Related Information
According to Carter, incunable/incunables is an anglicization of the original Latin. You will also encounter incunabulum (singular) and incunabula (plural) in the literature. (ABC for Book Collectors, 8th Ed.)
Learn more about incunables at the Folger Shakespeare Library...
Featured items from our members:
Four incunabula leaves (XV, LV, LVI, LX) from the from the "Postilla Super Psalterium"
by HUGO DE SANCTO CARO (d. 1263) -- ANTON KOBERGER (c. 1440-1513)
Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1498. Paperback. Very Good+. [31 January 1498]. The "Postilla" was the commentary on the Psalms written by Cardinal Hugh, of Saint-Cher (c. 1200-1263) also known as Hugo de Sancto Caro. Double column of 72 lines. Printed marginalia. Beautiful large format by the Koberger press, only slight marginal toning or stains in upper right margin.
Offered by Sanctuary Books.
by Slotkin, Stanley (compiler)
1493-1590. Good. Atlas folio (445 x 285). Contains a total of 7 leaves, six of which were tipped in opposite facsimile title-pages (mostly from the wrong editions), and with brief descriptive texts. Library buckram, UGLY stain on front cover and some wear to cloth, contents generally good (see below). VERY LITTLE KNOWN AMERICAN BIBLIOCLAST WHO SOLD NOTHING AND GAVE EVERYTHING AWAY. The "compiler" of the present volume was Stanley Slotkin (1905-1997), born in NYC to impoverished Russian immigrants. As a young entrepreneur he began dealing in junk parts for roller skates and bicycles. Having amassed $15,000 (an incredible sum in those days) in 1937 he founded Abbey Rents Inc. for which he developed an entirely new business concept: rent rather than sell equipment that people only needed temporarily (including medical equipment). By 1967 Slotkin had built 90 Abbey Rents stores nationwide. With success, Slotkin devoted the rest of his long life idiosyncratic philanthropy, including breaking up old books and giving away the leaves to libraries, churches, museums (as long as the leaves would be displayed publicly); among the recipients of Slotkin's leaves were Abbey Rents store employees. Other unusual philanthropic endeavors: free cosmetic surgery for people in need (including those in jail) in order to improve their lives. Much of our knowledge about Slotkin comes from his 30 Sept. 1997 obituary in the Los Angeles Times; see Yvonne Seale's blog "Scattered Leaves and Stanley Slotkin" in which she describes a Slotkin portfolio in the Frazier Hall Library, SUNY Geneseo. As Seale notes, almost every leaf in the Geneseo copy is wrongly identified by Slotkin, thereby creating useful pedagogical pursuits.
Whereas our volume is primarily medical in nature, Brigham Young University holds a Slotkin-created leaf book of Bible leaves, being 13 specimens meticulously catalogued by Maggie Kopp, who diplomatically notes that "Efforts to verify the accuracy of the identification of each book leaf led to the determination that some information was inaccurate or misleading."
CONTENTS:
LOOSELY INSERTED: Schedel, "Nuremberg Chronicle" (German edition). Nuremberg: Koberger, 1493. Fol. LXXXIX (3 woodcut portraits on recto, 10 woodcut portraits on verso intertwined with elaborate woodcut genealogical "tree"). Loosely inserted (gutter margin ragged and with evidence of glue, lower corner filled in, some staining);
1. Mattioli, "Commentarii in libros sex Dioscoridis," Venice, 1560. Pages 25/6 (some staining);
2. Theophile Bonet, Polyalthes (Tom. II), Geneva, 1590 [wrong title-page reproduction opposite, and wrongly identified by Slotkin as: Helmont, "Opuscula Medica" Lyon, 1567]. Pages 637/8 (some staining);
3. Galen [edition unidentifed, but certainly not the "1515" Froben edition as stated by Slotkin, the title-page of which is depicted opposite]. Some staining;
4. Hippocrates, "Opera omnia" (Geneva, 1557), [wrong title-page reproduction opposite, and wrongly identified by Slotkin as "Basel, 1500"). Two columns, Greek and Latin text (folded along right margin). Pages 251/2 (folded along outer margin);
5. Pliny, in French (Lyon: Antoine Tardif, 1684, a line-for-line reprint of the 1556 / 1562 Lyon editions printed by Claude Senneton). The facsimile title-page opposite is from a completely different edition ("1485") and again is wrongly identified by Slotkin. Good condition.
6. [Unidentified by Slotkin but]: Horace. Strassburg: Johann Grüninger, 1498. Fol. XLVI (Argumentum Odes XIX-XX). First illustrated edition of the works of Horace, and the first printed in Germany, with ingenious and delightful woodcuts by the Master of the Gruninger Terence (four woodcuts composed together). Good condition.
COMMENT: Whereas Otto Ege and his commercial "activities" are well known and well researched, Slotkin's Leaf Books and his bibliographic philanthropy remain almost completely unknown to specialists. Not listed in John P. Chalmers and Christopher de Hamel's Disbound and Dispersed: The Leaf Book Considered (Chicago: Caxton Club, 2005).
Offered by Michael Laird Rare Books.