The earliest printed books didn’t have title pages: they just launched straight in with ‘Here beginneth …’ (in Latin, incipit).  When the title page came along in the 16th century, it was just letter-press. But as the 16th century wore on, title pages grew more ambitious, and were engraved, with the title enclosed in a structure modelled on the facades of buildings of the time. The panels of these fantastic inky edifices included allegorical figures (quite often well-endowed ladies), pithy sayings and emblematic vignettes.

It’s not always easy to work out who was responsible for what. The designs are often signed with a name or names followed by a phrase (in Latin and abbreviated) which at least in theory explained what that person did – delineavit (drew), invenit (devised), sculpsit (engraved) or just fecit (made) – but in practice the roles are blurred.

The best book on the subject is inevitably on English title pages: the alluringly named The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title-page in England, 1550-1660 by Margery Corbett and Ronald Lightbown (London, 1979; British Library X.800/27484). These authors show that in England it was often the author who devised the design.

We Hispanists don’t have the wealth of supporting documents for which we envy our colleagues in English. But in one case we may be sure that the author was also the mastermind behind the title page.

In 1618 budding poet Esteban Manuel de Villegas (1589-1669) published his Las eróticas o amatorias. The title page showed figures of Horace and Anacreon (because these were the authors translated in the book), with at the base an emblem of the rising sun outshining the stars framed by the motto ‘Sicut sol matutinus’ and around the sun ‘Me surgente quid istae?’  [Like the morning Sun.  When I rise, who cares about these?].  ‘Sol matutinus’ puns ‘morning sun’ with ‘sun of Matute’ (Villegas’s birthplace, which made him a son of Matute).

The elaborate title page of Eroticas (Nájera, 1618) RB.23.a.35799

This was all too big-headed for some. Lope de Vega was in no doubt that the author was responsible for the design and put him in his place in his critical tour d’horizon the Laurel de Apolo:

Aspire luego de Pegaso al monte
el dulce traductor de Anacreonte,
cuyos estudios con perpetua gloria
libraron del olvido su memoria;
aunque dijo que todos se escondiesen
cuando los rayos de su ingenio viesen (III, 269-74)

[Then let the dulcet translator of Anacreon
Aspire to Pegasus’s Mount;
His studies with perpetual glory
Have rescued his memory from oblivion;
Though he did tell everyone to take cover
When they saw the sunbeams of his genius.]

Villegas learned his lesson. The issue with the lampooned title page is rare. More common is the second edition of 1620: gone is the bombast of the first, and instead it shows two links striking sparks off a flint, and the legend ‘Con el ocio, lo luzido se desluze. Rompe y luze’ [With idleness, the brilliant grows dim. Strike and shine].

Villegas’ more restrained second edition (Nájera, 1620) 1071.m.46

The British Library has owned the modest second edition since 1871. Only this year did we have the great good fortune of acquiring its overweening predecessor.

Barry Taylor, Curator Hispanic Studies

References:

Margaret Smith, The Title-Page: Its early Development 1460-1510 (London, 2000) 2708.h.839

Barry Taylor, ‘Allegorical title pages in seventeenth-century Spain and Portugal’, in Pruebas de imprenta: estudios sobre la cultura editorial del libro en la España moderna y contemporánea, ed. Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa (Madrid, 2013), pp.67-82