Aldus may have printed his Greek Book of Hours with half an eye to the Eastern Mediterranean market but there is no doubt that he also had a pedagogic purpose. “Politian himself said he had learned Greek by studying a bilingual Bible, and the familiarity of the liturgical content to Latin speakers lent itself to use in these books as simple readers for beginners” (Martin Davies, Aldus Manutius, British Library 1995).

Contemporary signature at foot of title, a Hellenization of the Dutch name Suiskens. We cannot place him but he was evidently a careful reader and in a series of marginal notes, draws attention to an extraordinary confusion in the printing house. The book is a 16mo. in eights where two gatherings are printed on a single sheet of paper and then cut apart for folding. Here the second forme to be printed of gatherings I and K was placed on the press the wrong way around, so that each leaf of gathering I carries text from gathering I on the recto and gathering K on the verso, and vice versa. The text is, of course, complete, but the reader has to jump from the recto of one leaf in one gathering to the verso of another in the other. We have not discovered whether other copies replicate this printer’s error.
      [Bookseller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd.]