11
Of course it is not complete: no bibliography of its age is. However, the British Library collection is large enough to be of use statistically. Sir Henry Thomas noted that the Library had 30-33 per cent of the books known to have been printed in the major cities of sixteenth-century Castile (including Madrid); but he too pointed out that he was relying on out-of-date bibliographies («The Output of Spanish Books in the Sixteenth Century», The Library, IV, I (1920-21), 69-94).
12
See J. Moll, «Diez años sin licencias para imprimir comedias y novelas en los reinos de Castilla: 1625-1634», Boletín de la Real Academia Española, 54 (1974), 97-103.
13
Two lists of Madrid booksellers (one with forty-four, the other with forty-eight names) prepared by the Inquisition about 1650 contain many names also found in imprints, but the Inquisitors rated only six of the forty-four as «quantiossos», while some names are quite unfamiliar (E. M. Wilson, «Dos memoriales de los libreros de Madrid a mediados del siglo XVII», El libro español, 3, núm. 26 (1960), 52-54).
14
For example, the printer Francisco Nieto died in 1673. His widow printed on with apparently increasing irregularity until at least 1696. In 1696 she produced a fattish folio decorated with woodblocks her husband had used in the 1660s (i. e. the imprint seems trustworthy). Does one record her as «active 1673-96», ignoring her ostensibly scant output, or does one assume (without proof) that she was an occasional printer with other means of support? If the latter, how does one record her?
15
The text is in F. Cendán Pazos, Historia del derecho español de prensa e imprenta (1503-1966) (Madrid, 1974), pp. 24-26.
16
«Nunc quum nescio
quo Hispaniae nostrae fato accidit ut in typographies officinis
vulgares cantiunculae, nonnumquam etiam obscoenae, et inepti
rhytmuli, aut his etiam indoctiores libri assidue operas
exerceant»
: see M. Bataillon, Erasmo y España
(Mexico, 1966), p. 163.
17
Las obras de la S. Madre Teresa de Jesús, 3 vols (Antwerp, 1649), 1, 6-7.
18
Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y de Castilla, 5 vols (Madrid, 1882-1903), V, 687-88.
19
Book 1, Chapter 68; I quote from the edition of Madrid, 1676, p. 99.
20
I quote from the edition of Madrid, 1673, p. 255.