"limited edition"

[benissimus]

does anyone happen to know a Latin phrase for "limited edition"? I imagine there would not be much need for the term in Classical Latin with the lack of mass publication, but surely a term pops up in some Medieval print. this would be helpful to me in a project I am doing.

[amans]

salue Benissime

well, a word for edition could be editio or recensio, and limited could be expressed by a number of adjectives. but as it is the number printed which is limited I wouldn't qualify the editio by the adjective but a word for quantity. one might say editio quantitatis parvae or editio quantitatis modicae, but I am not really convinced that this is very good just my own musings - I have no idea what they might have said in medieval times. hopefully someone else will post on this, too - a tough query it is!

[whiteoctave]

the matter strikes me as being insoluble. the notion of publication in the Classical and Medieval world was very different from our own, to the extent that once a text had left the hands of the writer he had no jurisdiction over its being copied and circulated. printing was, of course, not invented until the mid 15th cent, so a 'limited edition' would have to mean a text that was copied to a certain number in a given scriptorium - something which i have never heard of being organised. i presume you are speaking of texts rather than a more general notion of 'limited edition'. faute de mieux, you should form a periphrasis that clearly states what is meant, rather than combine editio with a limiting adjective.

~D

[benissimus]

I suspected it might be so, but I thought that a phrase would have been coined for the Latin books published since the invention of printing. Is there a better periphrasis than my editio ad breve tempus/spatium publicata?