Printers' Flowers as Evidence in the Identification of Unknown Printers: Two Examples From 1715.

This paper identifies John Darby of Bartholomew Close as the printer of the 1715 Tonson edition of the Works of Edmund Spenser, and the third edition of Edward Young's A Poem on the Last Day. The identifications are based on the evidence of printers' flowers. It is shown that composed arrangements of printers' flowers were sometimes kept as standing type and used in the printing of multiple works; the fact that this can allow unknown printers to be identified is explained and demonstrated for the first time. The collation of arrangements of printers' flowers, it is suggested, could be used more extensively in the future to gain a fuller picture of John Darby's career, and could potentially be applied to the works of other printers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]