History of Printing

History of the Book and Printing

The history of printing and the book arts is one of the primary interests of Special Collections. Highlights include:

A collection of two dozen incunabula including a splendid copy of Hartmann Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum (1493)
Numerous sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century titles from important printers such as Aldus Manutius, the Elzevirs, the Plantin-Moretus family, Baskerville, Bodoni, and others

These materials provide an essential learning laboratory for students and faculty interested in the history and technologies of the book. They also complement and provide a touchstone for a campus-wide interest in the history and future of media, communications, and disruptive technologies such as the Internet and the printing press.

How to Use the Collection

With a few exceptions, the collections can be accessed and requested through the library catalog. Finding aids for individual collections are linked on this website. Materials are available for use in the Special Collections Reading Room (room 401) during regular hours. Materials do not circulate.

MU Library Catalog

Finding Aids for the History of Printing

Anthony C. DeBellis Collection of Humanistic Literature.

Biographical Sketch Anthony C. DeBellis taught Italian language and literature at the University of Missouri from 1966 to 1981. Most of his rare…

Dime Novels.

Dime novels were published from the middle nineteenth century through the early twentieth century and were largely pulp fiction aimed at a…

Frank Luther Mott Collection of American Best Sellers, 1662-1945.

Scope and Contents The earliest book Mott considered for inclusion was Michael Wigglesworth'sThe Day of Doom(Cambridge: Samuel Green, 1662), and the…

Incunabula in Special Collections

The Department of Rare Books and Special collections maintains a small collection of incunabula (European books printed before 1501) and early printed…

Pages from the Past Collection

Pages from the Past is a collection of original manuscript and rare book leaves compiled and sold by a New York book dealer Alfred W. Stites from 1964…

Press Ephemera Collection.

Scope and Contents The collection contains material on private and specialty presses, dating primarily from the 1980s to the present. Many items in…

Rare Books

The Rare Books Collection is the default designation for materials in Special Collections that are acquired as individual items. Like Special…

Related Exhibits

Incunables in Special Collections

Printing with moveable type began in Europe in the 1450s in the German city of Mainz with the Gutenberg Bible...

Selected Items

De natiuitatibus.

Contents: Astronomicon, by M. Manilius--Phaenomena, by Aratos, in Latin and Greek with commentaries.--Sphaera, by Proclus Diadochus, in Latin and…

Genealogiae Joannis Boccatii : cum demonstrationibus in formis arborum designatis. Eiusdem de montibus & siluis de fontibus: lacubus: & fluminibus. Ac etiam de stagnis & paludibus; necnon & de maribus: seu diuersis maris nominibus.

Includes: Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375. Montibus, sylvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus.

Officio della beat.ma Vergine : presentato all'altezza reale di Eleonora Maria Teresa principessa di Savoja : con alcune dichiarazioni, meditazioni ed applicazioni d'intenzione, affine di recitarlo con maggior divozione e merito.

Contains a calendar, brief history of the Office, the Office of the Virgin, the Pentitential Psalms, Office of the Dead, Office of the Holy Cross,…

University of Missouri

Special Collections and Archives