Subscribers

Marsili’s Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus was a complex publication, requiring an unusually large (and therefore costly) paper format and the creation of a multitude of plates. No one publisher could hope to publish it alone and therefore a consortium of Dutch bookseller-publishers combined forces to produce the work. Three were based in The Hague: Pierre Gosse (1676?-1755); Rutger Christoffel Alberts (1691-1732) and Pieter de Hondt (fl. 1723-63); and two were located in Amsterdam: Hermanus Uytwerf (1698-1754) and François Changuion (1694?-1777?). The members of this coalition were well aware of the financial risk involved in producing such an ambitious work and they sought to mitigate that risk by resorting to a tried and trusted method: subscription. By enticing potential buyers to become subscribers the publishers would be assured of committed sales. Subscribers, for their part, could buy the work at a lower price and have the honour of their subscription acknowledged in a printed list of subscribers which, in this case, would be appended to the first volume in the set. Worth’s name is among those on the subscribers’ list, and, as the following image demonstrates, all five bookseller-publishers signed their names on Worth’s copy.

Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus: Observationibus Geographicis, Astronomicis, Hydrographicis, Historicis, Physicis (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1726), i, Subscribers’ List. Signatures of the five booksellers.

Pierre Gosse’s signature comes first, possibly because he was the most influential of the quintet of booksellers for Gosse had a finger in many commercial pies. His span of activity at The Hague ranged between 1710 and 1745 and, as the CERL Thesaurus notes, from 1714-1716 he had worked at The Hague in collaboration with Christiaen Van Lom (fl. 1714-33) and Rutger Christoffel (the latter a collaborator on the Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus). In the 1720s and 1730s he regularly worked with Johannes Groenewegen (from 1721-1728) and Jean II Neaulme (from 1725 to 1734) – though, as a few of Worth’s texts demonstrate, these partnerships might be augmented as needs be. By the 1740s his network at The Hague included booksellers such as Gerardus Block (fl. 1731-44), Adriaen Moetjens (fl. 1718-51), Johannes Swart (fl. 1708-58), and Isaac Beauregard (fl. 1730-86).[1]

Nor did Gosse limit his activities to The Hague for from 1724 to 1739 he was also busy in Geneva, this time in partnership with Marc Michel Bousquet (until 1736) and the brothers Jean Antoine and Henri Pellissari (1736-1739).[2] The book trade in England likewise beckoned and Gosse was responsible for introducing Groenewegen to the London trade in 1715. Ten years later a partnership was set up between Gosse, De Neaulme, Groenewegen and a relatively junior colleague, Nicholas Prevost, who had opened a shop at The Hague in 1722, three years before joining the London partnership.[3] Prevost would subsequently become Worth’s agent.[4] It seems likely that it was Groenewegen who introduced Prevost to Worth as a potential agent for prior to their association Worth had acquired a number of auction catalogues produced by Groenewegen (in collaboration with Abraham Vandenhoeck (1698–1750)). Worth certainly must have been aware of the Groenewegen-Vandenhoeck partnership by 1724 for he owned a copy of their Catalogus insignium & omnis generis studii librorum. Being a catalogue of choice, valuable, and very scarce books in Greek, Italian, French, Spanish &c. lately imported from Italy, France, and Holland (London, 1724), which is one of his earliest extant auction catalogues.

Catalogus bibliothecæ Wincklerianæ, a theologo quondam celeberrimo, Johan. Wincklero … Being a catalogue of choice, valuable, and very scarce books, in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish &c. lately imported … With an appendix of many books of physick, the collection of Edm. Littlehales, M.D. … to be sold … at the shop of J. Groenewegen, and A. vander Hoeck, … on Tuesday the 11th of May 1725 … (London, 1725), Advertisement to subscribers for Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus.

In the following year Groenewegen and Vandenhoeck produced another catalogue which would tantalize Worth, the Catalogus bibliothecæ Wincklerianæ. On the surface there was relatively little that might have appealed to Worth who had little interest in theology, but crucially Groenewegen and Vandenhoeck inserted an advertisement which certainly would have whetted Worth’s intellectual appetite, for the proposed Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus was just the sort of item to attract Worth who had a particular fascination for high value compilations with a strong scientific flavour.

