On this page, you will find a few resources that will help you construct the historical narrative of the incunabula that you are researching. Contextualize each of the three incunables you have chosen by discussing their relationship to other early works, where they fall in the timeline of other incunabula, what you know about the printers and their other work, etc. What kinds of information can you synthesize from these sources? How may you use these bibliographic utilities to build a picture of the book, its environments, its times?
The Atlas of Early Printing is an interactive site designed to be used as a tool for teaching the early history of printing in Europe during the second half of the fifteenth century.
You can play around with the interactive map as well as take a look at some of their guides on incunabula to help contextualize what you're discovering in your own research!
Are you still uncertain about pagination marks and foliation systems? You're not alone!
Members of the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project for the Bodleian Libraries and Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana wrote an article discussing not just the history of pagination and foliation but also how tricky and problematic the variations in page numbering and foliation of early printing works can be during digitization projects. Click the article title below to read more!
"Working with Foliation and Signatures" by the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project, 2013.
Explore this interactive timeline to learn more about typographical history!
What's the difference between an unopened page and an uncut page? What about untrimmed pages?
Head over to the The Collation, a blog maintained by the Folger Shakespeare Library, to read a great post that explains the difference between these terms. The article includes photographs to help illustrate the differences.Just click the title below to be taken to the blog post:
"Uncut, unopened, untrimmed, uh-oh" by Erin Blake, 2016.
Are you completely enamored now with incunabula?
Check out these digital resources and collections to view more!