The New Colophon 1950 - Rare Book Insider
The New Colophon 1950

Various

The New Colophon 1950

New York: Duschnes Crawford, Inc., 1950
  • $42
Beige cloth over boards with book shop scene in three colors. [viii] pp 9-375. Clean and unmarked. Tight binding Light shelf wear to cover. Very good.
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Africa Portuguesa
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Bellifortis

Bellifortis

Kyeser. Conrad Two volumes in original glassine in plain slip case. Hard covers. Quarto. Half vellum with titles in red. Volume one is a facsimile of the original with 173 diagrams. Volume two is a translation into German of the original Latin text. Small mark to spine of volume one. Very good. Bellifortis ("Strong in War", "War Fortifications") is the first fully illustrated manual of military technology, written by Konrad Kyeser and dating from the start of the 15th century it summarises material from classical writers on military technology, like Vegetius' De Re Militari and Frontinus' anecdotal Strategemata, emphasizing poliorcetics, or the art of siege warfare, but treating magic as a supplement to the military arts; it is "saturated with astrology", remarked Lynn White, Jr. in a review of the first facsimile edition. Bellifortis was written in Latin and contained many elaborate illustrations of war weaponry. The manual discusses machines and technology that were old and new. It described weapons such as trebuchets, battering rams, movable portable bridges, cannons, rockets, chariots, ships, mills, scaling ladders, incendiary devices, crossbows, and instruments of torture] The portrait of the author is called by its modern editor the first realistic portrait of an author since Antiquity. Many of the illustrations for the book were made by German illuminators who were sent to Eichstätt after their own ousting from the Prague scriptorium.
  • $500
Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Fraxi, Pisanus (pseudonym Ashbee, Henry Spencer) Quarter leather over red marbled boards. 4to. [lxxvi] 542pp [2]. Top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Title in gilt to spine. Text in black and red. All edges rubbed with an old near vertical scratch to front cover. Front free end paper and first blank leaf loose. Henry Spencer Ashbee was a book collector, writer, and bibliographer. He is notable for his massive, clandestine three-volume bibliography of erotic literature published under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi. The title of the work is Index Librorum Prohibitorum: being Notes Bio-Biblio-Icono-graphical and Critical, on Curious and Uncommon Books. It has an engraved frontispiece and reproduces by photolithography occasional facsimile pages from works which it discusses in its text. Its author listed himself on the title page as Pisanus Fraxi. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum–the title of course is humorously annexed from the Roman Catholic organ of censorship–is the first bibliography in the English language devoted to writings of a pornographic or sexual character. But the Index is itself the first part of a work, for in 1879 there followed a second, companion volume, Centuria Librorum Absconditorum, and in 1885 Pisanus Fraxi completed his project with a third volume, entitled, Catena Librorum Tacendorum. Pisanus Fraxi was the pseudonym of Henry Spencer Ashbee. Ashbee distinguishes himself from most previous bibliographers by virtue of the attention he gives to the contents of the books he examined. - Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians.
  • $300