In 1580 Lowys Elzevier, a former apprentice of Christopher Plantin in Antwerp, moved from the Southern Netherlands to the Northern university to setup his own bookshop.
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Elzevier Collection
About 1,150 books printed by members of the Elzevier family and by other 17th-century Dutch presses.
The Collection
Subject: Classics; Publishing history
Over 700 books printed by members of the Elzevier family, 1598-1706, and approximately 450 books produced by other seventeenth-century Dutch presses. The material covers the full range of Elzevier publications: alongside many editions of the Classics are contemporary works on theology, philosophy, politics, science, and other subjects. The ‘Little Republics’ series of books about various countries is well represented. For rarity, pirated editions of popular French literary works (Corneille, Molière, Scarron and others), booksellers’ catalogues, and early-eighteenth-century dissertations from Leiden University stand out.
All formats are present, as is the gamut of languages in which the Elzevirs published: above all Latin, but also French, Dutch, Semitic languages, and Italian. Most books are bound in contemporary Dutch vellum. Some calf bindings indicate early travel. The collection includes books from Leiden and Amsterdam, shows the various publishing devices used by the family, and includes works with false imprints, featuring such typical names as Jean Sambix (Leiden), Jacques Le Jeune (Amsterdam), and Pierre Du Marteau (Cologne).
For provenance, the pride of the collection is a copy of the Poemata & effigies trium fratrum Belgarum Nicolai Grudii (1612), given by its editor, Bonaventura Vulcanius, to Hugo Grotius. Several books have seventeenth- or eighteenth-century inscriptions from various countries in Europe, including England.
Printers of non-Elzevirian books include Jacob von Meurs, the Officina Hackiana, Johannes Janssonius van Waesborge, Elizaeus Weyerstraten, Jan Jansson, Daniel Gaasbeeck, Johann Ravestein and Franciscus Moyaerd. This section of the collection also contains work about the Elzeviers.
The collection was sold to the City of London by an unidentified H.A. Beaumont in 1900. The Guildhall Library, City of London, gave it to the University of London in 1950, when the Guildhall was seeking to focus more narrowly on London history and Senate House wanted to fill its tower.
Elzevier collection highlights
M. Tullii Ciceronis opera
Catalogus librorum qui in bibliopolio Elseviriano venales extant
Discorsi et dimonstrasioni matematiche intorno à due nuoue scienze
Disputatio juridica inauguralis, de patria potestate, quam divino numine propitio
Psalmi Davidis Regis et Prophetiae
Danielis Heinsii Panegyricus
M. Vitruvii Pollionis De architectura libri decem
Poemata & effigies trium fratrum Belgarum
Access
For an overview of the collection, do a mixed classmark search on [Elzevier]. “[Elzevier] W.” brings up items which appear in A. Willems’s catalogue Les Elzevier, in Willems order; “[Elzevier] E.S.” brings up other imprints.
Related materials
- Elzevier and other seventeenth-century imprints throughout the special collections more widely (do an author search on ‘Elzevir’).
Further reading
- Highlights from the Elzevier collection.
- Harskamp, Jakob, ‘When Leiden Meets London: The Background of the ULL’s Elzevier Collection’, FULLview, 21 (2002), 16-19.
- Willems, Alphonse, Les Elzevier: histoire et annales typographiques (1880).
