Details
GESTA ROMANORUM [German:] Das Buch von der Geschicten oder geschehen Dingen der Römer. Augsburg: Johann Schobsser, 23 February 1489.
Chancery 2° (261x188mm). Collation: π4 a-q8 (π1r xylographic title, π1v blank, π2r register, a1r text, q8r colophon, q8v blank). 131 (of 132, lacking d1) leaves. 35-36 lines and headline, double column. Type: 1:109G. Woodcut Maiblumen capitals and dragon S, some coloured in red. (Tiny hole in a1 affecting one letter, small piece torn from extreme lower corner of n4.) Nineteenth-century brown morocco over pastepaper boards, bound by Belz-Niedrée, central gilt stamp of Bibliothèque de Mello, gilt spine, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, in marbled paper slipcase. Provenance: purchase inscription washed from title: Emptus Anno domini 14[--], some marginal annotations washed out, including date 1578 on final blank verso; Baron Achille Seillière, with his supralibros (Bibliothèque de Mello) on both covers (sale Sotheby's, 1 March 1887, no.492, bought by Quaritch for ¨10 15s); Charles Fairfax Murray (H.W. Davies, Catalogue of a Collection of Early German Books in the Library of C. Fairfax Murray, London 1962, no.182) with his ex-libris; Robert Walsingham Martin, with his bookplate.
FIRST EDITION IN GERMAN of this most popular medieval collection of moralizing tales known as exempla. Drawn from classical as well as Arabic sources, such as the fables of Bidpai, these stories could also provide material for sermons, as witnessed in the use made of them by Robert Holcot in his Moralitates. This vernacular recension reflects a compilation different from the Latin one and contains 93 stories with allegorial interpretation. This copy, with its distinguished provenance, joins only 3 others recorded in America; outside the British Library no other copy is in the U.K. H *7753; BMC II, 378 (IB. 6623); Goff G-299; Pellechet 5262; Polain(B) 1657; IGI 4275; Murray German 182; BSB G-215
Chancery 2° (261x188mm). Collation: π4 a-q8 (π1r xylographic title, π1v blank, π2r register, a1r text, q8r colophon, q8v blank). 131 (of 132, lacking d1) leaves. 35-36 lines and headline, double column. Type: 1:109G. Woodcut Maiblumen capitals and dragon S, some coloured in red. (Tiny hole in a1 affecting one letter, small piece torn from extreme lower corner of n4.) Nineteenth-century brown morocco over pastepaper boards, bound by Belz-Niedrée, central gilt stamp of Bibliothèque de Mello, gilt spine, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, in marbled paper slipcase. Provenance: purchase inscription washed from title: Emptus Anno domini 14[--], some marginal annotations washed out, including date 1578 on final blank verso; Baron Achille Seillière, with his supralibros (Bibliothèque de Mello) on both covers (sale Sotheby's, 1 March 1887, no.492, bought by Quaritch for ¨10 15s); Charles Fairfax Murray (H.W. Davies, Catalogue of a Collection of Early German Books in the Library of C. Fairfax Murray, London 1962, no.182) with his ex-libris; Robert Walsingham Martin, with his bookplate.
FIRST EDITION IN GERMAN of this most popular medieval collection of moralizing tales known as exempla. Drawn from classical as well as Arabic sources, such as the fables of Bidpai, these stories could also provide material for sermons, as witnessed in the use made of them by Robert Holcot in his Moralitates. This vernacular recension reflects a compilation different from the Latin one and contains 93 stories with allegorial interpretation. This copy, with its distinguished provenance, joins only 3 others recorded in America; outside the British Library no other copy is in the U.K. H *7753; BMC II, 378 (IB. 6623); Goff G-299; Pellechet 5262; Polain(B) 1657; IGI 4275; Murray German 182; BSB G-215