Elsevier Elzevir, Or Elzevier, the name of a family of Dutch printers, established at Ley-den, Amsterdam, the Hague, and Utrecht, in the 16th and 17th centuries, and who for nearly 100 consecutive years were distinguished for the number and elegance of their publications, especially their editions of ancient authors. - Louis, the founder of the family, born in Lou-vain in 1540, emigrated to Holland in 1580, in consequence of the religious troubles which agitated his native city, and settled in Leyden, where he died, Feb. 4, 1617. He became a petty officer of the university of Leyden, and also engaged in the business of a bookseller and printer. In the latter capacity he is said to have produced, between 1583 (when the Drusii Ebraicarum Quoestionum, ac Responsi-onum libri duo, the first book bearing the imprint of Elzevir, appeared) and his death, 150 works. He is said to have been the first printer who observed the distinction between the vowels i and u and the corresponding consonants j and v. Of the seven sons of Louis, five followed the business of their father, viz.: Mattheus, who was established at Leyden, where upon his death in 1G40 he was succeeded by his sons Abraham and Bonaventure, who became partners in Leyden; Louis (II.), who in 1590 established a printing house at the Hague, and died there in 1621; Gilles, who was in business at the Hague and subsequently in Leyden; Joost, who settled in Utrecht; and Bonaventure, who was born in 1583 and died about 1652. Bonaventure in 1626 associated himself with Abraham, the son of Mattheus, and from their press issued those numerous exquisite editions of the classics, as also those on history and politics (62 vols. 16mo), called by the French Les petites republiques, with which the name of Elzevir is now most familiarly associated.

The Livy and Tacitus of 1634, the Pliny of 1635, the Virgil of 1636, and the Cicero of 1642, are among the best of their productions. Abraham died Aug. 14, 1652. Their children carried on the business for some time under the name of their parents. Louis (III.), son of Louis (II.), founded the Elzevir printing establishment at Amsterdam in 1638, and entered into a partnership with his cousin Daniel in 1654, which lasted 10 years. He was born in 1617, and died in 1670, at which time the reputation of the Elzevirs had reached its highest point. Among their chief publications are the celebrated New Testament of 1658, a series of Latin classics, the Etymologicon Linguoe Latino?, and an edition of the Corpus Juris. Between 1664 and 1680 Daniel carried on the business alone, and in that period published 152 works. He was the last of his family who excelled in printing, although his widow and Pieter, grandson of Joost, carried on the business for some years. - The merit of the Elzevirs consisted less in their learning or critical abilities, in which they were inferior to the Aldi, the Stephenses, and others of the celebrated printers of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, than in the clearness and beauty of their type, the excellent quality of their paper, which was made in Angouleme, and the general elegance of their publications.

The texts of their editions of the classics were generally reprints, and were sometimes pirated from other sources. All their choice works, particularly the small editions of the classics, bring large prices at the present day; and the name Elzevir applied to a book has become a synonyme for typographical correctness and elegance. The Elzevirs printed several catalogues of their works, but the best account of them is to be found in the Notice de la collection d'auteurs latins, francais et italiens, imprimee de format petit en 12?no par les Elzevir, in Brunet's Manuel du libraire (Paris, 1820), and in Berard's Essai bibliographique sur les editions des Elzevirs (Paris, 1822). See also Pieter's Annates de l'imprimerie elzevirienne (Ghent, 1851-'2), in which the number of works printed by the Elzevirs is stated at 1,213, of which 068 were in Latin, 44 in Greek, 126 in French, 32 in Flemish, 22 in oriental languages, 11 in German, and 10 in Italian. Their imprint was: Apud Elzevirios, or Ex Officina Elzeviriorum or Elzeviriana; and frequently the title page of their books contains a device of a blazing wood pile, emblematic of their name, compounded of els, alder, and vuur, fire.