Lovingly nicknamed the 'Corgi Book' for how comically and disproportionately thick it is for its height, this volume is an encyclopedia of miraculous and/or curious beings as described in texts that were popular or notable in western Europe at the time. It is organized in twelve sections:
VII. Animals, general
VIII. Terrestrial Animals
IX. Flying Animals
X. Aquatic Animals
XI. Meteors
XII. Miscellaneous
An incomplete edition of this book has been digitized by the Biodiversity Heritage Library and can be viewed online here.
A guide of regulations and remedies against the plague written in 1720 in the South of France. When and where was the last, big outbreak of plague in Western Europe? Why in 1720, in the South of France, of course. Pocket-sized and cheaply bound in parchment, it's easy to imagine an authority keeping this on hand as they battled to prevent, or at least minimize, the spread of plague through their city. Also fun for book historians is the extant stab-binding from when the text-block was originally sold!
Fun fact: we get the word 'quarantine' in English from the medieval Venetian practice of requiring all incoming ships and their crew to isolate for 40 (quarantena) days in order to prevent the spread of plague into the city.
In printing and publishing, proofs are the preliminary versions of publications meant for review by proofreaders. Making a letterpress book involves selecting and arranging not only every letter on a page but also every punctuation mark, space, indent, page number. Not only that, but each pressing produces two (folio), four (quarto), eight (octavo), or more pages at a time! Add to that that each type character is reversed, and there is plenty of room for errors. Enter proofing. A sample sheet would be printed to check for issues with spelling, spacing, and layout so that mistakes and improvements could be caught and remedied prior to the actual print run.
These programs are little booklets containing a title page, list of characters, and brief description of the synopsis of a theatrical performance. Where and when the performance will take place is on the title page. All the performances in this collection were performed by French schools, and proofreader's marks are evident in all 62 of the programs for the various tragedies, ballets, and operas in the collection.