The above advertisement aimed to attract subscribers with an interest in ‘profound learning’. It alluded to the erudition of the author; noted that the work had been undertaken at the command of Emperor Leopold I (though it naturally glossed over his subsequent break with Marsili); and emphasised that though the work contained almost 400 engravings the entire work was already ready to print. Finally, the publishers drew attention to the fact that this would be a collector’s item – only 625 subscription copies were to be made, 20 of which would go to the author. Each subscriber would receive their own numbered copy and arrangements would be made to ensure that no other edition could be produced – for the plates (with the exception of the geographical maps) were to be returned to Bologna, there to be affixed to the walls ‘as a perpetual memorial of so great a work’. In addition, the publishers promised to pay a hefty fine should any fraudulent second edition appear. For the price of 150 Dutch florins (guilders) a subscriber would receive 6 volumes by instalment: the first two volumes three months after they had subscribed; the second pair six months after that and the last two volumes 6 months after that – and needless to say, early subscribers would take priority. Potential buyers were warned that if they chose not to subscribe by September 1726 the price after that date would rise to 200 florins. The 1725 advertisement said little about the contents of the work, instead directing interested buyers to the Prodromus, which along with ‘Most part of the Cutts’ could be seen ‘at the place of sale’.

The tactic evidently worked for 181 copies were sold to 105 subscribers. Some are listed only by their initials (making them hard to identify) though the use of initials may reflect the fact that, as Máire Kennedy reminds us, ‘subscriptions were often gathered through personal contacts’ – so in this case the identity of the subscribers may have been well known to the publishers.[5] A handful of others likewise pose problems of identification but the vast majority can be identified and from this cohort it is clear that there was a geographical bias towards the Low Countries (in particular the Netherlands), and, secondly, that the most dominant group of subscribers were fellow booksellers – the latter group was responsible for no less than 80 copies in all (almost 53%).

The inclusion of such an advertisement in an auction catalogue of Groenewegen’s is hardly surprising given his close working relationship to Gosse at the time. As we shall see, the members of the latter’s book-trade network were certainly represented in the subscription list for among the Dutch booksellers we find familiar names: Joannes Groenewegen and Prevost (The Hague and London) subscribed for 5 copies while other associates of Gosse, such as Marc Michel Bousquet (Geneva) and Adrian Moetjens (The Hague) subscribed for 3 copies and 1 copy respectively. Dutch booksellers were among the most committed of subscribers and in Amsterdam 22 copies were sold to booksellers there: Jan Boom (1676-1744), Joannes Frederic Bernard (1680-1744), and Pieter De Coup (1684-1731).[6] The latter two booksellers were especially committed to the publication, for Bernard put his name down for 5 copies while Pieter De Coup subscribed for no less that 16 copies, clearly confident that he could sell them on at a greater price. Given that Bernard was, like Changuion, a Huguenot refugee, it seems likely that the two Amsterdam bookseller/publishers were using their own networks in much the same way Gosse had.[7]

Booksellers in smaller Dutch cities, while interested in the volume, were wary of so much outlay and instead purchased 1-3 copies: Wilhelm Heggers (a bookseller who was active in Arnhem between 1709 and 1727), and Leendert Bakker (a bookseller in Middleburg between 1723 and 1751), both subscribed for 2 copies and it is likely that the ‘Joannes de Lessart’ who bought 3 copies was Jacques Delessart, who had worked in Maastrict between 1712 and 1726.[8] Jan Daniel Beman, a bookseller active in Rotterdam from 1719 to 1767, bought 1 copy, as did Jean van Duren (who was based at The Hague between 1711 and 1757), Andries Dykhuysen (active in Leiden between 1701-27 ) and Joannes vander Linden the Younger (1707-31, also at Leiden).[9]

