A Brill Calendar: February 20

A Special Book Sale

Few public auctions have been more far-reaching in maintaining Leyden's linguistic and scholarly reputation than the public sale held in that city on February 20, 1713.

When the last male Elzevier active in publishing and selling books – Abraham - died the year before, it was obvious that the exceptional collection of machines, tools and instruments he owned during the protracted Decline & Fall of what used to be an empire of printing & publishing would be a great resource to an entrepreneur knowing what to do with them. The vast inventory didn’t only include desirable objects which could be used profitably in any kind of print-shop, but also an impressive collection of type for a wide range of exotic scripts like Arabic, Syriac, Samaritan and Hebrew; to name but a few.

It is seldom that a myriad of utensils of all kinds & sizes found a better purchaser. Pieter van der Aa was by far the most extensive and knowledgeable buyer during the auction; a colleague already well-known in the Leyden book-business and its guild - influential both in academic and municipal circles - as a wealthy and shrewd professional with great ambitions. When Pieter, by then well into his fifties, bought the Elzevier office building at the ‘Academieplein’ (‘Academy Square’) as well, all conditions had been fulfilled for him to be appointed in 1715 as ‘Printer to the Academy’; a responsibility he shouldered until 1730, when Samuel I. Luchtmans succeeded him.

In the technological, mercantile and intellectual tradition which would welcome its first Brill imprint almost a century later, Pieter van der Aa played a vital role; mainly by buying at the right time and at the right price.