Collections
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The Special Collections Research Center is comprised of several specialized book collections, manuscript collections, the University Archives and the Central Valley Political Archive. Anyone is welcome to use our collections but all materials must be viewed in the reading room. A picture I.D. is required while you are doing research. Photocopying is done by our staff. Special Collections is open by appointment between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Library’s Oldest Book is Sole Incunabulum
On December 26, 1963, Dr. Madden wrote a memo to Dean Tueller about the purchase of the Library’s first (and still, the only) incunabulum.
A few months ago, in a Los Angeles bookseller’s [Dawson's Book Shop] catalogue, I came across the listing of a work published in Strassburg in 1474. It is a life of Christ, by Ludolphus of Saxonia in two volumes. Contrary to the practice of practically all booksellers in starring, asterisking, underlining, and capitalizing incunabula, the entry for this work made no mention of the fact that the book was an incunabulum, and a relatively early one, at that. I was led to believe that the bookseller, because of the low price placed on the work, did not know the value of his wares. I accordingly ordered the work by telephone. The price for the two volumes was $100 [$714 at 2009 rates].
I am delighted that we have obtained this magnificent example of early printing. One volume is practically as crisp as the day it came off the press almost five hundred years ago. The bindings are fine examples of 18th Century binding. My main purpose in purchasing this work was to have a magnet which would attract gifts of similarly valuable and rare books. If we do not have the drawing card of a really fine example, collectors and other book lovers are not likely to b generous to us. We now have what, I am sure, is the only incunabulum between the two metropolitan centers of the state. In addition to this virtue as a magnet, the work will be of considerable use (I hope) in teaching the history of civilization, in the graphic arts program, and in the fine arts activities.
Books that were printed using movable type in the first five decades of its emergence (invented by Johann Gutenberg in the 1450s in Mainz), are called incunabula, or “cradle books,” because they represent the infancy of printing. However, it was not an infancy marked by rough and rudimentary end products. On the contrary, books that were printed between 1455 and 1501 are considered some of the most beautiful, well-crafted books ever produced, to this day.
The style and form of incunabula were based on the illuminated manuscript tradition as practiced by learned monks in monasteries throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. But whereas it might have taken several years for a monk to laboriously copy an entire manuscript by hand, the printing press allowed for mass production of a text in a fraction of the time. This innovation allowed for the widespread dissemination of information and knowledge which helped to usher in the Renaissance.
The Library’s sole incunabulum is now more than 500 years old, without question the oldest book in the collection. The author, Ludolph of Saxony, wrote the book in manuscript form while a monk in the Carthusian monastery where it was later printed, possibly with the types of Heinrich Eggestein. The text is in Latin with Gothic style letters and colored initial letters, which was typical for the time. The provenance of the book, that is, the history of ownership over the centuries, can be traced with certainty only to one person–Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843)– due to the presence of his armorial bookplate. Our copy has an eighteenth-century binding which is quite handsome. Unfortunately, the trimming of the book in the binding process cut off some of the scholarly notes in the margin (called marginalia) made by previous owners.
Although it was common for hundreds of copies of one text to be printed, there are only five other libraries in the United States that have a copy of this book: Huntington Library, Pierpont Morgan Library, Southern Methodist University Library, Princeton University Library and the Bancroft Library. So, with this work, we stand in very distinguished company.
Our incunabulum is currently on display in the Special Collections Research Center on the fourth floor of the south wing of the Henry Madden Library.
