Browse Items (259 total)

This exquisite example of a mark of ownership is not even that of a book owner but that of a bookseller in Glasgow, Scotland, who had this item for sale in their shop. This practice ensured that this item could be traced back to its original point of…

Classical texts, authors and classical languages formed the majority of texts printed in the early days of printing. While this item is not as old as its counterparts in the Collection, it does display, very richly, the elaborate Greek fonts that…

The endleaves of this book house a text on the wars of religion which occurred during the reign of Henri IV, specifically on the war that was titled the “Guerre des trois Henri” in 1585. The text speaks primarily of the Huguenots.

Robert Estienne (1503-1559) was the second son of printer Henri Estienne. After his father’s death in 1520, he collaborated with his older brother François and Simon de Colines (whose printer’s device we see in another item on display in this…

The eloquence of Cicero appears to have wildly inspired a number of readers. However, in one case, someone seems less inspired by the art of discourse than infused with a burining desire to go Spear-fiching. If the messy and free-spirited penmanship…

This item shows the printer’s device of Jean Petit (14.. - 1533). Petit was a very prolific printer, and was said to have printed one-tenth of all books printed in Paris from approximately 1493-1530, that is, about 1000 titles. Petit also…

Many hands and many quills have annotated this work by Jerome de Hangest, a theologian hailing from Compiègne and a contemporary of Erasmus. The marginalias annotation, as is the text itself, are in Latin, which would indicate a certain amount of…

William Morris (1834-1896), product of an upper-middle class upbringing of the 19th century, was actually a socialist with a great reverence for the skilled craftsman whose output was a product of labour done by hand, rather than that of…

Who is hiding within the lines of these two portraits in pencil done by an unknown hand? Another caricature is to be found on the verso of the endpaper. While we today might not dream about doodling on the endpapers of an 18th century book, this…

This image depicts the bookplate of Bernard Coleridge, 2nd Baron Coleridge. If the name Coleridge sets off the ringing of bells, it should, as Bernard’s grandfather was the nephew of famed English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).…