Old Cracow Editions of the First Book of Polish Proverbs.
1. Stanisław Giermański as the Editor of the Edition of Salomon Rysiński’s Przypowieści polskie / Polish Proverbs from 1619

This paper is the first part of a triptych aimed at presenting the publishing history of three Cracow reissues from 1619, 1620 and 1634 of the collection of Polish proverbs Proverbiorum Polonicorum […] centuriae decem et octo prepared by Salomon Rysiński, which was first published in Lubcz on the Neman in 1618. This part is devoted to the fi rst of these renewals, which was published in Cracow in 1619 without  naming the printer. However, the woodcut strips used on the title page of the collection allow us to determine the publishing house in which it was issued. It was the workshop that operated under the aegis of Jakub Sybeneicher’s heirs. It was then managed by Stanisław Giermański, who was probably also the initiator and editor of the reissue.

He introduced a number of signifi cant innovations to his edition. He polonised the Latin title of the original, omitted the author’s dedication, poems recommending Rysiński’s collection, and the numeration of proverbs (turning the centauries of the fi rst print into chapters), and removed some 80 proverbs from the Polish list, almost 30 Latin equivalents of native proverb, which Rysiński provided in the original, assuming that his work would be used by foreign paroemiologists, as well as all source annotations discussing the origins of the Polish and Latin dicta. Moreover, a number of proverbial phrases noted by Rysiński were edited by Giermański, who changed their shape into one that was better known in Cracow. Most of these changes were dictated by mercantile considerations. On the one hand, the volume presented by Giermański was reduced by 1.5 sheets, as compared to the fi rst edition, which made it possible to reduce the printing costs and make the typographer  earn more on the reedition. On the other hand, thanks to the title translated into Polish and the omitted numeration of proverbs, the collection better suited the needs of the local audiences, whose needs Giermański, a book seller, knew better than Rysiński.

This paper is the first part of a triptych aimed at presenting the publishing history of three Cracow reissues from 1619, 1620 and 1634 of the collection of Polish proverbs Proverbiorum Polonicorum […] centuriae decem et octo prepared by Salomon Rysiński, which was first published in Lubcz on the Neman in 1618. This part is devoted to the fi rst of these renewals, which was published in Cracow in 1619 without  naming the printer. However, the woodcut strips used on the title page of the collection allow us to determine the publishing house in which it was issued. It was the workshop that operated under the aegis of Jakub Sybeneicher’s heirs. It was then managed by Stanisław Giermański, who was probably also the initiator and editor of the reissue.

He introduced a number of signifi cant innovations to his edition. He polonised the Latin title of the original, omitted the author’s dedication, poems recommending Rysiński’s collection, and the numeration of proverbs (turning the centauries of the fi rst print into chapters), and removed some 80 proverbs from the Polish list, almost 30 Latin equivalents of native proverb, which Rysiński provided in the original, assuming that his work would be used by foreign paroemiologists, as well as all source annotations discussing the origins of the Polish and Latin dicta. Moreover, a number of proverbial phrases noted by Rysiński were edited by Giermański, who changed their shape into one that was better known in Cracow. Most of these changes were dictated by mercantile considerations. On the one hand, the volume presented by Giermański was reduced by 1.5 sheets, as compared to the fi rst edition, which made it possible to reduce the printing costs and make the typographer  earn more on the reedition. On the other hand, thanks to the title translated into Polish and the omitted numeration of proverbs, the collection better suited the needs of the local audiences, whose needs Giermański, a book seller, knew better than Rysiński.