The Plantin Press Online is based on The Plantin Press (1555-1589), an extensive six-volume bibliography of the editions printed and published in the printing office of Christophe Plantin at Antwerp and Leiden, compiled by Leon Voet, former curator of the Museum Plantin-Moretus Museum. The printed introduction to this edition is available here.
It contains detailed information on the editions printed during the lifetime of Plantin. During the months that followed after his death, the Officina Plantiniana continued to publish books with his imprint. These editions are included in the dataset, except for the works that clearly have been produced his passing. Between 1583 and 1585, Plantin had a press at Leiden. In 1586, his son-in-law Frans Raphelengius took over the business, which is why only the editions have been described until Frans Raphelengius came to own the printing office.
The 6 volumes of Voet’s bibliography were published in 1981. In 2022, these volumes were scanned, ocr-ed and converted to xml to provide the basis for this online research tool. The dataset continues to be updated and complemented with information that has been retrieved since the publication in 1981 and links to other (digital) resources are and will be added. A work in progress, this makes the Plantin Press Online a continuously growing research resource for all editions by Christophe Plantin.
The record of each work follows the structure of the descriptions in the printed bibliography, but there are a number of differences. Each record of an edition either printed or published by Plantin starts with a unique record ID (cpxxxxxx), followed by the number originally assigned by Voet, if applicable. When available, we include the link to the catalogue record of a copy preserved in Museum Plantin-Moretus. The records then include (if applicable) the following: