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Médailles sur les principaux événements du règne de Louis le Grand 1702, the making of the book

The type known as the romain du roi, begun in about 1696 but not completed until about 1750, is the earliest instance of a type for which the process of its design, and the materials for making it, largely survive. Its innovative appearance is widely cited as a major influence in the change in printing types that took place during the 18th century. Its first use was in Médailles sur les principaux évènements du règne de Louis le Grand, printed at the Imprimerie Royale, Paris, in 1702. Neither these materials nor the book itself had been examined in detail until the 20th century. They were the subject of an exhibition, ‘Le romain du roi: la typographie au service de l’état’, at the Musée de l’imprimerie, Lyon (2002–2003), of which Mosley was a curator and contributor to the catalogue.This research concerns many questions relating to the making of the type and the book itself, in which copper engravings were used together with the type, and on the presses used for printing. Many inadequately catalogued volumes of proofs at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the records of the ‘graveurs du roi’ in the Archives nationales de France were examined in order to construct a record of the ‘making’ of the book. Two members of the commission which drew up the designs for the type, Jacques Jaugeon and Gilles Filleau des Billettes, were also responsible for draft accounts of punchcutting, typefounding and printing that remain unpublished in the library of the Institut de France. These were transcribed and studied. Undocumented records of the engraved plates, made for the Imprimerie royale but now in the British Library, were drawn on in order to build a picture of the process. Many contradictory anecdotal accounts of the work were discussed and assessed.