‘FOR A CIVIL PRICE’
JACOBUS VAN EGMONT (1686-1725) AND THE
AMSTERDAM POPULAR BOOK MARKET IN THE
2 Cover image: Anon., Spotprent op de populariteit van prentjes en gedichten over de Oostenrijkse Successieoorlog, 1742 (Place unknown, 1742). Source: Rijksmuseum Rijksstudio.
3
‘FOR A CIVIL PRICE’
JACOBUS VAN EGMONT (1686-1725) AND THE
AMSTERDAM POPULAR BOOK MARKET IN THE
EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Lotte Savelsberg Leiden University: MA Thesis Book and Digital Media Studies First reader: Prof. dr. P.G. Hoftijzer
Second reader: Dr. J. Salman 19 February 2018
5
Index
Introduction ... 7
Chapter 1: The Dutch Book Trade in the Early Eighteenth Century ... 12
Introduction ... 12
Literacy ... 13
The Growing Reading Public ... 14
Popular Print ... 16
News, Opinion, and the Public Sphere ... 16
Periodicals: Combining Entertainment and Information ... 19
Jacobus van Egmont: A Representative of the Dutch Popular Book Trade ... 20
Chapter 2: Jacobus van Egmont’s Business: His List and his Network ... 22
Introduction ... 22
Notes on the Reconstruction of Jacobus van Egmont’s Publishing List ... 25
Genres ... 26
Former Employers ... 35
The Guild ... 37
Distribution: Pedlars and Hawkers ... 39
Authors... 41
Conclusion ... 44
Chapter 3: The Strategy of Jacobus van Egmont: Audience, Advertising, and Piracy ... 45
Introduction ... 45
Audience ... 45
Advertising ... 49
Piracy as a Business Strategy ... 52
Publisher’s Strategies in Practice: The Conflict between Jacobus van Egmont and Hendrik van Monnem ... 54
Conclusion ... 60
Concluding Remarks ... 61
Appendix ... 64
Table 1: Works Published by Jacobus van Egmont ... 64
Table 2: Titles from Stocklists and Advertisements ... 74
7
Introduction
In 1715, when the Amsterdam booksellers guild had started demanding stronger laws against the illicit reprinting of books, Jacobus van Egmont (c. 1686-1725) stated as a reaction that he had to copy, or otherwise could not make enough money to put bread on the table.1 This statement shows the remarkable honesty and determination of this bookseller and publisher, who occupied an interesting place on the Amsterdam book market of the early eighteenth century. Van Egmont, who published his farces, songbooks, periodicals and pamphlets from 1710 until his death in 1725 both legally and illicitly and worked together with some of the most popular hack-writers of the time, is a fascinating representative of the early eighteenth-century popular book market. He was aware of his position and his readership, and not
ashamed to pander to his audience. His stance on his own standing as a printer for the common people is refreshing, and he was successful in anticipating his readers demands.
While much research has been done on larger, more well-respected publishers in the Dutch Republic, like Luchtmans or the Elseviers, many of the smaller publishers like Jacobus van Egmont have remained in relative academic obscurity. Only in the twentieth century did people start studying books aimed at the popular market, as the interest in ‘folk culture’ grew.2 The idea of a popular culture separate from the ‘high culture’ of the elite most likely originated in late eighteenth-century Germany, where romantic intellectuals from the middle-class began to record what they thought to be traditional folk culture. They invented new terms such as
Volkslied and Volksbuch to identify things they thought belonged to ‘the people’.3 However, even under these middle-class intellectuals there was debate about what constituted ‘the people’.4 They often tended to exclude people living in towns and cities, instead focussing on peasants, who, according to these scholars, lived closer to nature and had preserved primitive customs.5 ‘Folk literature’ was thought of in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well tuned to the world of farmers and craftsmen in its contents and catering to their limited literacy and vocabulary.6 However, many of the books that were placed in the category of ‘folk literature’, like the French bibliothèques bleus for instance, did not actually fulfil these criteria. In fact, the books were often based on the literary world of scholars and the elite, rather than that of the
1 I.H. van Eeghen, De Amsterdamse boekhandel, 1680-1725: IV. Gegevens over de vervaardigers, hun
internationale relaties en de uitgaven, N-W, papierhandel, drukkerijen en boekverkopers in het algemeen (Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema, 1967), p. 133.
2 P. Cuijpers, Van Reynaert de Vos tot Tijl Uilenspiegel: Op zoek naar een canon van volksboeken
(1600-1900) (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2014), p. 3.
3 P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 3. 4 Ibidem, p. 11.
5 Ibidem, p. 22.
8 common people. We can also clearly see a shift in the intended public: many texts which were originally meant for the elite later became reading material for a broader audience. The term ‘folk’ which was so popular with these eighteenth and nineteenth-century middle class intellectuals, does not work well with the actual complexity and dynamics of history.7 The dichotomy between common people and the elite is largely artificial, and in research today this distinction has mostly been replaced with more useful comparisons between men and women, urban and rural areas, Reformed and Catholic, age, and occupation. We currently use the term ‘popular print’ or ‘popular literature’ instead of ‘folk literature’.8 This can be defined as print that is not explicitly aimed at a clear target audience, can be both fictional and non-fictional, is vernacular, produced at low costs in large print runs, and therefore has a low price.
Although a lot of research has already been done on the contents of popular literature, there are some obstacles with studying publishers and readers of popular literature. This is largely due to a lack of source material: almost no archival material about these small publishers has survived, as they often did not keep many records of their own work. We are often limited to the remaining books they published and source material that can be found in the archives of institutions like the printers’ and booksellers’ guilds. The readers from lower socio-economic classes also left very few traces.9 Nevertheless, studies on the popular book trade have steadily increased since the 1960s. For the first few decades, research was largely focussed on France, England and Germany. English street literature has been studied several times, most notably by Leslie Shepard. In his book A History of Street Literature, published in 1973, he argues that there is a connection between earlier oral culture and street literature, and that street literature often had more influence on society than traditional literature.10 Another influential voice in the debate about popular literature is Robert Darnton, who wrote on the French popular book market. With his work The Literary Undergrond of the Old Regime¸
published in 1982, he argued that the publication of pamphlets, cartoons, songs, and posters in France was of great influence on the origin of the French Revolution.11 Describing the
community of hack writers and clandestine booksellers and printers, he explains how the restrictions of censorship forced authors and publishers underground. While censorship was less of an issue in the Dutch Republic, Darnton’s book is still very important for the discourse on European popular literature.
7 Salman, Populair drukwerk in de Gouden Eeuw, p. 19. 8 Ibidem, p. 20.
9 Ibidem, p. 19.
10 L. Shepard, The History of Street Literature (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973), p. 38, pp.
40-44.
