Incunable

Page from Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia, printed in red and black by Peter Schöffer (Mainz, 1471). The page exhibits a rubricated initial letter "U" and decorations, marginalia, and ownership stamps of the "Bibliotheca Gymnasii Altonani" (Hamburg).

Incunable, or sometimes incunabulum, plural incunabula or incunables, is a book, pamphlet or even a broadside,[1] that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe. Incunable is the Anglicized (singular) form of "incunabula", Latin for "swaddling clothes" or "cradle"[2] which can refer to "the earliest stages or first traces in the development of anything."[3] A former term for "incunable" is fifteener, referring to the 15th century.

The first recorded use of incunabula as a printing term is in a Latin pamphlet by Bernhard von Mallinckrodt, De ortu et progressu artis typographicae ("Of the rise and progress of the typographic art", Cologne, 1639), which includes the phrase prima typographicae incunabula, "the first infancy of printing", a term to which he arbitrarily set an end, 1500, which still stands as a convention.[4] The term came to denote the printed books themselves in the late seventeenth century.

The end date for identifying a printed book as an incunable is convenient but was chosen arbitrarily. It does not reflect any notable developments in the printing process around the year 1500, and many books printed for a number of years after 1500 continued to be visually indistinguishable from incunables. The term post-incunable is sometimes used to refer to books printed after 1500 up to another arbitrary end date such as 1520 or 1540.

As of 2008, there are between 28,000 and 30,000 different incunable titles known to be extant, while the number of surviving copies in Germany alone is estimated at around 125,000.[5][6]

Contents

Types

There are two types of incunabula in printing: the Block book printed from a single carved or sculpted wooden block for each page, by the same process as the woodcut in art (these may be called xylographic), and the typographic book, made with individual pieces of cast metal movable type on a printing press, in the technology made famous by Johann Gutenberg. Many authors reserve the term incunabula for the typographic ones only.[7]

The spread of printing to cities both in the north and in Italy ensured that there was great variety in the texts chosen for printing and the styles in which they appeared. Many early typefaces were modelled on local forms of writing or derived from the various European forms of Gothic script, but there were also some derived from documentary scripts (such as most of Caxton's types), and, particularly in Italy, types modelled on handwritten scripts and calligraphy employed by humanists.

Printers congregated in urban centres where there were scholars, ecclesiastics, lawyers, nobles and professionals who formed their major customer base. Standard works in Latin inherited from the medieval tradition formed the bulk of the earliest printing, but as books became cheaper, works in the various vernaculars (or translations of standard works) began to appear.

Famous examples and collections

Famous incunabula include the Gutenberg Bible of 1455, the Peregrinatio in terram sanctam of 1486, printed and illustrated by Erhard Reuwich, both from Mainz, the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel, printed by Anton Koberger in 1493, and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, printed by Aldus Manutius with important illustrations by an unknown artist. Other well-known incunabula printers were Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg, Günther Zainer of Augsburg, Johannes Mentelin and Heinrich Eggestein of Strasbourg, Heinrich Gran of Haguenau and William Caxton of Bruges and London.

The first incunable to have woodcut illustrations was Ulrich Boner's Der Edelstein, printed by Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg in 1461. [8]

The British Library's Incunabula Short Title Catalogue now records over 29,000 titles, of which around 27,400 are incunabula editions (not all unique works). Studies of incunabula began in the seventeenth century. Michel Maittaire (1667-1747) and Georg Wolfgang Panzer (1729-1805) arranged printed material chronologically in annals format, and in the first half of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Hain published, Repertorium bibliographicum— a checklist of incunabula arranged alphabetically by author: "Hain numbers" are still a reference point. Hain was expanded in subsequent editions, by Walter A. Copinger and Dietrich Reichling, but it is being superseded by the authoritative modern listing, a German catalogue, the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, which has been under way since 1925 and is still being compiled at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. North American holdings were listed by Frederick R. Goff and a worldwide union catalogue is provided by the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue[9]

The largest collections, with the approximate numbers of incunabula held, include:

First incunable with illustrations, Ulrich Boner's Der Edelstein, printed by Albrecht Pfister, Bamberg, 1461.

