H. D. L. Vervliet

Hendrik Désiré Louis 'Dis' Vervliet (Antwerp, 31 December 1923 – August 2020) was a Belgian librarian and historian of books and printing.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]}

Vervliet in 1980

Life

Vervliet was born into a working-class family^[5] and received a doctorate in classical philology in 1955.^[10] In his career, Vervliet worked as deputy director of the Museum Plantin-Moretus,^[11] professor and librarian of the University of Antwerp^[12][13] and as professor of book and library history of the University of Amsterdam.^[11][14][15] In 1968 he became a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts in the humanities class.^[10] His wife was Irma Regemortels (1928-2006), also a librarian.^[4][16]

Work

In his writing on the history of books, Vervliet was particularly known for his work on printing in the sixteenth century in France, Belgium and the Netherlands,^[17][18][19] and the work of Robert Granjon.^{[20][21][22][23][24]} In 2013, Ton Croiset van Uchelen wrote that he "is now generally recognised as the authority on the sixteenth-century typefaces of Western Europe."^[11]

After retiring, Vervliet published extensively, in his eighties completing publishing two large volumes on printing in the French renaissance.^[18] In his nineties he additionally completed a book on Granjon's floral ornaments,^[20] and then a book covering Granjon's entire career published at the age of 94.^[21] Returning to the topic of civilité types, which he had published on at the start of his career, at the time of his death he had recently published a paper extending his earlier research on the types of Philippe Danfrie^[25] and was working on another paper on Granjon's civilité types.^[26][25][27]

A festschrift was published for Vervliet in 1988.^[5]