11 R. Darnton, The Literary Undergrond of the Old Regime (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
9 The first pushes towards the study of publication, distribution and reception of popular print in the Netherlands have been given by E.K. Grootes and Bert van Selm in the 1980s.12 An important overview specifically for the Amsterdam book trade, although not specifically
focussed on the popular book trade, is the impressive five-volume, De Amsterdamse boekhandel,
1680-1725, written by Isabella Henrietta van Eeghen between 1960 and 1978.This work gives information on many publishers active in Amsterdam during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Although Van Eeghen focusses on the publishers who also printed books in the French language and does not explicitly go into publishers who worked for the popular market, Jacobus van Egmont is touched upon several times, as he of course was a member of the local booksellers’ guild and had interactions with these other publishers. She also gives
attention to the different government regulations concerning the book trade and forms of copyright and privileges. Another work that is not specifically focussed on the popular book market, but should not be omitted here, is the collaborative work on the history of the printed book in the Netherlands, Bibliopolis: de geschiedenis van het gedrukte boek in Nederland, the result of a project by the National Library of the Netherlands that ran from 1998 until 2002. It is an online platform, giving researchers an overview of scholarly research that has been done on the subject.13 The project also culminated in a handbook with lemma’s written by numerous scholars in the field of Dutch book history, which includes some information on the popular book trade as well.14
Jeroen Salman, who also contributed to Bibliopolis, is the only author so far who has elaborated upon the printer Jacobus van Egmont in detail. In his 2012 article ‘Grub Street in Amsterdam? Jacobus (I) van Egmont, the Devil’s Corner and the Literary Underground in the Eighteenth Century’, he uses the concept of Grub Street, used to describe the literary
underground in eighteenth century Europe, for the Amsterdam popular book market.15 The metaphorical meaning and the physical appearance of Grub Street in London were compared to the ‘Duivelshoek’ in Amsterdam, an area around the Botermarkt (now Rembrandtplein) where several publishers were located. He uses Jacobus van Egmont as a representative, to lay out the complexity of the literary underground in Amsterdam. Salman has also written on an important aspect of the popular book trade that is often neglected in research: distribution by pedlars. His
12 P.G. Hoftijzer and O.S. Lankhorst, Drukkers, boekverkopers en lezers tijdens de Republiek (The
Hague: SDU, 2000), p. 137. See: E.K. Grootes, ‘De bestudering van populaire literatuur uit de zeventiende eeuw’, Spektator, 12 (1982/83), pp. 3-24. Also see: B. van Selm, ‘ “Almanacken, lietjes, en somwijl wat wonder, wat nieuws.” Volkslectuur in de Noordelijke Nederlanden (1480-1800): een onbekende grootheid’, Leidschrift, 5 (1988/89), pp. 33-68.
13 Bibliopolis, ‘Biblipolis’, <http://www.bibliopolis.nl/handboek?lang=en> (25 January, 2018). 14 M. Van Delft et al. (eds.), Bibliopolis: history of the printed book in the Netherlands (Zwolle:
Waanders, 2003).
15 J. Salman, ‘Grub Street in Amsterdam? Jacobus (I) van Egmont, the Devil’s Corner and the Literary
10 book Pedlars and the Popular Press: Itinerant Distribution Networks in England and the
Netherlands 1600-1850 was published in 2013, and in the same year he co-edited a volume of
Brill-series ‘The Library of the Written Word’ on the dissemination of popular print in several European countries, including the Dutch Republic, entitled Not Dead Things : The Dissemination
of Popular Print in England and Wales, Italy, and the Low Countries, 1500-1820.16
The fact that little has been written on individual players in the Dutch popular book market, is partly due to a lack of source material, which has been mentioned earlier. Still, from the material we do have we can create portraits showing us how the actors in the book trade dealt with the fierce competition in the eighteenth century. This master’s thesis aims to analyse the place Van Egmont occupied in the competitive popular book market of early eighteenth-century Amsterdam, how his career was defined by some of the larger societal changes of the time, and to what he owed his success in the highly competitive Amsterdam book trade. What did he publish, and for whom? How did he play into the demands of readers in the early
eighteenth century, and what did he do to make himself stand out from the mass of booksellers in Amsterdam? I endeavour to interpret his position and success on the popular book market by looking both at his own strategy and at the larger societal developments taking place in this period.
This thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter gives an overview of the Dutch popular book trade in the early eighteenth century, based on secondary literature research. This chapter will discuss the growing literacy rates and with that the growth of an audience for books, the causes for this growth, and the effects it had. The chapter will also focus on the subsequent rise of popular literature and the advent of pamphlets and periodicals which started to appear more and more often in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and which were very important publications for Van Egmont. In the following two chapters I will zoom in on Jacobus van Egmont and see how the aforementioned changes in the eighteenth-century book market of the Dutch Republic influenced his career. For this I have used both secondary literature as well as primary sources (chiefly the surviving books, periodicals and pamphlets published by Van Egmont). In chapter two I will give a more detailed account of Van Egmont’s business, and his publications. This chapter will focus on the titles and genres Van Egmont published, and why he chose those genres. I will also analyse the network in which he operated, including authors, other publishers, and distributors. The third and final chapter will look at the strategy of Van Egmont. What kind of audience did he have in mind with his
16 J. Salman, Pedlars and the Popular Press: Itinerant Distribution Networks in England and the
Netherlands (Leiden: Brill, 2013); R. Harms, J. Raymond and J. Salman (eds.), Not Dead Things: The Dissemination of Popular Print in England and Wales, Italy, and the Low Countries, 1500-1820 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
11 publications? How did he try to attract his audience and bind them to him? The chapter will also look at what kind of advertising he used, how he distributed his books, and how book piracy and reprinting played a role in his strategy and success.
12
Chapter 1: The Dutch Book Trade in the Early
Eighteenth Century
Introduction
During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was an important force in the European book trade. After the Reformation, Western European society had changed considerably. Venice and Antwerp had declined as places of power in the international community, and due to the Thirty Years’ War (1609-1648), the power of the German cities declined as well.17 After the northern Netherlands had declared themselves autonomous at the end of the sixteenth century and the Catholic south had returned under Spanish rule, economic, political and religious refugees from the southern Netherlands moved to the north, many of whom brought with them money, skills and expertise in all branches of trade and industry.Thus, the economic centre moved northwards and the resulting growth made the Republic a fertile place for the expanding book trade. The favourable economic situation also meant that Dutch printers could develop innovations such as more advanced and cheaper production of paper and type, and smaller book formats.18
Another important factor in the leading position the Dutch occupied in the book trade was the relative lack of censorship in the Republic. 19 A significant number of foreigners living in the Republic were scholars who wanted to publish their work without fear of persecution, which was uniquely possible in the country. Although the Dutch press was restricted from commenting freely on domestic politics, there were few restrictions on other fronts. Dutch publishers also often reprinted foreign publications, published periodicals in different languages, and produced prohibited books and pamphlets that they smuggled abroad, effectively turning into the main provider of banned literature to the rest of Europe.Even though the Dutch were particularly known for publishing controversial scholarly works,
scholars and intellectuals were no longer the only people reading books. In fact, historians have for a long time argued the existence of a transformation in reading culture that started in the seventeenth century. This chapter will explore these changes, by looking at the increase of literacy and the resulting growth of the reading public and the emergence of popular print.
17 J.A.H.G.M. Bots, ‘2.0: 1585-1725 – Introduction’, Bibliopolis
<http://www.bibliopolis.nl/handboek/search/recordIdentifier/HBB%3A2.0/maximumRecords/1> (25 January, 2018).
