Examples and Collections
Incunabula include the Gutenberg Bible of 1455, the Peregrinatio in terram sanctam of 1486—printed and illustrated by Erhard Reuwich—both from Mainz, the Nuremberg Chronicle written by Hartmann Schedel and printed by Anton Koberger in 1493, and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili printed by Aldus Manutius with important illustrations by an unknown artist. Other printers of incunabula were Günther Zainer of Augsburg, Johannes Mentelin and Heinrich Eggestein of Strasbourg, Heinrich Gran of Haguenau and William Caxton of Bruges and London. The first incunable to have woodcut illustrations was Ulrich Boner's Der Edelstein, printed by Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg in 1461.
The British Library's Incunabula Short Title Catalogue now records over 29,000 titles, of which around 27,400 are incunabula editions (not all unique works). Studies of incunabula began in the seventeenth century. Michel Maittaire (1667–1747) and Georg Wolfgang Panzer (1729–1805) arranged printed material chronologically in annals format, and in the first half of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Hain published, Repertorium bibliographicum— a checklist of incunabula arranged alphabetically by author: "Hain numbers" are still a reference point. Hain was expanded in subsequent editions, by Walter A. Copinger and Dietrich Reichling, but it is being superseded by the authoritative modern listing, a German catalogue, the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, which has been under way since 1925 and is still being compiled at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. North American holdings were listed by Frederick R. Goff and a worldwide union catalogue is provided by the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue.
The largest collections, with the approximate numbers of incunabula held, include:
| Library | Location | Number of copies | Number of editions | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bavarian State Library | Munich | 20,000 | ||
| British Library | London | 12,500 | ||
| Bibliothèque nationale de France | Paris | 12,000 | ||
| Vatican Library | Vatican City | 8,000 | ||
| Austrian National Library | Vienna | 8,000 | ||
| Württembergische Landesbibliothek | Stuttgart | 7,076 | ||
| National Library of Russia | Saint Petersburg | 7,000 | ||
| Bodleian Library | Oxford | 6,755 | 5,623 | |
| Huntington Library | Pasadena, California | 5,600 | ||
| Library of Congress | Washington, DC | 5,600 | ||
| Russian State Library | Moscow | 5,300 | ||
| Cambridge University Library | Cambridge | 4,650 | ||
| Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III | Naples | 4,563 | ||
| John Rylands Library | Manchester | 4,500 | ||
| Danish Royal Library | Copenhagen | 4,500 | ||
| Berlin State Library | Berlin | 4,442 | ||
| Harvard University | Cambridge, Massachusetts | 4,389 | 3,627 | |
| National Central Library (Florence) | Florence | 4,000 | ||
| Jagiellonian Library | Cracow | 3,671 | ||
| Yale University (Beinecke) | New Haven, Connecticut | 3,525 (all collections) | ||
| Biblioteca Nacional de España | Madrid | 3,300 | ||
| Herzog August Library | Wolfenbüttel | 3,000 | ||
| Biblioteca Marciana | Venice | 2,883 | ||
| Uppsala University | Uppsala | 2,500 | ||
| Biblioteca comunale dell'Archiginnasio | Bologna | 2,500 | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Colmar | 2,500 | ||
| Bibliothèque Mazarine | Paris | 2,370 | ||
| Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire | Strasbourg | 2,300 (circa) | ||
| Morgan Library | New York | 2,000 (more than) | ||
| National Central Library (Rome) | Rome | 2,000 | ||
| National Library of the Netherlands | The Hague | 2,000 | ||
| National Széchényi Library | Budapest | 1,814 | ||
| University Library Heidelberg | Heidelberg | 1,800 | ||
| Abbey library of Saint Gall | St. Gallen | 1,650 | ||
| Turin National University Library | Turin | 1,600 | ||
| Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal | Lisbon | 1,597 | ||
| Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova | Padua | 1,583 | ||
| Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève | Paris | 1,450 | ||
| Walters Art Museum | Baltimore, Maryland | 1,250 | ||
| Bryn Mawr College | Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania | 1,214 | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Lyon | 1,200 | ||
| Biblioteca Colombina | Seville | 1,194 | ||
| University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign | Urbana, Illinois | 1,100 (more than) | ||
| Bridwell Library | Dallas, Texas | 1,000 (more than) | ||
| University of Glasgow | Glasgow, UK | 1,000 (more than) | ||
| Newberry Library | Chicago | 1,000 (more than) | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon | Besançon | 1,000 (circa) | ||
| Free Library of Philadelphia | Philadelphia | 800 (more than) | ||
| Princeton University Library | Princeton, New Jersey | 750 (including the Scheide Library) | ||
| Leiden University Library | Leiden | 700 | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Grenoble | 654 | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Avignon | 624 | ||
| Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne | Paris | 614 (including the Victor Cousin collection) | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Cambrai | 600 | ||
| National Library of Medicine | Bethesda, Maryland | 580 | ||
| Humanist Library of Sélestat | Sélestat | 550 | ||
| Médiathèque de la Vieille Ile | Haguenau | 541 | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Rouen | 535 | ||
| Boston Public Library | Boston | 525 | ||
| Biblioteca del Seminario Vescovile | Padua | 483 | ||
| Univerzitná knižnica v Bratislave | Bratislava | 465 | ||
| Bibliothèque de Genève | Geneva | 464 | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Metz | 463 | ||
| Fondazione Ugo Da Como | Lonato del Garda, Italy | 450 | ||
| Brown University Library | Providence, Rhode Island | 450 | ||
| Bancroft Library | Berkeley, California | 430 | ||
| University of Zaragoza | Zaragoza | 406 | ||
| The College of Physicians of Philadelphia | Philadelphia | 400 (more than) | ||
| Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin | Austin, Texas | 380 | ||
| University of Chicago Library | Chicago | 350 (more than) | ||
| Médiathèque de la ville et de la communauté urbaine | Strasbourg | 349 (5,000 destroyed in the fire of 1870) | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Bordeaux | 333 | ||
| Smithsonian Institution Libraries | Washington, DC | 320 | ||
| Bibliothèque universitaire de Médecine | Montpellier | 300 | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Douai | 300 | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Amiens | 300 | ||
| University of Seville | Seville | 298 | ||
| Bibliothèque municipale | Poitiers | 289 | ||
| Bibliothèque du Grand Séminaire | Strasbourg | 237 | ||
| Library of the Castle Kynžvart | Bohemia | 230 | ||
| Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America | New York | 216 |
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