ELZEVIER', or ELZEVIR, the name of a celebrated family of printers at Amsterdam, Leyden, and other places in Holland, whose beautiful editions were chiefly published between the years 1583 and 1680. Louis, the first of them, is said to have been born at Louvain about the year 1540. He was induced by religious disturbances to leave his native city, and in 1580, he settled as a bookbinder and bookseller in Leyden, where he died about 1617. The first work edited by him bears the title Drusii EBraicorum Quces tionurn ac .Responsionum Libri Duo, 'videlicet Secundus ac Tertius, in Academia Lugdunensi MDLXXXIII. Veneunt Lugd-uni Batavorum spud Elseuirium e Region &holm Nova. The second, a Eutropius by P. Merula, bears the date 1592, and was long erroneously believed to be the first that issued from E.'s press. Five out of Louis' seven sons con. tinued to carry on their father's business. Their names were Matthew, Louis, Aegi dius, Jodocus (Joost), and Bonaventura. The last, in conjunction with his nephew Abraham E. (a son of Matthew), prepared the smaller editions of the classics, in 12mo and 16mo, which are still valued for their beauty and correctness. It is mainly on these
that their reputation is based. The house of E., in Amsterdam, was established by Louis, the son of Jodocus E., in 1638. Peter E., grandson of the last mentioned, carried on the bookselling business in Utrecht, and died in 1696. For more than a century, however, this family has ceased to have any connection with book-printing. It is believed that 1213 works in all proceeded from the E. presses. Amongst the most beautiful are the editions of Pliny, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, and Cusar; and, though for Greek and Hebrew texts the house of E. was surpassed by that of Stephens (q.v.), their Latin classics are unrivaled both for beauty and correctness. It is said that the Elze viers generally employed women to correct the press, under the conviction that they would be less likely than men, on their own responsibility, to introduce alterations into the text. Compare Adry, Notice sur les Imprimeurs de la Famille des Elzeviers (Paris, 1806), and Pieter's Annales de l'Imprimerie Elsevirienne (Ghent, 1851-52).