18 Ibidem.
19 R. Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education 1500-1800 (New York:
13
Literacy
While the levels of literacy increased rapidly in all of Europe during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Dutch Republic was a frontrunner, with in all probability the highest literacy rates of Europe.20 For instance, if we compare the southern and the northern
Netherlands we see that the literacy levels of Brussels in 1845 had already been reached by towns in Holland in 1600.21 In Amsterdam in 1630, 57 percent of the men and 32 percent of the women could sign their marriage acts. In 1680, this had risen to 70 and 44 percent respectively, and in 1730 to 76 and 51 percent.22 These high literacy rates in the Republic were largely due to its high degree of urbanization and the importance the dominant Reformed Church placed on the ability to read the Bible, which meant the Church stimulated education.23
It is important to observe that, when talking about literacy and the reading public, the most used way of measuring literacy, examining whether people were able to sign official documents, is in fact not very successful in determining actual reading or writing abilities.24 Although other possible criteria have been used in the past as well, such as book ownership, or the availability of education, these factors also do not give any definitive results. Furthermore, we need to keep in mind that literacy is not binary: people are not simply literate or illiterate.25 There were many different types of literacy. Reading was usually taught in schools before writing was, and therefore there likely was a significant number of people who were able to read, but not to write.26 Therefore, by just looking at signatures we may underestimate the number of people able to read. On the other hand, people might have been able to sign their name, but not to read well enough to comprehend the text of a book or pamphlet. Dutch book historian Han Brouwer argues that a difference in literacy can even be discerned between reading silently and reading out loud.27 Reading out loud, which still was practiced frequently in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, is according to Brouwer connected to a more elementary form of literacy, and to a certain type face, namely blackletter. Silent reading could
20 J. Salman, ‘2.4.2: 1585-1725 – Education and literacy’, Bibliopolis
<http://www.bibliopolis.nl/handboek/search/recordIdentifier/HBB%3A2.4.2/maximumRecords/1
> (25 January, 2018).
21 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, p. 138. 22 Salman, ‘2.4.2: 1585 - 1725 - Education and literacy’.
23 Salman, ‘2.4.2: 1585 - 1725 - Education and literacy’; J. de Kruif, Liefhebbers en gewoontelezers:
leescultuur in Den Haag in de achttiende eeuw (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1999), pp. 93-94.
24 R. van Vliet, ‘Print and Public in Europe’, in S. Eliot and J. Rose (eds.), A Companion to the History of
the Book (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 247-258, esp. pp. 250-252; H. Brouwer, ‘Rondom het boek: historisch onderzoek naar leescultuur, in het bijzonder in de achttiende eeuw. Een
overzicht van bronnen en benaderingen, resultaten en problemen’, Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw, 20 (1988), pp. 51-120, p. 62
25 Brouwer, ‘Rondom het boek’, p. 64; De Kruif, Liefhebbers en gewoontelezers, p. 93. 26 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, p. 130.
14 be connected to a higher level of literacy, which implies the ability to read handwritten texts as well, and which might also include the ability to write.
As mentioned before, the high degree of urbanisation in the Republic was important for the high level of literacy. People who lived in towns of more than two or three thousand
inhabitants were generally more literate than those living in the countryside, as the artisans, tradesmen and professionals living in towns often required some knowledge of reading and writing in their occupations.28 Towns not only concentrated literate people, they also stimulated literacy by the abundance of schools, books and writing available there and by demanding greater ability of reading, writing and counting in its day to day affairs.29 Therefore, although the ability to read and write in general used to be reserved for the people who could pay for an education, or the people whose social, cultural and economic life required literacy, gradually more and more people started to become literate. Although there had always been literates and illiterates among both the rich and the poor, by the end of the seventeenth century the division in the ability to read and write between the upper and lower socio-economic classes was no longer as sharp as it once had been.
The Growing Reading Public
Because of the growing literacy rates, the reading public expanded. However, direct evidence of readership is rare, and it is difficult to determine the exact size and composition of the reading public at any time. It is of little use to take the estimated literacy rates to determine the reading public, since the fact that a person could read did not necessarily mean this person read books. Therefore, the reading public was likely smaller than the total number of people who were able to read.30 Nevertheless, there were other ways in which the content of a book or pamphlet might reach a larger audience. An important cultural practice of reading was reading aloud to people: people would gather together to listen to a pamphlet being read for instance.31 This way, even people who weren’t literate could consume the content of printed works. Pedlars, the itinerant sellers of books, pamphlets and broadsheets, among other goods, also frequently advertised their wares by reading them out loud.32 Pedlars in towns would often have their own spot from
28 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, p. 140-143; Salman, ‘2.4.2: 1585-1725 – Education and
literacy’.
29 Ibidem.
30 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, p. 191. 31 Brouwer, ‘Rondom het boek’, p. 88.
32 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, p. 172; P. Visser, ‘2.4.3: 1585-1725 – Types of reading
public’, Bibliopolis
<http://www.bibliopolis.nl/handboek/search/recordIdentifier/HBB%3A2.4.3/maximumRecords/1
15 which they sold their wares and would attract regular audiences there.33 In this way, illiterates might be brought in contact with the literate world.
The growth of the potential audience for books meant that there was also more
differentiation in what kind of books were available.34 New genres started cropping up, such as regularly appearing publications like newspapers and periodicals. Books written in Dutch also started to gain ground on Latin in the seventeenth century. Protestantism played a part in this: elementary Protestant education was almost completely based on learning to read (and write) in Dutch. A very large number of books printed and sold in the Netherlands was therefore in Dutch, aiming towards a large reading public.35 Among this Dutch reading public, the reading cultures of different social groups could be very different.36 Social historian Rab Houston argues there were three regular reading publics: a limited number of ‘unlettered’ general readers, a group of academics, and then the educated upper classes. 37 He also mentions the bulk of the barely literate population, who were mainly attracted to devotional and recreational chapbooks and pamphlets. However, we can’t see them as completely separate from each other, as there was a great deal of overlap: everyone read the Bible, or psalms, for instance. Popular books, interestingly, also were consumed in almost every layer of society.38 Nevertheless, it is generally assumed that the nobility and patricians read different things than scholars or merchants, or shopkeepers and craftsmen. For instance, books in other languages, such as Latin or French, were only read by the well-educated.
Apart from social background, we can also distinguish by occupation. There is a visible difference between professional and non-professional readers.39 Professional readers, such as scholars, lawyers, church ministers, medical doctors, teachers, bankers and merchants, needed to read for their work. They not only read the books of their profession, like law books or
medical books, but they were also the intended readers for many of the various almanacs, which contained important information for these occupations, such as dates of annual fairs. These people often also appreciated and collected poetry and prose, emblem books, historical works, travel books, and pamphlets and newspapers.40
33 J. Salman, ‘Pedlars in the Netherlands from 1600 to 1850: Nuisance or Necessity?’, in R. Harms, J.
Raymond and J. Salman (eds.), Not Dead Things: The Dissemination of Popular Print in England and Wales, Italy, and the Low Countries, 1500-1820 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 53-74, pp. 64-65.
34 O.S. Lankhorst, ‘2.4.1: 1585-1725 – Introduction’,
<http://www.bibliopolis.nl/handboek/search/recordIdentifier/HBB%3A2.4.1/maximumRecords/1
> (25 January, 2018).
