In a recent article in the New York TIMES, Philip Brooks, noted rare
book commentator, remarked that there is nothing particularly mysterious
about incunabula. A polysyllabic Latin word with an impressive sound, it
means simply cradle books, or books published during the infancy of
printing. They occupy only a short span in the history of books, no more
than about fifty years, from the middle to the end of the fifteenth
century. To many collectors they are the true aristocrats, not only for
their antiquity, but often for their artistic beauty. For nearly 500
years printers have been trying but none have been able to approach the
typographical perfection of the Gutenberg Bible, which was finished
around 1455. Even the paper of these ancients is of superior quality
that they will outlive most books issued today.
Mr. Brooks further declared that while a common objection to collecting
incunabula is that they are incomprehensible, being printed in dead
languages that nobody reads nowadays, it is nevertheless a fact that
before the end of the century, books were being published freely in the
vernacular, and Caxton and his successors were making valuable
contributions to English literature in their native tongue.
Since the middle of the seventeenth century, when the output of the
fifteenth century first began to attract notice as collectible objects,
they have been subject to such intensive scrutiny that they are now the
most thoroughly bibliographed books in the world. From Panzer
(1793-1803) and Hain (1826-1834), who described 16,300 titles, the
scientific study evolved through the brilliant work of Bradshaw and
Proctor until its culmination in the British Museum catalogue.
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