Tag: Books & Printing

15cBookTrade Project

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Books printed between 1450 (the year of Gutenberg’s invention of modern printing) and 1500 (conventional cut-off date in scholarship) are known as incunabula. Some 30,000 editions are known today, in some 450,000 surviving copies, located in about 4,000 different public libraries, mostly in Europe and North America. Each surviving copy has a different history, which can be reconstructed with the help of physical evidence (ownership inscriptions, decoration, binding, coats of arms, manuscript annotations, stamps, prices, etc.) and bibliographical evidence (historic library catalogues, bookseller and auction catalogues, acquisition registers, etc.): all this is known as copy-specific information, or provenance, or material evidence, or post-production evidence. The idea that underpins the 15cBOOKTRADE Project is to use material and documentary evidence to address several fundamental questions relating to the introduction of printing in the West which have so far eluded scholarship, partly because of lack of evidence, partly because of the lack of effective tools to deal with existing evidence.

Lexicons of Early Modern English

Lexicons of Early Modern English

A database of 186 lexical texts published or written in England from 1475 to 1702 that hold fully searchable 620,000 word-entries. LEME offers unique digitized access to dictionaries, glossaries, and other lexical texts in a host of languages, focusing on English but including major works in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. LEME is hosted by the University of Toronto Library and published (since 2006) by the University of Toronto Press. It grows annually.

Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place

Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place

Footprints traces the history and movement of Jewish books since the inception of print.

The history of the book is an important part of humanities scholarship. Especially as more books are digitized, scholars, librarians, collectors, and others have become increasingly attuned to the significance of individual books as objects with their own unique story. Jewish books in particular tell a fascinating story about the spread of knowledge and faith in a global Diaspora.

Every literary work represents a moment in time and space where an idea was conceived and documented. But the history of a book continues long after composition as it is bought, sold, shared, read, confiscated, stored, or even discarded. This history is the essence of Footprints.

Renaissance Dante in Print (1472-1629)

Renaissance Dante in Print (1472-1629)

THIS EXHIBITION presents Renaissance editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy from the John A. Zahm, C.S.C., Dante Collection at the University of Notre Dame, together with selected treasures from The Newberry Library. The Zahm collection ranks among the top Dante collections in North America. Purchased for the most part by Zahm in 1902 from the Italian Dantophile Giulio Acquaticci, the 15th- and 16th- century imprints presented here form the heart of Zahm’s collection, which totals nearly 3,000 volumes, including rare editions and critical studies from the Renaissance to the present. The nine incunable editions and nearly complete series of 16th-century imprints featured in this exhibit constitute essential primary sources for both the history of Dante’s reception during the Renaissance and the early history of the printed book.

The concentrated Dante collection at Notre Dame is nicely complemented by the wide-ranging holdings of The Newberry Library in Renaissance literature and history, and especially for the history of printing and publishing. These two rich and varied collections have often been used by Dantists in the Midwest and from abroad. The complementarity of the collections is mirrored in the formal cooperation of Notre Dame and The Newberry Library through the consortium of The Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies, of which Notre Dame has been an active member since 1983. The exhibit was originally held at the Department of Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Notre Dame, October 15 – December 15, 1993 and the Newberry Library between 15 April – 15 June, 1994, and has been produced in expanded form for Internet publication by a collaboration between the William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies, University of Notre Dame and the ARTFL Project of the University of Chicago. The Devers Program, the ARTFL Project, and the Newberry Library are proud to welcome you to Renaissance Dante in Print (1472-1629).