Rylands BlogIncunabula Cataloguing Project. The John Rylands Library has one of the world’s largest and most magnificent collections of early European books printed before the year 1501. Collectively known as incunabula – a word derived from the Latin in cunabulis (“in the swaddling clothes” or “in the cradle”) to mean books produced in the infancy of printing – these are the first books made by the new invention of printing with movable metal type which began in Mainz, Germany, during the early 1450s. A brief guide to the incunabula collection, mentioning some of the highlights, can be found here: There are about 4,000 incunables in the library. The majority of them were collected at vast expense by George John Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer (1758-1834), who owned perhaps the greatest of all private libraries. The Incunabula Cataloguing Project will catalogue all of these 15th-century books to a very high level of detail.
The herball : or, Generall historie of plantes... Epistle Dedicatorie [to Sir William Cecil, baron Burghley]--[Commendatory verse and prose, mainly in Latin]--To the courteous and well-willing Readers. --First booke of the Historie of Plants, containing Grasses, Rushes, Corne, Flags, Bulbose, or Onion-rooted Plants. --Second booke ... Containing the description, place, time, names, nature, and vertues of all sorts of herbs for meate, medicine, or sweete smelling vse, etc. --Third booke ... Containing Trees, Shrubs, bushes, Fruit-bearing plants, Rosins, Gums, Roses, Heath, Mosses: some Indian plants, and other rare plants ...
Also Mushrooms, Corall, and their seuerall kindes, etc.