Nicholas Marlowe Rare Books List 1: Literature 1495 - 1920 Nicholas Marlowe Rare Books List 1: Literature 1495 - 1920 145 Wilmot St London E2 0BU United Kingdom
[email protected] www.nicholasmarlowe.co.uk All items offered subject to prior sale. Cover illustration: item 7 !2 !3 English incunable woodcut title page Printed by Wynkyn de Worde, assistant and successor to England’s first printer, William Caxton 1. [St. Jerome] [William Caxton]. Vitas Patrum (Lives of the Fathers). Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, 1495. Folio (250 x 180 mm.). Single leaf, signed “Aai” (collation of the complete book: Aa8, a-o8, q-x8, y10, z, aa-tt8, vv-xx6). White on black woodcut title in a single block at the head of the page (146 x 177 mm.); large woodcut below of St. Jerome and his lion surrounded by saints, in the background a landscape with a church and castle seen through a cloister (172 x 118 mm.). Verso blank. Fractionally dusty. Very good. RARE ENGLISH INCUNABLE TITLE PAGE, WITH A LARGE WOODCUT, of William Caxton’s translation of the Lives of the Holy Fathers: printed by Wynkyn de Worde, assistant and successor of Caxton, England’s first printer. One of Wynkyn’s earliest woodcuts, and a pioneering use of a large woodcut on a title page. Probably originally from Holland, Wynkyn de Worde met Caxton in Cologne in 1470, and accompanied him back to England in 1475. He then worked in Caxton’s printing shop in Westminster until Caxton died in 1492, at which point Wynkyn took over the business.