Well, in actuality, what I just brought back from Oak Knoll Books in New Castle, DE is a fabulous facsimile of the first book printed with moveable type, ca. 1455, shown here with TWO ORIGINAL LEAVES from a Gutenberg Bible that we have had at Trinity since the Fall of 1950.
This complete facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible was printed in 1961 by Pageant Books (New York). The reproduction derives from the Insel Verlag edition, which was based on the copy in the Königslichen Bibliothek in Berlin and the copy in the Standischen Landesbibliothek in Fulda, considered to be the most beautifully illuminated of the extant copies. According to the Gutenberg Museum, there are now 49 documented partial or complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible.
The two leaves shown here derive from an incomplete copy that was acquired by the New York bookseller Gabriel Wells in a Sotheby’s sale in November of 1920. Wells decided to “break” his copy and sell it for the most part as individual leaves, accompanied by an essay by Philadelphia collector, A. Edward Newton, entitled “A Noble Fragment.” Our two leaves are from I Chronicles and I Corinthians. Both were given to Trinity in the Fall of 1950 by the Reverend Joseph Groves (Class of 1910), “from the Ogilby sons in memory of their father, Dr. R. B. Ogilby.” Ogilby was the 14th president of Trinity College (1920-1943).
Here is one of the original leaves beside its facsimile counterpart. The acquisition of this facsimile will allow students and faculty to put our “noble fragments” in context, and to make any number of comparisons with later Latin Bibles in the collection, etc., etc.
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on Monday, November 9th, 2015 at 8:03 pm and is filed under book history, New acquisition, oppotunities for research.
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