35 Salman, ‘2.4.2: 1585-1725 – Education and literacy’. 36 P. Visser, ‘2.4.3: 1585-1725 – Types of reading public’. 37 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, pp. 193-194. 38 P. Visser, ‘2.4.3: 1585-1725 – Types of reading public’. 39 Ibidem.
16
Popular Print
The newly literate members of the lower classes might have been able to read, but they were still often unable to purchase books, and although books had become more affordable, prices were not low enough for wide-spread book ownership.41 However, soon new, cheaper books were printed that were also within financial reach of the less wealthy. This popular print was not aimed specifically at an elite or professional audience but could be read by a large number of people. Meant as recreational reading, it was often printed in blackletter, produced on cheap paper and if it contained woodcuts or ornamental decoration, these were often made with damaged or worn out blocks.42 The books were so cheap that they could be afforded by many, but their content too was aimed at a wide audience. Because of this large possible readership, the books also had large print runs. Although the primary appeal of this kind of literature was to people with little money to spend, readers could come from every class in society.43
There were several different types of popular print. Much liked from the sixteenth up until the nineteenth century were chapbooks, small booklets with wide ranging subject matter, covering romance, crime, songs, or strange occurrences, among other subjects.44 These stories were not always original. They were often based on medieval romances or Biblical stories, which were turned into shorter prose editions, constantly being reprinted and adapted throughout the centuries. More contemporary works were also being reworked into short chapbooks. Other popular genres, similar to these chapbooks were songbooks and printed plays, which were also aimed at a similar audience. Books in these genres often had multiple print runs and were guaranteed to sell well. The tradition of these books was quite
conservative: it continued with little change well into the nineteenth century.45
News, Opinion, and the Public Sphere
Popular print wasn’t just focused on recreational or practical use. As the Dutch Republic was Europe’s leading centre of international trade, it was also a highly important centre for news, and this news was spread via printed works which were read by a wide array of people.46 Early in the seventeenth century, the periodical newspaper developed, facilitated by the
establishment of quick, cheap and more frequent postal services and a growing demand for
41 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, pp. 186-187. 42 J. Salman, Populair drukwerk in de Gouden Eeuw, p. 20.
43 V. Neuburg, Popular Literature: A History and Guide, from the Beginning of Printing to the Year 1897
(Hardmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 12.
44 Cuijpers, Van Reynaert de Vos tot Tijl Uilenspiegel, pp. 6-7; Neuburg, Popular literature, pp. 20, 57. 45 L. Shepard, The History of Street Literature, p. 65.
46 A. Pettegree, The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself (New
17 political and economic news.47 While the development of the newspaper in the Netherlands was largely organic, in many countries it was deliberately steered by the government.48 The earliest newspapers were simple broadsheets, first printed on only one side, later on two sides, in two columns.49 They were very basic, only containing straightforward news without any further explanation or commentary.50 They were also mostly international in content, as publication on domestic affairs was often censored.51
These first newspapers took a long time to catch on: most people still preferred handwritten newssheets, which focused on exciting stories and were distributed after the events had taken place, and therefore had a stronger narrative structure and attempted to explain the occurrences.52 However, in the Dutch Republic the newspaper very quickly became a popular institution: in Amsterdam, the first newspaper appeared in 1618; by the 1640s, the city counted ten weekly newspapers.53 However, for extraordinary and fast-moving events, many readers still preferred news pamphlets in the old style over a newspaper. These could provide more in-depth coverage than newspapers, which simply did not have the space. Also, many political pamphlets were published anonymously, unlike the periodical newspapers, which meant their authors had more freedom of writing.54
The growing appetite for regular printed news among different layers of the Dutch population can also be connected to the rise of critical debate in late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jürgen Habermas defines this phenomenon as the rise of a liberal, bourgeois ‘public sphere’, the medium through which private persons from across social boundaries can
participate in critical conversation on political, religious and social issues.55 The growth of the ‘public sphere’ in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries was stimulated by growing literacy according to Habermas. A major part of his theory is that debate not only took place in person but also on paper, in pamphlets or periodicals for instance.56 Opiniated political
pamphlets were very popular with a guaranteed large audience. They were usually short: more than 60 percent was no longer than sixteen pages.57 The printer played a large part in
47 Pettegree, The Invention of News, p. 167.
48 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, pp. 178-179. 49 Pettegree, The Invention of News, p. 188.
50 Ibidem, pp. 8-9
51 J. Wald, ‘Periodicals and Periodicity’, in S. Eliot and J. Rose (eds.), A Companion to the History of the
Book (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 421-433, p. 423.
52 Pettegree, The Invention of News, pp. 8-9. 53 Ibidem, p. 227.
54 Ibidem, p. 229.
55 Van Vliet, ‘Print and Public in Europe’, pp. 250-252.
56 Van Vliet, ‘Print and Public in Europe’, p. 251; A. Briggs and P. Burke, A Social History of the Media:
from Gutenberg to the Internet (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), p. 60.
57 C. Harline, Pamphlets, Printing and Political Culture in the Early Dutch Republic (Dordrecht:
18 determining its size and length, and therefore also in determining the audience of the work, as paper was the greatest expense in printing and therefore dictated the price. For a printer, publishing pamphlets was a relatively safe bet. Printing a short pamphlet of eight to twelve pages only took a few hours, and they were cheaper to produce than books.58 They guaranteed quick profits, and authors could sometimes even make up an opinion, or involve themselves in matters of which they had little knowledge, so the publishers would have something to sell.59 It was not just pamphlets on politics or news that sold well, but also pamphlets on other subjects, like morals or social and religious issues.
In general, prices of pamphlets were low enough to be afforded by lower class people, labourers, servants, even peasants, and output was enormous.60 A political pamphlet was intended partially to inform, but more usually to influence the reader’s opinion on current events.61 Here another use of the word ‘popular’ applies as well when speaking about popular print: referring to the use of publicity to shape public opinion.62 There were different types of political pamphlets; official correspondences, battle accounts, proclamations, treatises, dialogues, or commentaries, among others. What most of them had in common, however, was that they dealt with current and topical events or ideas.63 Therefore, timing was very important to the publication: the booklets were only successful if they were of immediate significance. Political pamphlets were incredibly successful in the Republic and had been used for
propaganda since the Dutch Revolt. Controversial pamphlets could be published relatively easy thanks to the fragmented political structure of the Republic.64 There was no strong central government (the power of the States General in regional and local affairs was limited) and major decisions required approval from all seven provinces, which made reaching a decision a very slow process. If a pamphlet was banned by the States General, individual provinces, or even cities, could simply choose to ignore the ban, without any consequences whatsoever. Pamphlets detailing news from abroad were also sold widely, often translated or copied from the foreign original.
58 P. Dijstelberge, ‘Ik wil dat er gelezen wordt. Boekgeschiedenis: analytische bibliografie,
boekarcheologie’, in: J. de Kruif, M.M. Drees, and J. Salman (eds.), Het lange leven van het pamflet. Boekhistorische, iconografische, literaire en politieke aspecten van pamfletten 1600-1900 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2006), pp. 44-55, p. 50.
