Interview with Meghan Constantinou, Librarian, The Grolier Club of New York

*This blog post was originally written and translated for and first published on the blog of the Société bibliographique de France on 2 November 2019. Close to Central Park, on a lively street in one of the most exclusive districts of New York City, the Upper East Side, there is an oasis where the visitor, dazzled by …

The Relationship between the “Grolier Codex” and The Grolier Club of New York*

On October 8, the New York Times reported the death of Yale anthropologist and Mayan language expert, Michael D. Coe (1929-2019). Dr. Coe was responsible for translating and authenticating the so-called “Grolier Codex,” a ca. 12thc Mayan astronomical calendar discovered in a cave in Mexico in the 1960s and considered the oldest manuscript on paper …

A Noble Fragment

The 42-line Gutenberg Bible (1450-1455) is one of the most valuable books in the world. Of a print run that may have numbered between 160 and 180, only 49 copies have survived, complete or “substantially” complete – an important distinction, as it turns out.  Fragments from another sixteen or so Bibles survive, copies that were …

Grolier Club Library receives its second Digitization Grant from METRO: William Stannard’s The Art Exemplar (London, 1859?)

The Grolier Club Library is pleased to announce it has received a 2019 Digitization Funding Award from METRO (Metropolitan New York Library Council) in the amount of $2290 to digitize its copy of William Stannard's The Art Exemplar (London 1859?). This is the second Digitization Funding Award received by the Club from METRO in the …

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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The Book Peddlers of France

Nowadays many of us take for granted how easy it is to get a book -- we head to the local library, hop on the subway to go to our favorite store, open up a browser to order something online, and in a matter of hours or a few days we have a new book …

American Trust for the British Library (ATBL) Archive Established at the Grolier Club

The Archives Committee of the American Trust for the British Library and the Grolier Club Library are pleased to announce the completion of the processing of the records of the American Trust for the British Library. The archive consists of 6 boxes of materials (6 linear feet) of the business records of the ATBL, and …