However, despite the strong showing from the Dutch book trade, as the above image makes clear, this was a work which appealed to a European audience and booksellers beyond the Netherlands were among the first 50 to subscribe: Giuseppe Arnaldo Mornini, a bookseller based in Livorno, put his name down for no less than 8 copies. Clearly Mornini saw a market for this type of work and, as Moorman notes, he had already subscribed to 13 copies of Rutgert Alberts’ 1724 edition of Joan Blaeu’s Admiranda Urbis Romæ, which had first been published in 1663 in Amsterdam.^[10] In Germany Johann Georg Lochner, a bookseller in Nuremberg, subscribed to 3 copies while Arnaud Du Sarrat, who was predominanly based in Berlin between 1693 and 1734, subscribed for the same number.[11]

Beyond the Netherlands the chief interest in Marsili’s 6 volumes was in Paris and Parisian-based booksellers such as François Montalant (1677-1754), who had been active at Quai des Augustins since 1708, and Pierre Jean Mariette (1694-1774), whose shop was in Ruë Saint Jacques, evidently felt that they would have a ready number of purchasers for such a work in the French capital, for they purchased no less than 10 and 6 copies respectively.[12] Other booksellers based in Paris might not have been willing to outlay quite so much capital but they too chose to subscribe: the combination of the Quillau father and son firm (Jacques Quillau who died in 1729 and his son Gabriel François Quillau d. 1752), bought 3 copies; François Babuty (1683-1768) and Laurent Louis Anisson (of the King’s Printers) subscribed for 1 copy each while Jacques Rollin (active in Paris between 1720 and 1764), chose 2 copies.[13] An equal caution may be seen in Belgian booksellers such as Guillaume Barnarbé (active in Liège from 1721 to 1729), and the widow of Lucas’s firm in Antwerp who, as the following image demonstrates, chose to buy 1 and 2 copies respectively.[14]

While members of the European book trade might have dominated the subscription list, the ultimate targets for these volumes were members of learned societies, famous scholars, connoisseur collectors, members of the aristocracy and gentry throughout Europe and, more generally, members of the political class. In this the five publishers were not to be disappointed, for in the list of names we see representatives of all of these potential markets.

The very first subscriber was Claude Gros de Boze (1680-1753), who had been a member of Académie Française since 1715 and who was the Secretary of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. A well-known numismatist, he had been appointed curator of the Cabinet des médailles et antiques in 1719 and was the author of a number of works on the subject. His counterpart in England was the Irish-born physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) who had risen to the highest echelons of the medical profession and who was, at the time, Secretary of the Royal Society and therefore responsible for its famous journal, Philosophical Transactions. It was a position which, as Macgregor notes, ‘placed Sloane at the hub of the learned world’ and would lead to further honours: in 1699 the Académie Royale des Sciences appointed him correspondent and membership of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences followed in 1712. Subsequent honours followed in 1725 (election to the academies of sciences of St Petersburg and Madrid), and 1752 (Academy of Sciences in Göttingen).^[15] Sloane’s decision to purchase a copy is hardly surprising given his many scientific and antiquarian interests and he would already have been acquainted with the author since the latter’s visit to London in 1721.[16]

Both Boze and Sloane would have been even more familiar with another English physician and collector who probably subscribed at much the same time as Sloane as his name immediately follows on the subscribers’ list: Richard Mead (1673-1754).[17] Boze was a life-long correspondent of the famous Newtonian physician and Sloane collaborated with Mead on a number of ventures. Mead and Sloane had at least one thing in common: their dislike of their fellow physician John Woodward (1665/1668-1728), who had publicly quarrelled with both men.[18] Woodward, a committed natural historian and antiquary and a regular contributor to the Royal Society of London’s Philosophical Transactions, was likewise attracted to Marsili’s work and also subscribed. He was joined by yet another English physician, Thomas Goodman, who died in 1738, whose name comes immediately after that of Edward Worth. In many ways Worth had much in common with all these English physicians and collectors: he shared their profession and scientific interests and though his collection was much smaller than those of Mead and Sloane, the three collectors clearly had similar interests. Indeed Sloane, Mead, Woodward and Worth were all members of the Royal Society.

