Adventure and Art

Adventure and Art: The First Century of Printing accompanies a Rutgers University exhibition that highlights books published during the first century of printing—a transitional time of great innovation and accomplishment. The catalog begins with Gutenberg’s famous 42-line Bible and ends with the magnificently illustrated de luxe editions of the mid-sixteenth century, including the historically significant herbals of Otto Brunfels and Pedianus Dioscorides. Also featured are the exquisite specimens of the Golden Age of French typography, such as the multi-volume folio edition of the Spanish romance, the Amadis de Gaula.

            The catalog elegantly displays photographs of each work, including color photographs of the hand-colored herbal woodcuts and exquisite illuminations of fifteenth-century editions of Josephus and Antoninus. An extra feature is an essay by Barbara A. Shailor that analyzes the extraordinary cultural transformations wrought by the invention and refinement of printing. Paul Needham, Librarian of the Scheide Library at Princeton, provides detailed descriptions of the Rutgers incunabula, some of which are not held by any other North American library.

            Adventure and Art includes 27 illustrations (6 in full color) and a descriptive essay about Rutgers University Libraries Special Collections.