Fragments of an early "Vocabulare" edition a missing link in the evolution of the Barlaimont conversation books

The State Library of Victoria and the Huntington Library hold the only known fragments of what is popularly believed to be a c. 1530 edition of Noël van Barlaimont’s Vocabulare, printed in Antwerp by Willem Vorsterman. However, typographical and textual evidence suggests that the book from which the fragments come was printed slightly later by another Antwerp printer, Jan van Loe. In addition, the textual evidence indicates that this edition influenced or was the basis for virtually every subsequent edition of the Vocabulare series of conversation books. It also provides insight into composition practices for multi-column conversation books, indicating that compositors probably set columns simultaneously, on a word-for-word (rather than a line-for-line) basis.