incunables

In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were produced before the printing press became widespread on the continent and are distinct from manuscripts, which are documents written by hand. Some authorities include block books from the same time period as incunabula, whereas others limit the term to works printed using movable type.

there are about 30,000 distinct incunable editions known. The probable number of surviving individual copies is much higher, estimated at around 125,000 in Germany alone. Through statistical analysis, it is estimated that the number of lost editions is at least 20,000. Around 550,000 copies of around 27,500 different works have been preserved worldwide.

Terminology

Incunable is the anglicised form of ''incunabulum'', reconstructed singular of Latin ''incunabula'', which meant "swaddling clothes", or " cradle", which could metaphorically refer to "the earliest stages or first traces in the development". A former term for incunable is fifteener, meaning "fifteenth-century edition".

The term ''incunabula'' was first used in the context of printing by the Dutch physician and humanist Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe, 1511–1575), in a passage in his work ''Batavia'' (written in 1569; published posthumously in 1588). He referred to a period "" ("in the first infancy of the typographic art"). Hadrianus Iunius, ''Batavia'', .. ugduni Batavorum ex officina Plantiniana, apud Franciscum Raphelengium, 1588, p. 256 l. 3. The term has sometimes been incorrectly attributed to Bernhard von Mallinckrodt (1591–1664), in his Latin pamphlet ''De ortu ac progressu artis typographicae'' ("On the rise and progress of the typographic art"; 1640), but he was quoting Junius.

The term ''incunabula'' came to denote printed books themselves in the late 17th century. It is not found in English before the mid-19th century.

Junius set an end-date of 1500 to his era of ''incunabula'', which remains the convention in modern bibliographical scholarship. This convenient but arbitrary end-date for identifying a printed book as an incunable does not reflect changes in the printing process, and many books printed for some years after 1500 are visually indistinguishable from incunables. The term "post-incunable" is now used to refer to books printed after 1500 up to 1520 or 1540, without general agreement. From around this period the dating of any edition becomes easier, as the practice of printing the place and year of publication using a colophon or on the title page became more widespread.

Types

There are two types of printed incunabula: the block book, printed from a single carved or sculpted wooden block for each page (the same process as the woodcut in art, called ''xylographic''); and the '' typographic book'', made by individual cast-metal movable type pieces on a printing press. Many authors reserve the term "incunabula" for the latter.

The spread of printing to cities both in the North and in Italy ensured that there was great variety in the texts and the styles which appeared. Many early typefaces were modelled on local writing or derived from various European Gothic scripts, but there were also some derived from documentary scripts like Caxton's, and, particularly in Italy, types modelled on handwritten scripts and calligraphy used by humanists.

Printers congregated in urban centres where there were scholars, ecclesiastic

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