Following almost immediately after Worth in the subscription list were two fellows of Trinity College, Dublin: the theologians Jonathan Rogers and James Stopford (c. 1697-1759). Rogers (d. 1760) was at the time a senior fellow at the Dublin college, and would take his BD and DD in 1727, before moving on to become Rector of Clondevaddock (1730), Ardea (1741) and finally Loughgall in Co. Armagh.[19] Stopford, who would later become Bishop of Cloyne, was, at the time, still a fellow in Trinity College Dublin, having been appointed in 1717, and was known for his classical learning.[20] The Irish clerics were not the only ministers of the reformed churches to buy a copy of Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus in advance: in England William Henry Thominson (1693-1774), who had been Rector of Rettendon, Essex, since 1723, and Thomas Richardson (d. 1730) likewise subscribed, while in the Netherlands the theologian and philologist Joannes Hagelis (1676-1735), who was in Amsterdam at the time, and Jacques Saurin (1677-1730), the minister of French reformed church at The Hague, each made a purchase.[21] They were joined in the far north by Christen Worm (1672-1737), Bishop of Zealand, a grandson of the famous Danish natural historian, physician and antiquarian Ole Worm (1588-1654). Unfortunately Worm’s copy, along with his illustrious grandfather’s books was subsequently burnt in the Copenhagen fire of 1728.

Another minister, the elusive canon of Utrecht, Heinrich Hadrian vander Marck, also purchased a copy in advance. Vander Marck’s own library would later come on the market (in 1727) and prove a happy bibliographical hunting ground for Worth for Vander Marck was, like Worth, a connoisseur collector of rare printings and an afficionado of fine bindings.[22] Nor was he the only well-known collector on the list for, apart from people like Sloane, Mead and Worth himself, Joseph Smith (1673/4?-1770), an English collector based in Venice, also succumbed to the lure of the work. As Morrison relates, Smith, who had come to Venice in 1700, working in a bank there, was a serious connoisseur collector of books and art and had already, by 1724, produced a catalogue of his incunables.[23] Another assiduous collector of books and art was Samuel van Huls (d. 1734), whose auction catalogue would be printed by De Hondt and collected by Worth.[24] Huls was a collector on the scale of Mead and Sloane and his library collections proved attractive to Worth when they were auctioned in 1730.

Van Huls represents not only the wealthy European collectors who were attracted to the work – his career, as alderman and mayor of The Hague, is also a reminder that the secular arm of the state was as much interested in Marsili’s Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus as their clerical compatriots. Undoubtedly the highest ranking noble on the list was Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), no. 10 on the subscribers list, whose victory at the Battle of Zenta had led to the Treaty of Karlowitz.[25] However, Eugene was not joined by other members of the Austrian Habsburg court, and he was the only prince to subscribe. Some German and indeed English aristocrats did, however, follow suit: the Saxon count and military commander Jakob Heinrich von Flemming (1667-1728) was joined by the ‘Baron de Zocha’ (probably a reference to Karl Friedrich von Zocha (1683-1749), a member of the Zocha family who had, like his brother Johann Wilhelm von Zocha (1680-1718) worked as a gentleman architect on the Residenz, Ansbach).[26] Of the English aristocratic subscribers, undoubtedly the highest ranking was ‘Lord Cholmondeley’, i.e. George Cholmondeley, 2nd Earl of Cholmondeley (1666-1733), who had succeeded his brother as the second earl in 1725.

Bureaucrats and lawyers also showed interest in Marsili’s magnum opus. The most illustrious of all was Henri François d’Aguesseau (1668-1751), who was Chancellor of France on three occasions. In 1726 he was rusticating, having fallen foul of Cardinal Guillaume Dubois (1656-1723) in 1722, but he would later be recalled to his post in 1727. He was, according to Voltaire, ‘the most learned magistrate France had ever possessed’. But apart from D’Aguesseau and Van Huls, magistrate subscribers were relatively few in number and the emphasis was, yet again, on the Netherlands: for example Guillaume Six (1692-1757) in Haarlem, with a scattering of relatively minor Dutch and Belgian gentry.

