Publication
Title
Zacharias Heyns, sometime apprentice to Moretus, becomes the first merchant/publisher in Amsterdam
Author
Abstract
Zacharias Heyns, a son of a schoolmaster and an apprentice to Jan Moretus, established his bookshop in Amsterdam between 1592 and 1594. The choice of a publisher's device, combining Christian with humanistic elements, proves that he was aiming at a wide public, both Catholic and Protestant, Latin and vernacular, local and international. He cooperated with several printers, since he himself never ran a printing shop. In his early years he published schoolbooks in small formats, as well as humanistic books for the international market. For the local market he published Dutch translations of French books in octavo or smaller formats. Around 1600 he changed his policy and displayed a talent to assess which genres were going to be popular with the new public in Amsterdam, often rich immigrants from the Southern Netherlands, who could afford more expensive books. Whether it was a costume book, an emblem book, a fable book, a biblical epic, a travel story, a geographical description or a military manual, when the texts were not available Heyns simply translated, adapted or wrote them himself.
Language
Dutch
Source (journal)
Quaerendo : a quarterly journal from the Low Countries devoted to manuscripts and printed books. - Amsterdam, 1971, currens
Publication
Amsterdam : 2008
ISSN
0014-9527 [print]
1570-0690 [online]
DOI
10.1163/157006908X363967
Volume/pages
38 :4 (2008) , p. 381-397
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
VABB-SHW
Record
Identifier
Creation 13.12.2008
Last edited 07.10.2022
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