Full cataloguing of the St Andrews Incunabula Collection complete!
Last weekend marked the close of another cataloguing project: bringing all of the records for our incunabula collection (pre-1501 printed works) up to a full level of description and to provide full indexed access to the collection (our incunabula are found across a number of named collections. This work was done from the end of November 2011 and has seen a total of around 160 existing incunabula records edited and six new records created.
The existing records for the incunabula collection had been created over a number of years by several different people and so to a varying level of standards. The majority of this project work was aimed at cleaning up these records, providing specific points of access and making all of our pre-1501 books easily findable. This work included adding references to all relevant bibliographies: ISTC, USTC, Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke [GW], British Museum Catalogue of XVth century books [BM 15th cent.], Frederick Goff’s Incunabula in American libraries [Goff], and the Catalogue of incunabula in St Andrews University Library (1956). After this work was done, uniform titles were added to all works which required them, full title and imprint (or colophon) transcriptions were added, and the descriptive notes which help researchers identify one issue of a work from another were added. Also, all authors, printers, publishers, illustrators and former owners have now been indexed correctly. This project reported six new holdings to ISTC and three to ESTC, and also included the upgrading of about 70 16th century records of items that were bound-with our incunabula.
I also have added a unique subject string to each incunabula record which brings together all incunabula printed in a certain country, city and year, for example: if a researcher wanted to see what books we have printed in Louvain in 1485, they can now do so.
Below you will find a rogue’s gallery of some of the usual suspects in our collection. The majority of this collection has been in the University for a long time: St Andrews only added around 20 incunabula to its collection in the past 150 years. Indeed, some of these books have been quietly resting on our shelves for hundreds of years. This work really felt like I was wandering the halls of a retirement home banging a loud drum and shouting “Wake up! Wake up!” Many of these books were happy to be explored and revealed themselves quite easily, but some took a great deal of time to really figure out what was going on with them: Were there missing leaves? Who’s signature is this? Why is this bound this way? How did you come to be in St Andrews?
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- The first item in TypNL.A85JT, a collection of six tracts owned by Archbishop William Scheves and John Duncanson, Principal of St Leonards.
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- A leaf from Matthew from the 1480 “Venice Bible”, which is decorated throughout with illuminated initials (TypIV.A80RB).
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- The first leaf of the 1479 Rome printing of the second part of Jerome’s Epistolae, with a large illuminated initial and elaborate intertwined border decoration (TypIR.A79LJ).
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- The first leaf of the 1470 Rome printing of St Thomas Aquinas’s Quaestiones, featuring a miniature of the author within the initial and border decoration (TypIR.A70LT).
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- The first leaf of the 1475 Mantua printing of Pablo de Santa Maria’s Scrutinium Scripturarum, with a puzzle-work illuminated initial featuring Pablo de Santa Maria and Samuel of Morocco (TypIM.A75SP).
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- The title page from the 1493 Nuremberg Chroncile, with multiple different ownership inscriptions (TypGN.A93KS2).
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- The two page spread of Venice from the second copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle (TypGN.A93KS2).
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- The opening pen-decorated initial from the second part of the 1481 Nuremberg printing of John Duns Scotus’s Quaestiones in quattuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (TypGN.A81KD).
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- A series of inky fingerprints found in the margins of the German language 1473 printing of Gregory I’s Dialogorum (TypGA.A73BG).
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- The fly-leaf for TypGA.A72ZG: the lower half of a 1472 broadside almanac printed in Augsburg.
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- The opening page for the 1470’s Augsburg printing of Gregory I’s Epistolae, with lovely woodcut initials (TypGA.A72ZG).
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- Title page, with woodcut printer’s device, for the 1497 Parisian printing of Eusebius’s Historia ecclesiastica (TypFP.A97LE).
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- The front cover of the 1495 printing of Gregory I’s Moralia, featuring possibly the earliest dated panel stamp binding stamp recorded (St. James on upper board, dated 1488, and of the Annunciation on lower board, both bearing name of “Mgr Iacobus Moerart”) (TypFP.A95GG).
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- A woodcut diagram of parts of eye on leaf U5v of v. 2 of the 1498 Lyon printing of Avicenna’s Canon Medicinae (TypFL.A98TH v. 2).
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- The colophon of 1483 William Caxton printing of Quattor Sermones (TypBL.A83CS).
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- Some of the incunabula collection on the shelf, ready for a new life!
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- Collating our two copies of the Nuremberg Chroncile proved to be most interesting: this heavily inked engraving is accompanied by its printer’s fingerprint! (St Andrews copy at TypGN.A93KS and TypGN.A93KS2).
This collection has a lot of highlights, but probably the best find was the two fly-leaves of TypGA.A72ZG: fragments of a broadside almanac for the year 1472 used as fly-leaves for a 1470’s printing of Gregory I’s Epistolae (pictured above). This volume actually has the bottom half of two of these broadsides used as the front and back fly-leaves, and there are only three other copies of this work known to exist, all fragmentary. The copy at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek just happens to be the top half of this broadside, and has been provided online as well, so by putting these two halves back together we can get an idea of what this broadside actually looks like!
Now that my work is done on this collection, it is now time for it to settle back down into quiet slumber, but I hope that the cataloguing that I have done in these past few months will provide a more active research and education life for these books. If you’d like to come in and have a look at any of them, just make an appointment!
–DG
Congratulations and thanks!
Some candidates for inclusion in a second 'Treasures' book here! Congratulations, Daryl.
[…] 1501 and the library has finished cataloguing all items held across various named collections in 2012 . For the workshop Eisermann picked a selection of 20 outstanding copies that he discussed with the […]
[…] incunabula. St Andrews holds around 160 of these early books printed pre-1501 and librarians have finished catalogueing all items held across various named collections in 2012 and Eisermann picket 20 outstanding […]