59 Ibidem, pp. 48-49.
60 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, p. 183. 61 Harline, Pamphlets, Printing and Political Culture, p. 3.
62 J. Raymond, ‘International News and the Seventeenth-Century English Newspaper’, in Harms et al.
(eds.), Not Dead Things: The Dissemination of Popular Print in England and Wales, Italy and the Low Countries, 1500-1800, pp. 229-252, p. 234.
63 Harline, Pamphlets, Printing and Political Culture, p. 43. 64 Ibidem, p. 13, pp. 16-17.
19 It is estimated that pamphlets usually had a print run of around 1000 to 1250 copies.65 However, that does not mean that pamphlets only reached this number of people: successful pamphlets could have multiple print runs, and one sold copy of a pamphlet did not to mean that only one person read it: they were often borrowed, passed on, resold, and read collectively with friends and family.66 Therefore, pamphlets could reach a very wide audience. Pamphlets were aimed at a very general audience, the ‘average citizen’ as it were. This is evidenced by the title-pages of some pamphlets, which tell us they are addressed to ‘the good subjects’ or ‘all people, whether rich or poor’.67 Only occasionally pamphleteers addressed a specific audience, although they often mentioned their own supposedly humble background, which might have been a way to get readers of lower socio-economic classes to identify with them.68 Pamphlets were
sometimes also made more appealing to a broader audience by the use of rhyme, and from the seventeenth century onwards, there was a tendency towards a more entertaining format which was lighter to read, like allegorical pamphlets or dialogues.69
Periodicals: Combining Entertainment and Information
The periodicals that arose by the end of the seventeenth century were also more entertainment-oriented and meant to provide amusement or instruction.70 Their creation was inspired by the success of scholarly journals, and periodicals soon developed many subgenres, among which the popular essay journal or spectator, which covered an abundance of subjects, like politics,
morals, religion and literature. During the Enlightenment, the periodical became the dominant textual medium of entertainment, societal commentary and intellectual exchange, even
surpassing the traditional book.71
A hybrid form of the general interest periodical and the newspaper was the news periodical. 72 They were not published as frequently as actual newspapers or magazines, coming out once a month or even less. At the end of the year the issues, printed in quarto format, were bound together as a yearbook. Their publishers aimed to present and preserve information about interesting topics in Europe for contemporary and later generations, as is evidenced in the prefaces.73 These periodicals concerned largely the same topics as newspapers, but
65 Ibidem, p. 21. 66 Ibidem, p. 65. 67 Ibidem, pp. 25-30. 68 Ibidem, pp. 28-30. 69 Ibidem, p.. 33, pp. 52-53.
70 Wald, ‘Periodicals and Periodicity’, pp. 423-424. 71 Ibidem.
72 J. Koopmans, ‘Storehouses of News: the Meaning of Early Modern News Periodicals in Western
Europe’, in Harms et al. (eds.), Not Dead Things: The Dissemination of Popular Print in England and Wales, Italy and the Low Countries, 1500-1800, pp. 266-267.
20 presented in a different way, as their editors and journalists had more time to write the articles. Also, they were more interrelated and more authoritative, and therefore less prone to doubt about their truthfulness. Documents that could provide evidence or additional information were often included, as well as sections from pamphlets and even prints. However, these periodicals were more a kind of collector’s item for the educated middle and higher classes, than something a common reader would choose to inform him or herself.74
Jacobus van Egmont: A Representative of the Dutch Popular Book Trade
The turn from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century was a transformative period in the Dutch book trade. The Dutch Republic stood out from the rest of Europe by the large part of its population that was – at least partially – able to read and write. Reading was no longer just reserved for a scholarly, elite group. The new reading public, consisting of merchants and craftsmen but also of servants and peasants, hungered for both recreation and information in the form of print. The book trade quickly responded by producing new genres and new forms. While chapbooks filled the demand for cheap recreational literature, pamphlets andnewspapers satisfied the want for commentary and information on current affairs and
contributed to the public debate. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, these new genres had found their niches in the book trade.
Jacobus van Egmont was a publisher who focussed on printing within this niche. Born around 1686 in The Hague, Van Egmont started his first printing apprenticeship around 1700, when he was thirteen or fourteen years old.75 We know little of his family and whether they were in the book trade as well.76 By 1707, Van Egmont, then twenty-one years old, had travelled to Amsterdam to work as a compositor for the printer Cornelis van Hoogenhuysen. That same year he got engaged to Marretje Valintgoet, whose mother had a shop in Amsterdam where she sold leather, yarn, and paper for printing (possibly she was the supplier of paper for Van Hoogenhuysen).77 Little is known of their family. The couple had at least three children: Hendrik, born in 1712, Anna, born in 1715 and Jacobus, born in1716.78 Jacobus later took over
74 Koopmans, ‘Storehouses of News’, p. 268.
75 M.M. Kleerkooper and W.P. van Stockum jr., De boekhandel in Amsterdam, voornamelijk in de
zeventiende eeuw (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1914-1916), pp. 195-196.
76 Van Egmont’s family is not mentioned in the main overview of the booktrade in The Hague,
namely E.F. Kossmann, De boekhandel te ’s-Gravenhage tot het eind van de 18e eeuw. Biographisch
woordenboek van Boekverkopers, uitgevers, boekdrukkers, boekbinders enz. Met vermelding van hun uitgaven en de veilingen door hen Gehouden (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1937).
77 J. van Gysen, ‘Jan van Gysen’s 51e maandaagse Amsterdamsche Merkurius’, Jan van Gysens
weekelyksche Amsterdamsche Mercuuren, vol. 10 (Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont, 1720), p. 204.
78 Amsterdam City Archives (ACA), Archives of Civil Status: baptismal, marriage and burial books of
Amsterdam, inv. no. 5001, 69 Baptismal and Birth Registers Nieuwe Zijds Kapel 1704-1729, p. 151. <https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/inventaris/5001.nl.html#000000047014> ; ACA,
21 the business together with his mother.79 In 1710, Van Egmont started his own printing business, and in the following fifteen years he created and sustained a successful company, that would survive for nearly a century. The following chapters will explore how Van Egmont laid the groundwork for this success, how he played into the relatively new popular market and what strategies he used to fully utilise the new opportunities that had arisen.
Archives of Civil Status: baptismal, marriage and burial books of Amsterdam, inv. no. 5001, no. 100 Baptismal and Birth Registers Zuider Kerk 1709-1721, p. 185
<https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/inventaris/5001.nl.html#000000053175> ; ACA, inv. no. 5001, no. 100, p. 222.
79 Anon., Spermaceti en Fliria Conserva. Bly-eindend treurspel (Amsterdam: wed. J. van Egmont en
22
Chapter 2: Jacobus van Egmont’s Business: His List
and his Network
Introduction
When Jacobus van Egmont took the first steps on his own in the book trade, he moved into a market that was no longer the flourishing environment for commerce it had been a few decades earlier. After the middle of the seventeenth century, economic growth in the Dutch book trade had halted and the number of booksellers began to stagnate.80 By 1710, when Van Egmont started his own business, the Amsterdam book market had become saturated. The primacy of Amsterdam in the international book trade now moved to London.81 Nevertheless, the number of books published still grew. The growing public sphere meant that there was a large market for political pamphlets and news publications, which were important in the public debate that was now occurring among different layers of society. Moreover, many publishers wanted to be a part of this lucrative market, and so the book trade became increasingly competitive.
