Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 99/1: The Aldine Edition of the Ancient Greek Epistolographers: Roots and Legacy

This special issue of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library is devoted to the Aldine edition of the Ancient Greek epistolographers. Published in Venice in 1499 by Aldus Manutius, the Aldine edition was the first printed edition of most of the thirty-six Greek letter collections that it contains. As such, it embodies the intersection between the medieval epistolary anthologies that predated it and the printed editions of Greek epistolographic collections that followed, which were primarily based on its text. In recent decades, the Aldien edition has been the subject of important works, which have sought to analyse its contents and sources. This issue explores the Aldine edition from three perspectives: its relationship to the epistolary collections found in medieval manuscripts, its relationship to the printed editions that followed it and its legacy and value for the modern scholar studying Ancient Greek epistolography.