Oak Knoll

First edition. All four volumes uncut. Near fine condition.

These volumes appear as the most recent chapter in the ongoing attempt to catalogue the incunabula contained in the collection of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and they depend on the scholarship of all previous attempts for some of their content. The form, as the introduction states, is derived from that of "Incunable Short Title Catalogue of the British Library" (liii). "What has been produced is really a handlist or inventory, an access list, with the relevant bibliographic description in short-title form, citations to certain of the several standard catalogs where other copies of the same title and edition have been recorded, and the Vatican shelfmarks of all copies in the collections. Every entry is complete in itself with all the relevant information about the author or the text repeated in each entry" (liii). Before the alphabetical entries begin, a list of reference works cited is included in Volume One. Volume Four contains an index of printers and publishers, a table of concordances, a bibliography of works containing references to Vatican incunabula, and an index to incunabula bibliography. Unopened tail edge and improperly cut lower corner on pages 591-594. Penciled in corrections to typos throughout four volumes. Last page in Volume One has a tear in the upper left corner. Memorial bookplate on front inside covers indicates that this copy came from the H.P. Kraus reference library and stock. From the reference library of Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts with their bookplate included.