Tag: bibliography
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New Light on the Rylands Gutenberg Bible
In 2013, the John Rylands Library in Manchester used multi-spectral imaging to recover an almost completely erased ownership inscription in volume I of their Gutenberg Bible (figure 1).[1] The provenance of this Bible had been unknown prior to its nineteenth-century owner, George John, 2nd Earl Spencer (1758-1834), until the previous year when Eric Marshall White,…
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Finding Scottish University Graduates in Early Modern Records
Inspired by a recent query from one of my postgraduates, I thought there might be some value in providing a quick tutorial in how to locate the academic backgrounds of early modern Scots with university degrees. Let us suppose you find a Scot in a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century document with the honorific “M[aste]r”. Unlike its more…
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Brunet: The Great Bibliographer
Jacques-Charles Brunet (1780-1867) was probably the greatest bibliographer of the nineteenth century, perhaps of almost any century. The son of a bookseller, his universal Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur de livres first appeared in three volumes in 1810 and continued to re-appear in increasingly expanded editions over the course of his lifetime. Organised alphabetically,…
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The Joys of Bibliography
“Once you have approached the mountains of cases in order to mine the books from them and bring them to the light of day – or, rather, of night – what memories crowd in upon you!” — Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library” This year I’ve been teaching a series of masterclasses on descriptive bibliography to…
Kelsey Jackson Williams 