Chancery cursive attributed to Pierre Hamon, “Navigation,” the title page from the Harleyian manuscript, c. 1560; in the British Museum, London (MS. 3996, fol. 1).Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum
Hamon’s early use of metal engraving is generally overlooked in discussions of the printing history of writing books because of the extreme scarcity of his little book. Hamon was arrested in 1569 either for his Protestant religious beliefs, for forging the royal signature, or because he wrote some treasonable verses about the king. In any case, not only was Hamon executed that year, but all of his works were ordered destroyed.
The same year Hamon’s book appeared, the Flemish publisher-printer Christophe Plantin published the Dialogues françois pour les jeunes enfans (“Dialogues in French for Young Children”), which includes a conversation on the teaching of handwriting supposedly held between Hamon and a French physician and poet, Jacques Grévin. When Grévin asks Hamon which alphabet a child should learn first, Hamon recommends the cursive French secretary, followed by a dozen more hands, including a few italic styles.
The first copybook published in England, A Booke Containing Divers Sortes of Hands (1570; this title also translates Cresci’s), is the work of a French Huguenot immigrant writing master, Jean de Beauchesne, and John Baildon (or Basildon), about whom nothing further is known. Divers Sortes of Hands has characteristics of both writing manuals and copybooks: it includes instructions on how to make ink, cut a quill for writing, hold the pen (illustrated), and sit at a writing desk. Yet it does not explain how to write any of the 15 styles of handwriting it contains. Once again, secretary and other forms of gothic cursive hands predominate, with a few examples of “Italique” (as the book calls cancelleresca) letters. (Beauchesne himself was a master of this hand, however.)
Likewise, the anonymous A Newe Booke of Copies (1574) follows the pattern of Divers Sortes of Hands, with similar instructions and illustrations and emphasis on various secretary hands commonly used for writing legal and court documents. The focus of these books on commercial rather than calligraphic scripts probably reflects their most likely consumers—a merchant class in need of practical writing skill rather than a scholarly or courtly audience.
Around the middle of the 16th century, cancelleresca, or Italian chancery italic, had become the preferred hand of English intelligentsia and the royal court, who had learned it either directly from Italian or French writing masters (such as Beauchesne) or from printed books. Roger Ascham, a tutor to English nobility (including Queen Elizabeth I), wrote and taught an exemplary cancellaresca based on the one shown in Arrighi’s La operina, and the 16th-century scholar Bartholomew Dodington, a professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, wrote a fluid italic that might have been the envy of any professional writing master.
Running secretary hand, letter by Roger Ascham, 1552; in the British Museum, London (Landsdowne 3).Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum
Toward the end of the 16th century the Italians were losing their dominance in the writing-book market despite the number of titles they produced. Engraving had rapidly become the preferred means of reproducing all sorts of writing, and cancelleresca was evolving. The first copybook to be printed in the Netherlands from engraved metal plates was the Exercitatio alphabetica (1569; “Alphabet Practice”) by the 17-year-old Clément Perret. Perret’s book contains examples in many different hands chosen to match the language of the text. The beautifully ornate writing in Exercitatio is somewhat overshadowed by the finely drawn cartouches that surround the examples, and it seems clear that this was a book not only for writers but also for artists, mapmakers, metalsmiths, and needle workers—in short, all those who used letters or borders in their work. Perret’s copybook was closely followed by the first engraved Italian writing book, Essemplare utile di tutte le sorti di l’re cancellaresche correntissime (1571; “Useful Examples of All the Sorts of Cursive Chancery”) by Giuliantonio Hercolani. This copybook is less ornate than Perret’s, but it clearly shows how metal engraving can reproduce the subtleties of any writing style done with a broad-edged pen.
The last quarter of the 16th century also marks the emergence of women from their relative obscurity in the field of calligraphy. They had played an important role in the production of manuscripts since the 8th century, when the oldest surviving Roman sacramentary (Vatican Library, Reg. lat. 316) was written out at a convent in Chelles, France, about 750. Nuns and laywomen were responsible for writing and illuminating manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages, but they, like monks and laymen of the time, often remained anonymous.
The first calligraphy by a woman to appear in a printed work was that of Jacquemyne (or Jacomina) Hondius, the sister of the Dutch publisher, cartographer, and calligrapher Jodocus Hondius. Two examples by her were included in the first international calligraphic anthology, the Theatrum Artis Scribendi (1594; “Display of the Art of Writing”), published in Amsterdam by her brother. Other important calligraphers of the day—such as Jean de Beauchesne, Ludovico Curione, Jan van den Velde, and Peter Bales—were also represented in the book.
Another writing mistress of distinction is Marie Presot. Like Beauchesne, she and her husband were French Huguenots, and they settled in Edinburgh about 1574. They set up a school there where her husband, Nicholas Langlois, taught French language and composition and Presot taught writing. A single surviving manuscript by her in the Newberry Library, Chicago, shows a fine mastery of the French secretary and cancelleresca hands. Like many writing teachers, Presot also trained her children in the art of writing, and one of them, as Esther Inglis, went on to become one of the most prolific calligraphers of the late 16th and early 17th century. Inglis (a translation according to the Scottish usage of her father’s name, Langlois, meaning English) specialized in writing miniature books in literally minuscule scripts in which some letters were as small as 1 mm (.039 inch) high. Many of the books, in addition to showing a variety of 16th-century calligraphic hands, were decorated by Inglis with paintings or pen drawings of flora and fauna.
The growing literacy of the period, promoted by the rise of commerce throughout Europe, encouraged the teaching of writing to women, who were often involved in running their spouse’s business, and several late 16th-century printed copybooks contain examples for women to copy. The earliest writing book published by a woman survives in a unique, incomplete copy in the Newberry Library; it is Marie Pavie’s engraved copybook, which was probably printed in France about 1600. Pavie includes a Cresci-style italic and two forms of French secretary on each page. The scripts are ornately presented and surrounded by pen-drawn calligraphic borders similar to those found in other late-16th-century French writing books.