Booksellers and publishers had to specialise and find their own niche to stay afloat. In this chapter, I will explain how Van Egmont created his own niche on the early eighteenth-century Dutch book market, exploring his list of publications, the authors he worked with and his distribution network.
First, however, a better idea of Van Egmont’s business model must be given. While the first steps towards the separation of the activities of publisher, bookseller and printer were already under way, there was not yet a strong distinction between the three.82 This was also the case for the activity of Jacobus van Egmont. Even though in the Republic, smaller booksellers and publishers often had their publications printed by small, independent printers, Van Egmont ran his own printing office on the Reguliersbreestraat, called ‘De Nieuwe Druckerij’ [The new printing office], which doubled as a bookshop.83 He had purchased the establishment in 1710 from the Smient family. They had been printers as well, but he did not take over their printing press and materials, although he may have bought some of the family’s stock of printed ephemera and catchpenny prints at their stock auction in April 1710.84 From that moment on,
80 C. Rasterhoff, ‘Carrière en concurrentie in een culturele sector: de Amsterdamse boekhandel,
1580-1800’, De zeventiende eeuw, 27 (2011), pp. 162-179, esp. pp. 163-169.
81 Briggs and Burke, A Social History of the Media, p. 48.
82 P.J. Verkruijsse, ‘2.2.2: 1585-1725 – Organisation of a printing / publishing business’, Bibliopolis
<http://www.bibliopolis.nl/handboek/search/recordIdentifier/HBB%3A2.2.2/maximumRecords/1 > (25 January, 2018).
83 I.H. Van Eeghen, De Amsterdamse boekhandel 1680-1725, vol. V1, De boekhandel van de Republiek
1572-1795 (Amsterdam: Nico Israel, 1978), p. 40.
23 Van Egmont referred to himself, and was referred to by others, as a printer and bookseller. We know he had at least one apprentice or journeyman working with him, and it is likely that his wife and later his son were also involved in the business, as they were the ones who took over when Van Egmont died, but other than that there is little information about the set-up of his printing office.85
Jacobus van Egmont’s printing office and bookshop on the Reguliersbreestraat was situated in a less affluent area of Amsterdam centred around the Botermarkt, now known as the
Rembrandtplein. The neighbourhood had a duplicitous reputation, so much so that
contemporaries called it ‘Duivelshoek’ [Devil’s corner]. Beggars, hack writers, musicians, street vendors and quack doctors filled the streets, and the crime rate was high.86 The marketplace in the centre of the area was filled with bookstalls selling mostly second-hand books, except for Mondays when a big butter market was held (hence the name Botermarkt). The bad reputation of the area is described in a farce written by Jacobus Rosseau and printed by Van Egmont in 1718, entitled De
Booter-markt. The character index at the beginning of
the book already gives a good idea of the notoriety of the Botermarkt: the play is filled with characters such as Kwantzelaar [Hawker],
Zwetzer [Blabbermouth], a quack doctor, and
the ballad singer Rotkeel [Rotten throat] (fig 1).87
85 Jan van Gysen mentions a ‘knecht’ (journeyman or apprentice) in: J. van Gysen,, ‘Jan van Gysen’s
19e maandaagse Amsterdamsche Merkurius’, Jan van Gysens weekelyksche Amsterdamsche
Mercuuren, verhaalende op een boertige wys het voornaamste nieuws door heel Europa, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont, 1711), p. 76.
86 Salman, ‘Grub Street in Amsterdam?’, pp. 139-140; R. van Vliet, ‘Klein Jan: de bard van de
Botermarkt’, Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman, 30 (2007), p. 26.
87 J. Rosseau, De Booter-markt. Klugtspel (Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont, 1718), p. 8.
Figure. 1: List of characters in J. Rosseau, De Booter-markt (Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont, 1718).
24 Jacobus van Egmont fits well within this picture of the ‘Devil’s Corner’. Although he did have his own printing office and bookshop, and therefore was per definition higher up on the social ladder than the booksellers manning simple stands on the square, he still tried to
supplement his income by selling a variety of additional wares, for instance from quack doctors. In the advertisements at the end of one of Van Egmont’s periodicals, he provides an exact list of the things he sold in his shop: ‘[…] and also sells all sorts of comedies, histories, songbooks and school supplies, as well as all sorts of paper, pens, wax, cachets, and black office ink’ (fig. 2).88 In the same issue, there is a notice of an ‘English doctor’ having arrived, and selling through Van Egmont a ‘gold tincture’ and ‘English elixir’, costing respectively eleven stivers and one guilder per bottle.89 These kinds of secondary activities were not uncommon for smaller booksellers at the time.90 Van Egmont also printed occasional poetry on request, and traded in commercial printing, other common secondary activities for small printers.
88 “En verkoopt ook alderley zoorte van Comedien, Historien, Liedeboeken en Schoolgoed, als mede
alderhande soorte van Papier, Penne, Lak, Ouwelen en Swarte Comptoir-Inkt”, in J. van Gysen, ‘Jan van Gysen’s 33e maandaagse Amsterdamsche Merkurius’, Jan van Gysens weekelyksche
Amsterdamsche Mercuuren, verhaalende op een boertige wys het voornaamste nieuws door heel Europa, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont, 1712), p. 132.
89 Van Gysen, ‘Jan van Gysen’s 33e maandaagse Amsterdamsche Merkurius’, p. 132. 90 Verkruijsse, ‘2.2.2: 1585-1725 – Organisation of a printing / publishing business’.
Figure 2: Advertisement, in J. van Gysen, ‘Jan van Gysen’s 33e maandaagse Amsterdamsche Merkurius’, Jan van
Gysens weekelyksche Amsterdamsche Mercuuren, verhaalende op een boertige wys het voornaamste nieuws door heel Europa, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont, 1712), p. 132.
25
Notes on the Reconstruction of Jacobus van Egmont’s Publishing List
In Amsterdam’s highly competitive publishing business, it was essential to distinguish oneself as a printer or publisher in one way or another. Many publishers did so by specialising in specific genres. Readers and street hawkers knew where to find the producers of the specificmerchandise they wanted. For instance, Cornelis van Hoogenhuysen, Van Egmont’s old employer, was known as a publisher of political pamphlets.91 A similar niche can be identified for Jacobus van Egmont by looking at what he printed and sold during his lifetime.
To establish Van Egmont’s list, I used the Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands (STCN) and WorldCat as main resources. The STCN is the Dutch national bibliography for books printed in the Netherlands in between 1540 and 1800 and is a useful tool for the research of Dutch books. However, not all works published by Van Egmont can be found in the STCN. For instance, broadsheets, a sizable part of Van Egmont’s work, are often not included in the database (with a few exceptions). I have therefore also used WorldCat, the largest international bibliographical database, to research Van Egmont’s publications, as this database does include broadsheets. This way a more complete view of the type of works published by Van Egmont can be presented. The combined databases give us a total of 162 remaining, publicly accessible, publications by Van Egmont. These are not all different titles: some works were successful enough to have multiple editions printed, and copies of these different print-runs (if they can be found in the STCN or WorldCat) have also been included. Although many remaining copies of Van Egmont’s publications have been catalogued in the databases, an issue with Van Egmont’s work is that a large part of his list consisted of pamphlets and broadsheets. This material was of an ephemeral nature, often discarded after use, which means a substantial portion of Van Egmont’s
publications may simply have disappeared.
