Bartolo of Sassoferrato’s Super prima parte Digesti novi (1478)

I am pleased to announce my guest post, written for the Early Modern Female Book Ownership blog, about an inscription documenting an early modern woman’s ownership of one of the Grolier Club Library’s incunables.

My thanks to Martine van Elk for inviting me to contribute!

Meghan Constantinou

Early Modern Female Book Ownership

By Meghan Constantinou, Librarian, The Grolier Club

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  Fig. 1. Bartolo of Sassoferrato (1313-1357). Super prima parte Digesti novi. Venice: Nicolas Jenson, 1478, leaf a2r. Grolier Club Library, Call no. *34.15VeniJ541478Folio. Photograph by Meghan Constantinou.

At the Grolier Club Library, we were pleasantly surprised to discover an inscription documenting ownership by the English Restoration poet, Rachel Jevon (bap. 1627), on our copy of Bartolo of Sassoferrato’s Super prima parte Digesti novi, printed by Nicolas Jenson in 1478 (ISTC ib00216000). The inscription was discovered by John Lancaster while recording provenance details of the Club’s copy in CERL’s Material Evidence in Incunabula database (MEI). The database is searchable by gender, as well as many other facets. [1]

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  Fig. 2. Bartolo of Sassoferrato (1313-1357). Super prima parte Digesti novi, leaf a2r (detail). Photograph by Meghan Constantinou.

Rachel Jevon, born to a clergyman in the Diocese of Worcester in 1627…

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