A school book, with counter fictitious imprint and numerous annotations was well as a humble yet informative binding with many annotations by early modern students .

723J Quintilian, Marcus Fabius 35-96ad

Marci Fabij Quintiliani Oratoriarum institutionum libri duodecim diligenter emendati. :  Index capitum totius operis ea serie qua explicabuntur.

[Lyons] : [.s.n.] Lyon. 1518 (19 November)  {It looks like Lyon: [Jaques Myt] for Barthèlemi Trot(h)} Price $3,500

Octavo 17 x 10 cm. Signatures: &⁴, a-z⁸, A-Q⁸, R⁵.(R⁶ blank and lacking) This copy is bound in paste paper covered boards, made up of both early printed waste leaves and re-purposed manuscript materials with many repairs and vellum spine. ( see images below).

This copy Housed in a custom clamshell box made to match the binding. Like many editions of Quintilian I have seen and had there are early manuscript marginal annotations, mostly to books one and two in Latin. 

This edition, an Lyonese Aldine contrefaction, includes the dedicatory epistle by Aldus Manutius and which was edited by A. Navagreo and G.B. Ramusio. (1514). There is no printer or place of publication given. The lily on the title page evokes the Florentine press of the Giunti family. The colophon reads: Impressum anno domino. M.D. XViij.xic. mensis Nouembris die.  Printed in italic type. Some Greek characters are present.

Published around year 95 AD, In the first two books, Quintilian focuses on the early education of the would-be orator, including various subjects he should be skilled in, such as reading and composition. “He offers us indeed not so much a theory as a curriculum. For instance in ch. iv of Book I he discusses certain letters, the derivation of words, and parts of speech; in ch. v, the necessity of correctness in speaking and writing, choice of words, barbarisms, aspiration, accent, solecisms, figures of speech, foreign words, and compound words; in ch. vi, analogy, and in ch. viii, orthography” (Laing). Regarding the age at which the orator’s training should begin, Quintilian refers to the views of Hesiod and Eratosthenes, but accepts Chrysippus’ view that a child’s life should never be without education (Quintilian 1.1.15-19). In book III on Quintilian deals with rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery, subjects which might more advanced the the usual student reader, hungry to get on with reading more promising subjects. 

In September, 1416, the Italian humanist and book-hunter Poggio Bracciolini visited a Benedictine monastery in St. Gall, Switzerland. There he found—not in a library but in a dungeon which he declared was not fit for a condemned man—the first complete copy of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria (Orator’s Education, 95 CE) that any scholar had seen for nearly six centuries. Suddenly aware that it was a valuable book, the German monks refused to let Poggio take it away, so he was forced to sit down and copy it by hand over the next 54 days. The reaction to the discovery among humanists, especially in Italy, was swift and fervent. Leonardo Aretino wrote, “I entreat you, my dear Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that I may see it before I die”

— James J. Murphy, “A Quintilian Anniversary and Its Meaning”, Advances in the History of Rhetoric Volume 19, 2016 – Issue 2: An Ancient Master Teacher Speaks to the Modern World: What Quintilian Can Tell Us About Modern Pedagogy (June 2016)

The Printing is a forgery of the Aldus edition, including Aldus’ introduction! In the first part of the sixteenth century Forgeries of Aldus printings were not scarce. In fact they were common enough that Aldus published a complaint letter in 1503 

Aldus complains that:

“it happens that in the city of Lyon our books appeared under my name, but full of errors … and deceived unwary buyers due to the similarity of typography and format (enchiridii forma) …. Furthermore, the paper is of poor quality and has a heavy odor, and the typography, if you examine it closely, exudes a sort of (as I would phrase it) ‘Frenchiness’.

This book, is an archaeology project waiting to happen. To begin from the outside, the binding is obviously utilitarian and quite used and amateurishly repaired. The notes are very dense and in some places quite small, hurried, and of a personal nature. In short this is a working copy for a young (?) student.

To investigate this book the modes of production and practices and uses of materials are unavoidable !