The Aldine Collection at Tisch Library

After Gutenberg, the most important early European printer was the Italian, Aldus Manutius (Aldo Manuzio, 1449–1515).

 Humanist scholar and tutor for aristocratic Italian families, Aldus made his mark in history by printing scholarly editions of Greek and Latin classics. Neither pressman nor typecutter, his accomplishments lay in the work of editing, book design, type design, and in marshaling the capital and other resources his projects demanded. He introduced the first practicable Greek typeface to print ancient Greek works in the original language, rather than in Latin translation, as had been a mainstay of Classical scholarship in medieval Western Europe. Another of his innovations was the italic typeface, modeled on humanist scripts used by 15th century Italian scribes.

 Aldus also popularized the small octavo format for scholarly and literary works. His octavos made portable and lendable texts which earlier were more apt to exist in large folio formats better suited to reading at a library table or at a substantial desk in the study of a well-to-do humanist.

 A particular printer’s mark identifies books from Aldus: a dolphin curved around an anchor, signifying the adage, festina lente, or “hasten slowly.” The humanist Erasmus, in his Adagia, has this to say of how his friend and collaborator exemplifies festina lente:

 Aldus was as it were born on purpose and, I might say, formed and fashioned by the Fates themselves for learning's benefit, so ardently he desires this one thing only, with such tireless zeal he toils and shirks no labor or hardship so that he might restore the whole of literature entire, unblemished, and pure back to the possession and the hearts of good people.

 Among Tisch Library’s Aldines are the Organon (1495), from the first collected edition of Aristotle; the first collected edition of Plato (1513); and the 1515 Inferno of Dante, illustrated with a two-page diagram, Sito et forma della valle inferna (‘Site and shape of the infernal valley’).