One of the first things fledging historical bibliographers are taught is to identify formats: take a sheet of paper and fold it once to give folio format, fold again to make a quarto gathering, and once again for an octavo. Then they need to know about chain lines, wire lines and where to find watermarks…
The Cathedral Library’s oldest printed item is a single leaf printed in a typeface attributed to Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of printing, which had been used to print an edition of the Bible produced in Bamberg in about 1459. Gutenberg is renowned for producing the very first printed Bible, in Mainz around 1455. This Bible…
Sir Hans Sloane MD, FRS, FRCP (1660–1753), was a celebrated 18th-century physician and scientist. He was a royal physician to Queen Anne, George I and George II, and President of the Royal Society from 1727 to 1740. He was also President of the Royal College of Physicians. More importantly (if that is possible) he accumulated…