"In the second half of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth century there was no more widely read meditation book in the German Language." (CE https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07238c.htm) 573J Henricus Suso. (1295-1366) Horologium aeternae sapientiae. Cologne: Johann Landen, December 1500/1501. Price $15,000 Octavo,... Continue Reading →
So here are just 8 of the ones who come to the top of my head. Some Not-So-Famous PrintersThe history of printing is usually told through its giants—Aldus, Plantin, Estienne—but most early books were produced far from those centers, by... Continue Reading →
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Although often gathered under the convenient label of “emblem books,” the four works assembled here occupy a more oblique and revealing position within the history of moral and mnemonic illustration. Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia and Geistliche Schöpfung are not emblem books in any... Continue Reading →
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an exposition on just one emblem from Paradin's Les Devises héroïques 1567. Praestat insignem gloria facti,
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Few books better embody the Counter-Reformation synthesis of image, text, and devotion than Hieronymus Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia (Antwerp, 1595). Conceived as a visual and spiritual instrument for the global mission of the Society of Jesus, this monumental folio unites 153 superb Flemish engravings—by the Wierix circle and their collaborators—with a systematic program of Gospel meditation. Issued posthumously under Jesuit supervision, Nadal’s work stands as one of the great illustrated Gospel books of the late sixteenth century and a cornerstone of Jesuit visual culture.
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Functional, Functioning books a group of heavily annotated books—scholastic compendia, pastoral manuals, humanist classics, and historical authorities—united less by genre than by function.
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The copies that matter most are not always the cleanest ones. This mid-sixteenth-century Cologne edition of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s Epistolae ad familiares survives as a working book, densely annotated by an early modern reader who approached Cicero not as a... Continue Reading →
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A working blog by antiquarian bookseller James Gray, documenting the handling, study, and cataloguing of early printed books and manuscripts. Posts focus on provenance, annotations, bindings, and the material history of books as objects and ideas in use.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY WEEK ABAA Bibliography Week Booksellers ShowcaseJoin exhibitors offering books, maps, ephemera, and more for sale at the Bibliography Week Showcase. The Showcase takes place in conjunction with Bibliography Week at L’Alliance New York located at 22 East 60th Street,... Continue Reading →
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