‘But to Whose Charge Shall I Lay It? Your Printer Is All Readie Loaden’

Abstract

Although the rhetorical practice by which authors or printers asked forgiveness of readers for ‘errors escaped’ in the printing is familiar, there has been little exploration of those instances in which readers did not forgive the printers’ errors. Looking at a diverse range of texts, this chapter demonstrates that in early modern religious disputes there was an established discourse around printers’ errors that aimed at apologising and attributing responsibility, reflecting anxiety among both authors and printers about the need for textual accuracy. The authors of works about religious matters highlighted flaws in others’ texts to undermine the arguments and scholarship of their adversaries. They also used the idea as a defence for defects in their own publications, though such rhetoric came to be regarded as a poor excuse for textual slips. These practices offer insights into how early modern authors and printers perceived culpability for errors and how they deployed the concept in their scholarly debates.