Browse Items (420 total)

Published by Fleury Mesplet (1734-1794), this physically tiny work would be the first work printed by Mesplet after his arrival in Montréal in 1776. After leaving Lyon for Avignon, London and Philadelphia, Mesplet settled in Montréal on the…

Printed in Oxford in 1707, at the Sheldonian Theatre, which is seen in the printing device on the title page (not seen here). A travelogue of a journey through the Holy Land, the text is open to an architectural plan, which like engravings, would…

In this work and in others, we see very fine lines in red that delineate different spaces on the page for the printed text. This work carries over the medieval practice used by manuscript copyists, that is, the ruling of spaces in the text in…

A Venetian, Gabriele Giolito de Ferrari (1508-1578), established a bookstore and printing shop in Venice with his father, named “Liberia del Fenice” (the Phoenix bookstore). As we have seen with other printer’s devices, the mark may illustrate the…

This item is on display to show the exquisite richness of the engraving shown. Note the texture and pristine whiteness of the paper used; this was intended for a reader seeking luxury. The engraving would have been passed through the press at a…

This book offers a typical example of the classic formula of “promise” and “reward” that one regularly finds in books of the 15th and 16th centuries. The phrasing varies as per the personality and humour of the owner and how much value he assigns to…

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…

In a fine and elegant script, the annotations appearing in the margins of the work by Papinus are of the hand of a French reader. Due to the distance of several centuries, it is difficult to identify the commentator, but the annotations appear to be…

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.