Statistical data

The data in this section were derived from the Incunabula Short-Title Catalogue.[32]

Post-incunable

The end date for identifying a printed book as an incunable is convenient but was chosen arbitrarily. It does not reflect any notable developments in the printing process around the year 1500. Books printed for a number of years after 1500 continued to look much like incunables, with the notable exception of the small format books printed in italic type introduced by Aldus Manutius in 1501. The term post-incunable is sometimes used to refer to books printed "after 1500 — how long after, the experts have not yet agreed."[33] For books printed on the Continent, the term generally covers 1501–1540, and for books printed in England, 1501–1520.[33]

See also

References

  1. ↑ For example the Almanach cracoviense ad annum 1474
  2. ↑ C.T. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin dictionary, Oxford 1879, p. 930. The word incunabula is a neuter plural; the singular incunabulum is never found in Latin and not used in English by most specialists.
  3. ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, 1933, I:188.
  4. ↑ Jacqueline Glomski, "Incunabula Typographiae: Seventeenth-Century Views on Early Printing" The Library 2.4 (2001 :336-348).
  5. ↑ British Library: Incunabula Short Title Catalogue gives 29,777 editions as of 8th January 2008, which also includes some prints from the 16th century though (retrieved 11.03.2010).
  6. ↑ According to Bettina Wagner: "Das Second-Life der Wiegendrucke. Die Inkunabelsammlung der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek", in: Griebel, Rolf; Ceynowa, Klaus (eds.): "Information, Innovation, Inspiration. 450 Jahre Bayerische Staatsbibliothek", K G Saur, München 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-11772-5, pp. 207–224 (207f.) the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue lists 28,107 titles published before 1501.
  7. ↑ Oxford Companion to the Book, ed. M.F. Suarez and H.R. Woudhuysen, OUP, 2010, s.v. 'Incunabulum', p. 815.
  8. ↑ Daniel De Simone (ed), A Heavenly Craft: the Woodcut in Early Printed Books, New York, 2004, p. 48.
  9. ↑ "ISTC". http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/. Retrieved 2009-05-16. 
  10. ↑ Bavarian State Library - Facts and Figures 2008
  11. ↑ Incunabula at the Bodleian Library
  12. ↑ Jagiellonian Library in numbers
  13. ↑ Whitesell, David (2006). First supplement to James E. Walsh's Catalogue of the fifteenth-century printed books in the Harvard University Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Library. xiii. ISBN 9780674021457. OCLC 71691077. 
  14. ↑ Uppsala University Library. Special collections: Incunabula
  15. ↑ [1]
  16. ↑ Bibliothèque Mazarine - Collections (French)
  17. ↑ [2]
  18. ↑ [3]
  19. ↑ [4]
  20. ↑ [5]
  21. ↑ The Walters Art Gallery - Ancient, Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts Collections
  22. ↑ [6]
  23. ↑ [7]
  24. ↑ [8]
  25. ↑ BH-Selestat.fr
  26. ↑ Mediatheques-cus.fr.
  27. ↑ [9]
  28. ↑ [10]
  29. ↑ University of Seville at Seville
  30. ↑ INIST.fr
  31. ↑ [11]
  32. ↑ BL.uk, consulted in 2007. The figures are subject to slight change as new copies are reported. Exact figures are given but should be treated as close estimates; they refer to extant editions.
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Carter, John; Barker, Nicolas (2004) (PDF). ABC for Book Collectors (8th ed.). New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press and the British Library. p. 172. ISBN 1‒58456‒112‒2. http://www.ilab.org/download.php?object=documentation&id=29. Retrieved 28 May 2010. 

External links