Oak Knoll

First edition. Top edge of volume one with a small bump, else a complete set in fine condition.

The Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the Bodleian Library, generally referred to as Bod-inc, is a monument in the history of the book. Bod-inc followed on from the rearrangement of the Library's incunabula begun by L. A. Sheppard, however the work was abandoned when Sheppard left the Library in 1971. The project was revitalized in the 1980s by Kristian Jensen and work was started in 1992. The manuscript was finished in 1999 and was then sent to the editorial phase. The work was finally printed in 2005 on the 400th anniversary of the first printed catalogue of the Bodleian Library.

The entire work compises over 5,600 entries regarding the Incunabula collection at the Library. Other individuals included with the work are: Kristian Jensen, Cristina Dondi, Bettina Wagner and Helen Dixon; with the assistance of Carolinne White and Elizabeth Mathew; blockbooks, woodcuts and metalcut single sheets by Nigel F. Palmer; inventory of Hebrew incunabula by Silke Schaeper.

From the catalogue's introduction: "The main aim of the catalogue has been, from the outset, to combine information about the individual copies in the collections of the Bodleian Library (their bindings, their provenance, manuscript notes, and other signs of use) with a detailed analysis of the contents of each edition, locating all texts in each edition, identifying their authors, and giving references to modern editions of each text where they exist. It is not the aim of the catalogue to replicate typographical information which is already available in one of the other detailed incunable catalogues, such as GW, BMC, or Polain."

"The Bodleian Library houses the fifth largest collection of fifteenth-century western printed books (incunabula) in the world. This catalogue describes the books to the same standards expected in the best modern catalogues of medieval manuscripts. It records and identifies all texts contained in each volume, and describes in details the book's copy-specific features (binding, hand-decoration, marginalia, and provenance). The analysis of the texts is an innovative feature, as is the extensive index of names of authors. The attention given to copy-specific information is distinctive, and the provenance index will be of great value to anyone interested in book history from the 1450s to the present day." -prospectus.