broadside uses gothic type (or black letter as the English often called it) for the main text of its announcement, as is typical for official English documents, with roman type setting off the names of the escapees.

Kats, Ma’aseh Toviyah, 1708 (40.2v)

This imprimatur, the only page in Italian in this Hebrew encyclopedia, verifies that the book may legally be printed because the Inquisitors have found it to contain no anti-Catholic, anti-government, or immoral content.

Kats, Ma’aseh Toviyah, 1708 (π1r)

This title page combines both Hebrew and roman type, indicating its origin at a Hebrew print studio in Venice. The main part of the title reads, "Part one of the book of worlds or Ma'aseh Toviyah containing the four worlds. And it is divided into five parts. The first part describes the world above, that is the spiritual world. The second the world of the middle, that is the world of the planets. The third is the lower world that is our world. The fourth is the small world, that is The Man. The fifth in the foundations of the world."

Keimer, Elegy, 1723 (1r)

Because broadsides weren't typically bound into books but rather distributed as single sheets, they often have very high loss rates. This is the only known copy of Keimer's Elegy, which Benjamin Franklin describes in his Autobiography as having unusually been composed as Keimer set the type. This was the first work that Keimer published in America, and Franklin's first known printing job in Philadelphia.

Lodge, Euphues, 1634 (A1r)

John Smethwicke's printer's device features a bird known as a smew holding a scroll reading "wick" in its beak: smew + wick = Smethwick.

Marmion, Antiquary, 1641 (H4r)

Blank areas on a page are usually filled with type or spaces that won't print---without those extra pieces, the platen of the press will tilt unevenly as it's pushing down on the forme. On this copy, the quads used to fill the blank areas were accidentally inked and printed.

Marston, Antonio and Mellida, 1603 (A1r)

Thomas Fisher's printer's device, shown on this playbook title page, puns on his name by featuring a kingfisher bird.

Molina, Vocabulario, 1571 (V10r)

The colophon being printed in both Spanish and Nahuatl suggests that the book was meant to be accessible equally to Spanish colonial and Indigenous audiences.

Morley, Introduction to practicall musicke, 1608 (B4r)

Letterpress music was printed using metal pieces of type, so that music was easily able to be set and printed on the same press and at the same time as text. The downside, however, was that the lines of the staves were uneven, since separate pieces of type were needed to make a single line.