New incunabula in GW (June 2012)

A while ago I promised to announce to the list new findings of incunabula as they occur. I’m pleased to start today with a new acquisition by Grand Valley State University in Allendale MI, as GVSU’s Robert Beasecker was the first to support my initiative on Exlibris, thanks again. The edition in question is

GW 0612205N: Carcano, Michael de: Confessionale [Italian]. [Venice: Johann Hamann, c. 1490]. 8°

Cf the not-so-tiny URL at http://gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de/docs/GW0612205N.htm. (NB: The ISTC link in the GW description is not yet active, but will be available after the next ISTC update). Moreover, the new edition can already be viewed online at (oops) http://cdm16015.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p188901coll2/id/692, thanks to Robert’s highly recommendable initiative in digitizing the library’s incunabula.

This is a page-by-page, often line-by-line reprint of GW 6122. One remarkable thing about the various Carcano Confessionals is the number of new findings since the article on Carcano was published in GW volume 6 in 1934: Six fifteenth-century editions were then recorded, GW 6121-6126, whereas our database now has nine, all extremely rare (no edition with more than one copy; the unique copy of GW 6124 has not been seen since the early 1930s or so).

I’ve also added a preliminary description of the Delft incunabulum announced by Patrick Cates, by chance another Confessional, cf http://gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de/docs/GW0378250N.htm.

And as a cliffhanger: A number of new findings is described in the recently published catalogue of the library of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (by Dominique Coq, ISBN 978-2-600-01585-1); more details in a forthcoming announcement.

Best, Falk

Dr. Falk Eisermann