with privilege

In printing, with privilege is a phrase that appears in the colophon or title page of a book to signal that its publication has been officially licensed and protected by law. From the 16th century onward, European printers and publishers sought exclusive rights to reproduce certain works, granted by monarchs, city councils, or ecclesiastical authorities. The phrase with privilege (or Latin variants like cum privilegio, par privilege, con privilegio) was the printer's public declaration of this protection.

The privilege itself was a monopoly: a legal document that forbade other printers from reproducing the licensed book for a set period, typically five to twenty years. The grant often covered a single title, an author's collected works, or an entire subject category. Venice, the Low Countries, and the Italian city-states issued many of the earliest privileges in the 1470s and 1480s. England formalized the system through the Stationers' Company, chartered in 1557, which controlled printing rights until parliamentary statute reformed copyright law in 1710.

How the protection worked

A privilege was only as strong as the authority behind it. A privilege granted by a city council in Strasbourg had no force in Paris; a royal privilege from Spain meant nothing in the German principalities. Publishers therefore sometimes sought multiple privileges across regions. Violation could result in seizure of books, fines, or destruction of printing stock. However, enforcement was inconsistent and often depended on the printer's resources and political connections to pursue infringement.

The phrase with privilege served as both legal notice and marketing signal. Readers understood it to mean the book was legitimate, officially sanctioned, and produced by an authorized publisher. It also indicated commercial value: a privilege was worth money, and only established, wealthy printers could afford to obtain one. In an era before modern copyright, this was a printer's primary shield against unauthorized reproduction.

By the 18th century, as statutory copyright replaced the privilege system, the phrase fell out of use in English printing. Continental Europe retained privilege language longer in some jurisdictions. Today with privilege appears chiefly in scholarly discussion of early printed books and in facsimiles or critical editions of early works, where it serves as historical documentation of the original legal status of the text.