Jacobus van Egmont often advertised his current and upcoming publications in stock lists and advertisements in his books and pamphlets (although he does not seem to have advertised in newspapers), and I have included the advertised works that are not mentioned in WorldCat or the STCN in a separate list. In his stocklists, Van Egmont also notes several more standard works he sold, such as gospels, bibles, psalm-books and catechisms (in Calvinist, Lutheran and Catholic editions), ABC-books, riddle-books, joke-books, prints for children, and board games (fig. 3). However, because Van Egmont does not give any specific information on these works, I have not included these in the list. Of course, for many of the titles named in the advertisements we can’t be sure if they were ever really published. Furthermore, I have not been able to check all advertisements in Van Egmont’s books, due to the limitations of time and
91 J. Salman, ‘Peddling in the Past: Dutch Itinerant Bookselling in a European Perspective’, Publishing
26 location of this study. Therefore, this second list
can best be regarded as a further contribution to the general impression of Van Egmont’s publishing business. Still, with this combination of resources, a good indication of the works printed by Van Egmont and their nature can be given.
Genres
The current list of works printed by Jacobus van Egmont, containing combined data from the STCN and WorldCat, consists of 162 titles. I have divided this list into nine categories:
songbooks, sermons, drama, periodicals, poems, history, occasional writings, and period documents (news broadsheets or pamphlets). The 101 titles that can be identified from Van Egmont’s advertisements and stock lists show no big surprises when compared to the first list, while the differences are easy to explain. For instance, only six sermons printed by Van Egmont are preserved, while an additional six new titles can be identified from his stock lists. The main difference appearing from the stocklists is the number of titles that seem to refer to chapbooks
Figure 3: Catalogue of publications and other wares sold in Van Egmont's shop, in J. Rosseau, Samenspraak gehouden in de and’re
27 containing mainly fictional or semi-historical stories, either in prose or rhyme. Some refer to medieval romances, like Historie van de vier heemskinderen [The Four Sons of Aymon] and De
ridder met de swaan [Knight of the Swan], or they refer to historical events, like Distructie van Jeruzalem [Destruction of Jeruzalem] and Leidens Ontzet [Relief of Leiden]. Titles like these do
not come up at all in the STCN or in WorldCat. It is likely that they were of an ephemeral nature and discarded after use, and therefore did not survive over time. In the same vein, the stocklists mention Van Egmont printed ‘heilighen’, or catchpenny prints, but there are no remaining prints by publically available.92 Songbooks also appear more frequently in the stocklists and
advertisements, but this may have been influenced by the fact that two of the stocklists I have used were printed in songbooks and therefore mainly featured other songbooks.
The list of Van Egmont is dominated by one category: period documents. Of the 162 titles that can be found in the STCN and in WorldCat, 97 belong to this category. In comparison, the next largest category is drama with only sixteen titles. These period documents have different formats, from broadsheets printed on one side to quarto booklets of sixty-four pages, although the four-page quarto pamphlet was most common. The longer works appear to have been sold for a maximum of two stivers.93 Of course, there are many different types of
pamphlets and broadsheets, and Van Egmont’s publications certainly can’t all be painted with the same brush. The American historian Craig Harline has created a typology for pamphlets, describing four general varieties of pamphlets, three of which can be recognised in the list of Van Egmont: descriptive pamphlets written by private authors, directly persuasive or
argumentative pamphlets, and persuasive pamphlets of an imaginative or entertaining form.94 The fourth type, descriptive pamphlets issued by official bodies, does not occur in the list of Van Egmont, although we do know that he illegally copied state publications at least once, in 1714, when he was sentenced to pay a fifty-guilder fine.95 In general, the most common type of pamphlet was the argumentative treatise or commentary, followed by descriptive reports of battles, official correspondences, foreign edicts and speeches. Both types are represented almost evenly in the list. Interestingly, in case of the argumentative or persuasive pamphlets, Van Egmont did not print for one political side of the events he covered; although he may have had his own opinion on these matters, he was not going to let it stand in the way of his earnings.
92 N. Boerma, A. Borms, A. Thijs, J. Thijssen, Kinderprenten, volksprenten, centsprenten, schoolprenten.
Populaire grafiek in de Nederlanden 1650-1950 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2014), pp. 166-168; for stocklist, see J. Rosseau, Samenspraak gehouden in de and’re waereld, tusschen Jan van Gysen, en eenige and’re versturve poeëten (Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont, 1722).
93 Prices are given in several advertisements by Van Egmont. 94 Harline, Pamphlets, Printing and Political Culture, p. 43.
28 Although the so called imaginatively persuasive approach is described by Harline as the least common of the categories of pamphlets, it appears more often in Van Egmont’s list than either the descriptive or directly argumentative categories. Most of these are part of a series of dialogues in rhyme, the Harlequin met de rarekiek [Harlequin and his peep show], written by Jan van Gysen and published by Van Egmont from 1712 until 1719. In these dialogues, a Dutchman and a Frenchman discuss political events in a satirical manner. The dialogue of the Frenchman is written in a printed approximation of a French accent, with French words sprinkled throughout, to enhance the entertaining value of these dialogues. The use of rhyme also was a common practice to make pamphlets more broadly appealing. These dialogues were not the only period documents printed by Van Egmont that were in rhyme.96 The characters of the
Harlequin-dialogues generally comment on foreign politics, less so on domestic and state affairs. According to Jeroen Salman, this was to avoid prohibition by the government.97 In fact, this is a theme that can be seen throughout the list of Van Egmont: most of the period documents are about
European issues, which of course would have influence on the Republic and were therefore relevant, but the subject posed less risk for a publisher in the Republic. Nevertheless, the events of the Great Northern War (1700-1721), for example, about which several pamphlets were written, would likely have had less of an immediate impact on Van Egmont’s readers than actual domestic affairs, except for the impact on trade relations. This may be a sign that his readership did not just read these pamphlets out of a necessity to stay up to date on current events, but rather out of personal political interest.
