Printed Books and the Stories They Tell: Material Evidence in Incunabula - MAB 3/11/2024

Nestled on the ground floor shelves, the Beinecke’s incunabula-or books printed in Europe with moveable type before 1501-greet visitors as soon as they walk in the door. They tell tales of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, of ships full of foolish men, of Greek grammar, of Hebrew rhetoric, of medicine, of law. And that’s just their text. Each one over five centuries old, these incunables also tell of diligent readers and ones less careful with their candles, of monastic and manorial libraries, of book sales small and large. In this presentation, Agnieszka Rec and Rachel Beaver will discuss how to read the stories these books have to tell and will introduce Material Evidence in Incunabula, a project tracking these stories of early European prints now in libraries around the world.
Agnieszka Rec is Early Materials Cataloger at Beinecke. Rachel Beaver is a Research Assitant in the library and a candidate for the Master’s Degree in Religion and the Arts, Yale Divinity School.
Mondays at Beinecke online talks focus on materials from the collections and include an opening presentation at 4pm followed by conversation and question and answer beginning about 4:30pm until 5pm.