Fifth printed edition of the travelogue, Strasbourg 1484

There were four editions of Hans Tucher's travelogue on the market by 1483. This was due not only to the popularity of the work, but also to Tucher's aforementioned confrontation with the Augsburg printer Schönsperger. In addition to the first edition and the authorised Nuremberg edition, Schönsperger presented a corrected third edition, which was published in 1482. A fourth edition was published in 1483, probably in the middle of a plague.

All these books were mainly distributed on markets in Franconia and Swabia. The fifth edition, produced in the Strasbourg office of Heinrich Knoblochtzer in 1484, now testifies to the national interest in Tucher's travel report.

In the early days of book printing there were no copyrights. Knoblochtzer in Strasbourg reprinted the Augsburg first edition – a custom common at the time.

The edition nevertheless has a special bibliophilic value, as it is provided with a woodcut depicting Tucher in the posture of the instructing pilgrim and author. The printer used an existing template here too: this was the cover woodcut included in the Nuremberg edition of the travelogue by Marco Polo from 1477. Knoblochtzer omitted the inscriptions around the original picture of the author but faithfully repeated the figure's posture and the tapestry with pomegranate pattern hanging in the background.

Randall Herz

To the digitised copy