Another factor that might have contributed to the large representation of pamphlets and broadsheets about foreign affairs could be that, whereas piracy of Dutch publications was severely frowned upon, foreign publications were free game.98 Indeed, many of the period documents in Van Egmont’s list were translated from English or French: these are of course not exact copies, but printing translations still saved a lot of work and therefore money. It is not clear in all cases whether Van Egmont did the translations himself, if he had someone in his service to do it for him, or even if he copied the translated text from the publications of other Dutch publishers: a translator is mentioned only a handful of times. Because they were often not named, it is difficult to pinpoint what kind of people these translators were. For both translators named by Van Egmont, translating was not their only source of income. Gysbert Tysens, a translator mentioned twice, was a hack writer himself, who likely did translation and correction
96 Harline, Pamphlets, Printing and Political Culture, p. 33. 97 Salman, ‘Grub Street in Amsterdam?’, p. 144.
98 P.G. Hoftijzer, ‘A sickle unto thy neighbour’s corn: book piracy in the Dutch Republic’, Quaerendo
29 work for printers on the side.99 The only other translator mentioned by name was William Sewel, a Quaker historian and linguist with an English background. Besides translating English, French and German works, he also contributed to several newspapers, wrote poetry, and ran a periodical.100 Another way in which Van Egmont obtained the material for his period documents was by copying information from newspapers. This was a commonly accepted way of working: he explicitly mentions copying from newspapers in several broadsheets, even to the extent of stating the name and date of the specific newspaper.101
The periodicals published by Van Egmont are in many ways similar to his period documents. Their authors also worked by taking information from the newspapers, and they often also focussed on foreign affairs (or domestic events with little political value, like natural disasters). One of the most important publications for Van Egmont was a satirical periodical on current news written by the well-known hack writer Jan van Gysen, called the Weekelyksche
Amsterdamsche Merkuuren, verhalende op boertige wys ’t voornaamste nieuws door heel Europa
[The Weekly Amsterdam Mercuries, Relating in a Droll Manner the Main News from All over Europe], also called the Maandagsche Amsterdamsche Merkurius or simply the Amsterdamsche
Mercurius. A new issue of the Amsterdamsche Mercurius was published weekly on Monday
(although a substantial number of issues contain extensive excuses by the author on their tardiness) from 1711 until 1722, each consisting of four pages in quarto format (fig. 4). After a
99 B. van der Zijde, Apollo's marsdrager: geschiedenis van een populaire uitgave uit het begin van de
achttiende eeuw (Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1996), p. 66. Unpublished PhD-thesis.
100 C. Fell Smith, ‘Sewel, William’, Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder & Co,
1885-1900), pp. 283-285.
101 Anon., Pertinent relaas, van alles watter is gepasseert in het verslaan van het Turksche leeger, by
Semblin, door den prins Eugenius van Savoyen (Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont, 1716). This broadsheet explicitly states it was copied from the Haagse maandaagse Courant of 25 Augustus 1716.
Figure 4: First page of J. van Gysen, ‘Jan van Gysen’s 11e Maandaagse Amsterdamsche Merkurius’, Jan van Gysens
Weekelyksche Amsterdamsche Mercuuren, verhaalende op een boertige wys het voornaamste nieuws door heel Europa,
30 year, the issues could also be had in a bound volume, complete with a separate title page with an explanation in rhyme.102
Van Gysen worked by reading through several newspapers every week, and commenting on the events described in these newspapers in a joking manner.103 The
Amsterdamsche Mercurius was not the only,
or the first, periodical of its kind: similar news publications, often also named after the Roman messenger god Mercury, had been printed since 1656, when the Haegsche
Weeckelijckse Mercurius [The Hague Weekly
Mercury] by Hendrik Doedyns was first published.104 In these publications the relationship between the information and commentary that was standard in other news publications was inverted: the ironical or even completely irrelevant commentary often became more important than the news itself. Jan van Gysen’s Merkurius fits within this tradition: he was aiming to entertain his readers rather than to inform them. He also included highly personal stories and interacted with his readers, for instance by writing about the anonymous gifts of fish, wine or chocolate that arrived for him, and urging the benefactors to come forward. The detail with which Van Gysen describes his personal life in the Mercurius makes this periodical also an interesting source on the working relationship between Van Gysen and Van Egmont, which I will further elaborate on in the following chapter.
Van Egmont published two other periodicals of the same nature: the Amsterdamsche
mars-drager [The Amsterdam Hawker], published during 1720 and 1721 in 29 weekly
instalments, and the Nieuwe Amsterdamsche post-ryder [The New Amsterdam Postman] by Jacobus Rosseau, printed in 1718. Van Gysen’s Amsterdamsche Mercurius, however, was Van Egmont’s longest running and most successful periodical. For Van Egmont, it was a virtual
102 This was common practice for news periodicals, see Koopmans, ‘Storehouses of news’, p. 268. 103 R. Beentjes, ‘…En de man hier Jan van Gyzen. Een verslag van twaalf jaar lief en leed in Jan van
Gysens Weekelykse Amsterdamsche Merkuuren (1710-1722)’, Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman, 17 (1994), pp. 1-15, p. 6.
104 Ibidem, p. 2. These mercuries should not be confused with other news periodicals, also called
31 goldmine. Although separate issues were inexpensive (the prices seem to have fluctuated
around an oortje105), a periodical meant a returning audience, and a steady income. Indeed, the
Amsterdamsche Mercurius had a group of dedicated readers, who would complain if an issue
was late (which was often the case) and send its author gifts if they were amused. This
periodical seems to have had a broad audience, crossing borders of social classes. Students were among the readers, as evidenced by the lamentation supposedly written by a student when the
Mercurius had not been printed for a while, and some readers were even very well-off, like a
merchant from Amsterdam who regularly invited Van Gysen on to his ship.106
Although Jacobus van Egmont clearly focussed on publications with political or topical relevance, this was not his only specialty. The three main other genres of which his list consists, songbooks, drama and poetry, are in many ways very different from the aforementioned period documents. Van Egmont does not seem to have favoured one genre above the other: there are fifteen remaining songbooks and poetry works respectively, and eighteen plays. Songbooks like the ones Van Egmont published had been printed since the sixteenth century, but in the
seventeenth century they truly became widespread.107 In no other country so many songbooks were printed as in the Netherlands, and nowhere was there such a varied supply.108 The most common songbooks are collections of Dutch song texts, sometimes mixed with other poetry. They do not contain any musical notes, as most readers were unable to read music anyway. Instead, the songs were contrafacta, which means that they were written to well-known popular melodies.109 The books often contain both new songs and older, more traditional material. They are printed in small formats, so they were easily portable; the songbooks that Van Egmont printed range from octavo to decimosexto. Van Egmont published many books that contained relatively innocent love songs, but he also printed more explicitly sexual songs and bawdy drinking ballads.
For a publisher, songbooks were a safe bet. They were one of the most popular kinds of literature during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and always in demand. This is illustrated by the fact that many of these books had several print runs: one book printed by Van Egmont – Het amoureuze lust-hof, of ’t Vervolg van Thirsis minnewit [The Amorous Pleasure Ground, or the Sequel to Thirsis Minnewit, 1719] – was a seventh edition.110 Printers and
105 An oortje was worth one fourth of a stiver. 106 Beentjes, ‘…En de man hiet Jan van Gyzen’, p. 7.
107 N. Veldhorst, Zingend door het leven: het Nederlands liedboek in de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2009), pp. 12, 15.
108 Ibidem, p. 129.
109 L.P. Grijp, ‘Apollo’s Gifts. Dutch Songbooks for the Urban Youth of the Eighteenth Century’, in S.
Beghein, B. Blondé and E. Schreurs (eds.), Music and the City: Musical Cultures and Urban Societies in the Southern Netherlands and Beyond, c. 1650-1800 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013), p. 162.
110 Anon., Het amoureuze lust-hof, of ’t Vervolg van Thirsis minnewit, bestaande in aangenaamste
