Incunabula
Ornamental letters from the 1493 Liber chronicarum, or, Nuremberg chronicleIntroduction
This online exhibition showcases the work that Charlotte Chambers undertook in the internship module of her 2018 MA Early Modern History course, when she was based in the Foyle Special Collections Library at King’s.
Charlotte worked on the incunabula items in our collections and the core task of the internship was to study the provenance of these books, and to enter this information onto the CERL (Consortium of European Research Libraries) Material Evidence in Incunabula database. Full details of all the provenances found in our incunabula are available through these records.
The term incunabula normally refers to books printed before 1501 and the purpose of the Material Evidence in Incunabula database is to create a map of how individual copies of incunabula have travelled across Europe and beyond throughout the centuries. The history of each book begins with its place of printing and ends with a record of its current holding institution.
The sections of this online exhibition detail the research into some of the incunabula undertaken by Charlotte, and notable provenances and features of the books are outlined.
A link to the King’s College London catalogue record for each item is available at the bottom of each page; and there is a link available here to a web page listing the 17 incunabula we hold at King’s. Scroll down to the bottom of the ‘Overview’ page.
The holdings of incunabula at King’s reflect the teaching and subject strengths of the University, so subjects like theology, medicine, travel, literature are well-represented.
A blog post written by Charlotte explaining her work is also available here.