Talk:Incunabulum
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[edit] Really old stuff
About a third of the incunabula that are preserved today belong to the Vatican Library.
This statement is at best ambiguous. Surely the Vatican Library does not possess about a third of the preserved copies of books printed before 1500.
What is meant is perhaps that the Vatican has copies of about a third of the known incunabula.
Clarification by an expert is desirable.
Sebastjan
- of incunabula Institution
4600 Cambridge University Library 2000 Koninklijke Bibliotheek 12,500 British Library 3100 + 425 at Yale University (Beinecke + others) 4500 John Rylands University Library 280 McGill University Libraries 1800 Harvard University 8000 BIBLIOTECA APOSTOLICA VATICANA --seems hard to get exact figures but they don't seem like they are going to match that statement... -- Someone else 08:40 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)
[edit] Date
What about books printed on 1500? That's not clear from the article. -- Error
- There's been a bit of disagreement about this. All the incunable catalogues I know go up to 1500 inclusive; however, Glaister's Encyclopedia of the book (1996 ed.) defines an incunable (wrongly in my view) as "a book printed before 1500". I've attempted to solve the problem by redefining it as "a book printed in the 15th century", which is undeniable — the only disagreement being precisely when the 15th century ends! This is also, incidentally, the solution adopted by the Encyclopedia Britannica (1997 CD-ROM). Wilus 11:35, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Improvement drive
The article on Johann Gutenberg has been nominated to be improved on WP:IDRIVE. Come and support it with your vote!--Fenice 21:11, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Error: 17th century (as stated in article) or 15th century?
In the context of the origin of the term incunabula, the following is said:
"The term came to denote the printed books themselves from the late 17th century"
Should this say 15th century?
Thanks for the good work!
- No, we're talking about the term, not the books. Wilus 13:02, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] How Rare?
If the numbers for collections are correct, then there are more than 100,000 pages of incunabulum known; that doesn't strike me as "very rare" as the article states. Naznarreb 15:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
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- Counting books by the page is a tad perverse. Many editions don't survive at all. Johnbod 17:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Title
Is there any reason why this is at "incunabulum"? The plural form is by far the more common one, in my experience... Shimgray | talk | 22:08, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Incunables
Singular incunabulum, plural incunabula. Or anglicized, incunable/incunables. There is no doubt as to the cut-off date, 31 Dec. 1500. The end of the first century of printing. The total extant copies number around 550,000 but is very uncertain; one difficulty is defining whether a single volume of a set of anything up to ten constitutes an incunable. Even when they were printed years apart. Many incunables are broadsides or broadsheets of a single leaf or less. Up to 20 million copies may have been printed in the 15th century, again very much a guess. A high proportion has been destroyed not in ancient times, but warfare and disasters since 1900. The main problem is not determining the end of the century, so much as the date a book was printed; Hain wrongly included many items as incunables which are now known to be after 1501 and sometimes as late as 1520.The definitive authority is the British Library's ISTC (Incunable Short-title Catalogue) which aims to include a listing of every known copy. Colcestrian 21:43, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
