In my previous Collation post I explained what a bibliographic
fingerprint is and how it works. The examples I will discuss in
this post will demonstrate how useful the fingerprint is to
compare copies remotely and to identify title editions and
variants within editions. Some of these discoveries may shed
more light on (bad) habits in book production and the marketing
of books in the early modern period. If you doubt what printer’s
and book sellers want you to believe, just verify some
fingerprints! A Second “Second Edition” The rich Folger
collections house an interesting story written by the prolific
German Jesuit Hieremias Drexel (Augsburg 1581–Munich 1638).
Unfortunately, the title page of this book is severely damaged.
The upper half of the engraving is torn off, but parts of the
author’s name (“R.P. Hier[emia Drexel]”), his affiliation (“Soc.
Ie[su]”), and the name of the city where he spent the largest
part of his career (“Monachii”) are still readable. More
importantly, the imprint at the bottom is st