The subscriber’s list is important because it shows us purchasers who were definitely committed to the new work and without whose financial backing Marsili’s enormous work might not have come into being. It is the starting point to exploring the later reception of the work for, as the subscription advertisement made clear, the subscription copies were not the only copies to be printed. The six-volume work, while costly, had much to commend it for it offered its readers a cornucopia of subjects, which might be of interest to a military commander at the Austrian court such as Prince Eugene, to a humble minister of the Church of Ireland. To Worth it brought together a host of areas in which he had a deep and abiding interest: geography, astronomy, natural history, and archaeology.

TEXT: Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian of the Edward Worth Library.

SOURCES

Bergin, John, ‘James Stopford, (c. 1697–1759), Church of Ireland bishop of Cloyne’, Dictionary of Irish Biography.

Bibliotheca Hulsiana, sive catalogus librorum… collegit Samuel Hulsius … (The Hague: Swart and de Hondt, 1730).

Bibliotheca Marckiana … (The Hague: Pieter de Hondt, 1727).

Boran, Elizabethanne, ‘Dr Edward Worth: a connoisseur book collector in early eighteenthy-century Dublin’, in Elizabethanne Boran (ed.), Book Collecting in Ireland and Britain 1650-1850 (Dublin, 2018), pp 80-103.

Burtchaell, G.D., and T.U. Sadleir (eds), Alumni Dublinenses … (Dublin, 1935).

CERL Thesaurus: ‘Anisson, Laurent Louis’; ‘Babuty, François’; ‘Bakker, Leendert’; ‘Barnabé, Guillaume’; ‘Beman, Jan Daniel’; ‘Delessart, Jacques’; ‘Du Sarrat, Arnaud’; ‘Dykhuysen, Andries’; ‘Gosse, Pierre (1676?-1755)’; ‘Heggers, Wilhelmus’; ‘Mariette, Pierre Jean’; ‘Montalant, François’; ‘Rollin, Jacques’; ‘Jean van Duren’; Vander Linden, Joannes’.

Clergymen of the Church of England Database: ‘Thomlinson, William Henry’.

Curl, James Stevens, and Susan Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of architecture (Oxford, 2015).

Digital Library for Dutch Literature (DBNL): ‘Hagelis, Joannes’.

Feola, Vittoria, ‘Prince Eugene and his Library. A preliminary analysis’, Rivista Storica Italiana (2014), 742-87.

Guerrini, Anita, ‘Mead, Richard (1673–1754), physician and collector of books and art’, ODNB.

Kennedy, Máire, ‘Reading Print, 1700-1800’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford History of the Irish Book, volume III, The Irish Book in English 1550-1800 (Oxford, 2006), pp 146-66.

Levine, J.M., ‘Woodward, John (1665/1668–1728), physician, natural historian, and antiquary’, ODNB.

Macgregor, Arthur, ‘Sloane, Sir Hans, baronet (1660–1753), physician and collector’, ODNB.

McConnell, Anita, ‘L.F. Marsigli’s visit to London in 1721, and his report on the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 47, no. 2 (1993), 179-204.

Mijnhardt, Wijnand.W., ‘The Amsterdam booksellers Jean Frederic Bernard (1680-1744) and Marc Michel Rey (1720-1780)’.

Moorman, Gloria, ‘Discovering Rome through Joan Blaeu’s Admiranda Urbis Romæ: The creation of the town atlas of Rome (Amsterdam, 1663) in the light of Italian-Dutch relationships in the seventeenth century’, unpublished Master’s in Media Studies, University of Leiden, 2014, p. 60.

Morrison, Stuart L., ‘Smith, Joseph (1673/4?–1770), book collector and patron of the arts’, ODNB.

Swift, Katharine, ‘Dutch penetrations of the London market for books, c. 1690-1730’, in Christiane Bertvens-Stevelinck, Hans Bots, P.G. Hoftijzer and O.S. Lankhorst (eds), Le Magasin de L’Univers. The Dutch Republic as the centre of the European book trade (Leiden, 1992), pp 265-79.

Van Eeghen, Isabella Henriette (ed.), De Amsterdamse Boekhandel 1680–1725 (Amsterdam, 1967), volumes III and IV.

[1] CERL Thesaurus: ‘Gosse, Pierre (1676?-1755)’.

