September 30, 2004
Lost & Found

Missing for five centuries, a stolen page from a landmark book has been found:

The illuminated page depicting the occupations of the month of October comes from the Sforza Book of Hours, one of the most lavish books of the Italian Renaissance and a treasured item in the [British] national library's collection.

While historians understandably study the content of books, I wish someone would write a history of some books. Before printing came along, many of our most important works of literature, history, and science existed in only a handful of copies, sometimes only one. How Tacitus's Annals came to us (to pick just one example) is, for me, at least as interesting as what it says.

Posted by scott at September 30, 2004 03:01 PM

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Comments

Palimpsets are the most interesting part of the history of books, for me. The "rewritten" part of it, and the potential for modern technology to uncover what the 1st document was underneath it.

Posted by: Jon on October 1, 2004 12:12 PM
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