Inventing the Paperback

At Yifitsin Print Bookshop, Samuel Quinine is preparing an exhibition celebrating the life of Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) printer, publisher and inventor of the semicolon and the prototype of the paperback. He promoted italic type (and was also into Garamond and Zapf's Palatino). In his desire to preserve ancient Greek literature, Manutius introduced personal or pocket editions of the classics in Greek and Latin that anyone could own. He founded the Aldine Press in Venice, which continued to produce finely illustrated books until 1597. Today, antique books printed by the Aldine Press are referred to as Aldines, and Samuel Quinine owns a seventeeth share in a rare edition of the previously mentioned Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. To Quinine, Manutius is a personal god.