[2] Ibid.

[3] On Gosse, Groenewegen and Prevost see Swift, Katharine, ‘Dutch penetrations of the London market for books, c. 1690-1730’, in Christiane Bertvens-Stevelinck, Hans Bots, P.G. Hoftijzer and O.S. Lankhorst (eds), Le Magasin de L’Univers. The Dutch Republic as the centre of the European book trade (Leiden, 1992), p. 273.

[4] On Prevost see Boran, Elizabethanne, ‘Dr Edward Worth: a connoisseur book collector in early eighteenthy-century Dublin’, in Elizabethanne Boran (ed.), Book Collecting in Ireland and Britain 1650-1850 (Dublin, 2018), pp 87-8.

[5] Kennedy, Máire, ‘Reading Print, 1700-1800’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford History of the Irish Book, volume III, The Irish Book in English 1550-1800 (Oxford, 2006), p. 148.

[6] On Amsterdam booksellers of the period see Van Eeghen, Isabella Henriette (ed.), De Amsterdamse Boekhandel 1680-1725 (Amsterdam, 1967), volumes III and IV.

^[7] On Bernard see Mijnhardt, Wijnand.W., ‘The Amsterdam booksellers Jean Frederic Bernard (1680-1744) and Marc Michel Rey (1720-1780)’.

[8] CERL Thesaurus: ‘Heggers, Wilhelmus’; ‘Bakker, Leendert’; ‘Delessart, Jacques’.

[9] CERL Thesaurus: ‘Beman, Jan Daniel’; ‘Jean van Duren’; ‘Dykhuysen, Andries’; Vander Linden, Joannes’.

[10] Moorman, Gloria, ‘Discovering Rome through Joan Blaeu’s Admiranda Urbis Romæ: The creation of the town atlas of Rome (Amsterdam, 1663) in the light of Italian-Dutch relationships in the seventeenth century’, unpublished Master’s in Media Studies, University of Leiden, 2014, p. 60.

[11] CERL Thesaurus: ‘Du Sarrat, Arnaud’.

[12] CERL Thesaurus: ‘Montalant, François’ and ‘Mariette, Pierre Jean’.

[13] CERL Thesaurus: ‘Babuty, François’; ‘Anisson, Laurent Louis’ ; ‘Rollin, Jacques’.

[14] CERL Thesaurus: ‘Barnabé, Guillaume’.

[15] Macgregor, Arthur, ‘Sloane, Sir Hans, baronet (1660–1753), physician and collector’, ODNB.

[16] See McConnell, Anita, ‘L.F. Marsigli’s visit to London in 1721, and his report on the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 47, no. 2 (1993), 179-204.

[17] Guerrini, Anita, ‘Mead, Richard (1673–1754), physician and collector of books and art’, ODNB.

[18] Levine, J.M., ‘Woodward, John (1665/1668–1728), physician, natural historian, and antiquary’, ODNB.

[19] Burtchaell, G.D. and T.U. Sadleir (eds), Alumni Dublinenses … (Dublin, 1935), p. 714.

[20] Bergin, John, ‘James Stopford, (c. 1697–1759), Church of Ireland bishop of Cloyne’, Dictionary of Irish Biography.

[21] ‘Thomlinson, William Henry’ in Clergymen of the Church of England Database; ‘Hagelis, Joannes’ in DBNL.

[22] Bibliotheca Marckiana … (The Hague: Pieter de Hondt, 1727).

[23] Morrison, Stuart L., ‘Smith, Joseph (1673/4?–1770), book collector and patron of the arts’, ODNB.

[24] Bibliotheca Hulsiana, sive catalogus librorum… collegit Samuel Hulsius … (The Hague: Swart and de Hondt, 1730).

[25] Prince Eugene had a distinct (and, given his illustrious military career), highly understandable interest in geographical works of this kind: Feola, Vittoria, ‘Prince Eugene and his Library. A preliminary analysis’, Rivista Storica Italiana (2014), 762.

[26] Curl, James Stevens, and Susan Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of architecture (Oxford, 2015), p. 869.