Mortimer, Ruth ( Compiled by ) HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY DEPARTMENT OF PRINTING & GRAPHIC ARTS CATALOGUE OF BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS FRENCH SIXTEENTH CENTURY BOOKS (2 VOLUMES) , Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1964.

Illustrated by Numerous Illustrations. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good. 4to Will be posted for the standard charge, no extra postage will be asked for. Two volume blue cloth hardcover set. Bright gilt titling on spine. No slipcase. Both volumes in Near Fine condition. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall. Heavily illustrated. 728 pages very clean & tight. FOREWORD: These volumes arc the first part of a projected catalogue of the books and manuscripts in the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts established in the Harvard Library by Mr. Hofer in 1938. This Department, the first of its kind, at least in the generous dimensions with which Mr. Hofer has envisaged it, for it is built around his own collection of well over ten thousand books and manuscripts, is designed to make possible the study of the development of the arts of the book from classical times to the present day, both manuscript and printed, and in all countries, both Western and Oriental, where those arts have flourished. Since it is located in a library which contains nearly seven million volumes, it is supplemented nearby with countless examples which might have otherwise been chosen for the collection and which, in any case, are available for study and comparison. The present part, devoted to French books of the sixteenth century, contains many unusual and remarkable volumes. The reader may judge for himself by turning its pages. Inevitably it will be compared with the C. Fairfax Murray Collection. That Collection contained just over five hundred sixteenth-century French titles, while the Hofer Collection has some fifty more. At least eighty are common to both collections. While a good many of the Murray books were more remarkable for their literary importance (those, for example, by Bruno, Montaigne, and Rabelais) or for their bindings than for their illustration or printing, there are fewer of this type in the Hofer Collection and when they occur they were chosen because they are well printed or illustrated. The Murray Collection contained a larger proportion of early romances and translations in gothic letter, frequently with fifteenth-century cuts, whereas the Hofer Collection has a much larger number of illustrated or finely printed books, many in roman or italic, printed in Paris and Lyons in the middle of the sixteenth century, the greatest period of French typography and the one which has had the most influence on later periods. All of the books described in this catalogue are now the property of the Harvard College Library, by far the greater part of them the generous gift of Mr. Hofer. Already two further parts of this series are in preparation and eventually it is hoped that all the books and manuscripts of the Department will be similarly catalogued. As no one person in a lifetime could complete such a task on this scale, for the Collection continues to grow, it will only be possible if in the future other cataloguers as competent and devoted as Miss Ruth Mortimer take up the task. It is proper here to record that she alone has compiled these volumes with only such advice and occasional help as Mr. Hofer and others of her colleagues have been able to give. WILLIAM A. JACKSON (Book ref. 129353)  £218.00

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