History of the Book

Featured exhibit items for the history of the book.

Exhibit Items

	Celestial Globe Gores Coronelli, Vincenzo (1693; reprint ca. 1800) Coronelli, a Franciscan theologian and astronomer who worked in both Italy and France, was a founder of modern geography and an influential maker of celestial and terrestrial globes.
	On Bees Stelluti, Francesco (1625) In this poster-sized work, the first publication of observations made with a microscope, Cesi and Stelluti studied the anatomy of the bee. The text includes classical references to bees as well as new knowledge, integrated in a tabular outline.
1	The Nuremberg Chronicle Schedel, Hartmann (1493) In the most lavishly illustrated book of the 1400’s, solid spheres ceaselessly turn, carrying the planets and filling the universe between the outermost heaven and the central Earth.
1	Elements of Geometry, 1482 Euclid, (1482) Euclid was the starting point for a mathematical approach to physics. This is the 1st printed edition. The beautiful woodcuts are hand-colored in this copy. The text of the first page was printed in both black and red ink. The geometrical diagrams were quite difficult to prepare.
2	The Advantages of Country Living de’ Crescenzi, Pietro (1471) This is the earliest published work on agriculture, a manual for managing a feudal estate. It is an ancestor to the early printed herbals, and explains what plants one must cultivate to be able to make the common remedies.
2	On Animals Aristotle, (1476) This is the first publication of Aristotle’s biological works. While Plato emphasized astronomy as the ennobling science, Aristotle insisted that biology, including the study of even the lowliest organisms, is beautiful to one who understands natural causes.
3	On the Dissection of the Parts of the Human Body Estienne, Charles (1545) Clip art with woodblocks: Estienne obtained a number of woodblocks from an obscure artist. To show anatomical detail, he cut little rectangles out of the art woodblocks and substituted his own diagrammatic drawings.
4	Geneva Bible , (1560) The Geneva Bible was the first lay study Bible, written in the vernacular, portable, affordable, and designed with cross-references and explanatory notes for self-study. It was the Bible of Shakespeare, of the Puritans, of settlers in the colonies of New England, and of Scotland.
4	On the Fabric of the Human Body, 1543 Vesalius, Andreas (1543) Best known work of early modern anatomy: Vesalius was fortunate to team up with Jan Stephan van Calcar, a world class artist. Even the human skeletons reveal an aesthetic appreciation of the human body.
5	The Natural History of Plants, 1542 Fuchs, Leonhart (1542) Fuchs extracted the best knowledge available from Galen, Dioscorides and Pliny. Fuchs gave each plant a German name as well as the traditional Latin. He described nearly 100 northern European plants unknown to previous physicians.