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.

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

In 1965, shortly after Frank Luther Mott’s death, his family presented his personal library to the University. The private papers, manuscripts, and…

Incunabula

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 Book Collection

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

Related Exhibits

Engraved Throughout

This exhibition features engraved books housed in Special Collections & Rare Books, and includes some of the finest engraved books...

Many Happy Returns

This exhibit brings together a selection of items associated with the most important literary anniversaries celebrated in 2016.

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

Epistolae familiares

Imprint from colophon.
Capital spaces and guiding letters.
No pagination.
Hand-written note on the left upper corner of inside cover: This is the…

Lives. Latin

Title from colophon.
Cymonis uiri illustris uita ex Plutarcho Graeco in Latimin per Leonardum Iustianum uersa"-- leaf [232]
Hain. Repertorium (with…

Omnia divini Platonis opera / Tralatione Marsilii Ficini, emendatione et ad graecvm codicem collatione Simonis Grynaei nunc recens summa diligentia repurgata

Bible. Latin. Vulgate. 1480.

No t.p. Title from Goff.
Imprint given at the end of the New Testament (leaf 422)
Illuminated initials at beginning of prologue and at beginning of…

Observations on the theory and practice of landscape gardening : including some remarks on Grecian and Gothic architecture, collected from various manuscripts, in the possession of the different noblemen and gentlemen, for whose use they were originally written; the whole tending to establish fixed principles in the respective arts / by H. Repton, esq.

University of Missouri

Special Collections and Archives