In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were produced before the printing press became widespread on the continent and are distinct from manuscripts, which are documents written by hand. Some authorities include block books from the same time period as incunabula, whereas others limit the term to works printed using movable type.
The Gutenberg Bible was the earliest major book printed in Europe using mass-produced metal movable type. It marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of printed books in the West. The book is valued and revered for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities as well as its historical significance. It is an edition of the Latin Vulgate printed in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, in present-day Germany. Forty-nine copies have survived. They are thought to be among the world's most valuable books, although no complete copy has been sold since 1978. In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible displayed in Frankfurt to promote the edition, and that either 158 or 180 copies had been printed.
Book collecting is the collecting of books, including seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever books are of interest to a given collector. The love of books is bibliophilia, and someone who loves to read, admire, and a person who collects books is often called a bibliophile but can also be known as an bibliolater, meaning being overly devoted to books, or a bookman which is another term for a person who has a love of books.
Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach was an American collector, scholar, and dealer in rare books and manuscripts. In London, where he frequently attended the auctions at Sotheby's, he was known as "The Terror of the Auction Room." In Paris, he was called "Le Napoléon des Livres". Many others referred to him as "Dr. R.", a "Robber Baron" and "the Greatest Bookdealer in the World".
Henry Bradshaw was a British scholar and librarian.
Elizabeth Lewisohn Eisenstein was an American historian of the French Revolution and early 19th-century France. She is well known for her work on the history of early printing, writing on the transition in media between the era of 'manuscript culture' and that of 'print culture', as well as the role of the printing press in effecting broad cultural change in Western civilization.
The Mainz Psalter was the second major book printed with movable type in the West; the first was the Gutenberg Bible. It is a psalter commissioned by the Mainz archbishop in 1457. The Psalter introduced several innovations: it was the first book to feature a printed date of publication, a printed colophon, two sizes of type, printed decorative initials, and the first to be printed in three colours. The colophon also contains the first example of a printer's mark. It was the first important publication issued by Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer following their split from Johannes Gutenberg.
Frederick Richmond Goff was an American rare book librarian and specialist in incunabula.
Terry Belanger is the founding director of Rare Book School (RBS), an institute concerned with education for the history of books and printing, and with rare books and special collections librarianship. He is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia (UVa), where RBS has its home base. Between 1972 and 1992, he devised and ran a master's program for the training of rare book librarians and antiquarian booksellers at the Columbia University School of Library Service. He is a 2005 MacArthur Fellow.
Edward Gordon Duff, known as Gordon Duff, was a British bibliographer and librarian known for his works on early English printing.
David Pearson is an English librarian who served as the Director of Culture, Heritage and Libraries at the City of London Corporation between 2009 and 2017; his brief covered London Metropolitan Archives, Guildhall Library, City Business Library, Guildhall Art Gallery, and other institutions. He retired in early 2017 to focus on his work in book history and is now a Senior Member of Darwin College, Cambridge ; Honorary Senior Research Associate of the Department of Information Studies, University College London ; and Senior Fellow of the Institute of English Studies, University of London. A member of the Faculty of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, he teaches regularly at the London Rare Book School.
The Scheide Library once a private library, is now a permanent part of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections of the Princeton University Library. It is housed in the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library on the campus of Princeton University.
Robert George Collier Proctor, often published as R. G. C. Proctor, was an English bibliographer, librarian, book collector, and expert on incunabula and early typography.
Henrietta Collins Bartlett (1873–1963) was an American bibliographer, Shakespeare scholar, and creator of the first modern census of Shakespeare's published drama. She has been called "one of the foremost bibliographers of her time," despite working in a scholarly field in which "the overwhelming majority has been male."
The Sandars Readership in Bibliography is an annual lecture series given at Cambridge University. Instituted in 1895 at the behest of Mr Samuel Sandars of Trinity College (1837–1894), who left a £2000 bequest to the University, the series has continued down to the present day. Together with the Panizzi Lectures at the British Library and the Lyell Lectures at Oxford University, it is considered one of the major British bibliographical lecture series.
The McKenzie Lectures are a series of annual public lectures delivered by "a distinguished scholar on the history of the book, scholarly editing, or bibliography and the sociology of texts". The lectures are held in Oxford at the Centre for the Study of the Book. The series was inaugurated in 1996, in honour of Donald Francis McKenzie (1931–1999), upon his retirement as Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism, University of Oxford.
Megan Curran Rosenbloom is an American medical librarian and expert on anthropodermic bibliopegy, the practice of binding books in human skin. She is a team member of the Anthropodermic Book Project, a group which scientifically tests skin-bound books to determine whether their origins are human. Rosenbloom is the author of Dark Archives, a 2020 non-fiction book on the history, provenance, and myths about books bound in human skin.
Ruth Mortimer was an American rare books curator and librarian, known for her work at both Harvard University and Smith College. From 1988 to 1992, Mortimer served as the president of the Bibliographical Society of America, the first woman to inhabit the role.
Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin is a 2020 non-fiction book by the medical librarian and death-positive advocate Megan Rosenbloom. Dealing with anthropodermic bibliopegy, the binding of books in human skin, it expounds upon Rosenbloom's research on such books and their historical, ethical, and cultural implications.
