The Venetian printer Aldus Manutius (c. 1452-1515) is credited with helping to create the notion of personal reading, thanks to his portable, accessible editions of the secular classics. “Aldus Manutius: A Legacy More Lasting Than Bronze,” an exhibiton at the Grolier Club in Manhattan, gathers nearly 150 Aldines, as books from the press he founded in 1494 are known.”
CURIOUS strollers in early-16th-century Venice might have paused by the shop of the great printer Aldus Manutius only to be scared off by a stern warning posted over the door.
“Whoever you are, Aldus asks you again and again what it is you want from him,” it read. “State your business briefly, and then immediately go away.”
To state the current business at hand briefly, Aldus is the subject of a new exhibition commemorating the 500th anniversary of his death — and the birth of reading as we know it.
Aldus has attracted some pop-culture attention in recent years, at least among those with a geekish taste for printing history. The novel “The Rule of Four” gave his most famous book, the enigmatic “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” an upmarket “Da Vinci Code” treatment in 2004. There was also Robin Sloan’s 2012 best seller, “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” which turned Aldus into the founder of a shadowy secret society headed for an apocalyptic showdown with Google.
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Mr. Clemons, a managing partner at the financial firm Brown Brothers Harriman, bought the first of the roughly 1,000 Aldines in his collection while an undergraduate classics major. “It may now finally be worth what I paid,” he joked.
Mr. Fletcher, who acquired the first of his 125 Aldines when he was 16, summed up their allure with what might be called Aldine understatement.
“Aldus was a person with a strong aesthetic sense who was also able to work with common sense,” he said. “This is an almost completely unknown phenomenon, even today.”
“Aldus Manutius: A Legacy More Lasting Than Bronze” runs through April 25 at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, Manhattan; 212-838-6690, grolierclub.org. Admission is free, and free tours are on Wednesdays from 1-2 p.m.
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