Giulia Bologna, Illuminated Manuscripts: The Book Before Gutenberg, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988, VG

Bologna, Giulia. New York, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. 

English, First American Edition, Very Good, Hard Cover, Folio, 10 ⅝” x 12 ½,” 199 pp.

ISBN: 1555842755

Cream woven cloth over boards, gilt stamped titling to spine, in publisher’s navy dust jacket, full-color images of manuscripts to front and back, pink and navy text to front, white text to spine and inner flaps. Mild pressure indentations to front board, mild age toning, mild edgewear, otherwise tightly bound, clean throughout, and excellent. In a Very Good dust jacket now protected in a mylar sleeve. Very minimal edgewear to jacket, mild scratching and shelfwear to sleeve, otherwise excellent. 199 pp. Replete with over 200 illustrations, including 149 full-color. Signed “To Lisa Merry Xmas 1988 Love, John” at frontis. With Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, the practice of creating illuminated manuscripts ceased. Bologna celebrates the history of books before this point in history, highlighting both well-known and lesser-known works to create a comprehensive discussion. From the dust jacket: “The illustration introduction follows in entertaining detail the history of the book from the early beginnings as a scroll or tablet, through each of its great periods of flowering up to the invention of printing: from papyrus to parchment to paper; the methods and tools used; the types of scripts and styles of illumination; the life of the scriptorium and the scribe; biblophiles and book-collecting; even the development of the book trade.”