eBook - ePub
The Lost Gutenberg
The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey
Margaret Leslie Davis
This is a test
Share book
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
The Lost Gutenberg
The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey
Margaret Leslie Davis
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
'An entertaining and insightful human story of obsession about books.' Daily Telegraph 'A lively tale of historical innovation, the thrill of the bibliophile's hunt, greed and betrayal.' New York Times
T he never-before-told story of one extremely rare copy of the Gutenberg Bible, and its impact on the lives of the fanatical few who were lucky enough to own it. For rare book collectors, an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible - there are only forty-six in existence - is the undisputed gem of any collection. The Lost Gutenberg recounts five centuries in the life of one particular copy of the Bible from its very creation by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, to its ultimate resting place, in a steel vault under the protection of the Japanese government. Margaret Leslie Davis draws readers into this incredible saga, inviting them into the colourful lives of each of its fanatic collectors along the way. Exploring books as objects of desire across centuries, Davis will leave readers not only with a broader understanding of the culture of rare book collectors, but with a deeper awareness of the importance of books in our world.
Frequently asked questions
How do I cancel my subscription?
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlegoâs features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan youâll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weâve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is The Lost Gutenberg an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access The Lost Gutenberg by Margaret Leslie Davis in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Teologia e religione & Bibbie. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Topic
Teologia e religioneSubtopic
BibbiePART I
THE IMPERIAL CENTURY
The Gutenberg Bible is a masterpiece of world culture. Only forty-eight or forty-nine copies of this landmark work survive, and of those, only one has been owned by a woman collector. This is the true story of that book, the copy designated as Number 45, printed by Johann Gutenberg sometime before August 15, 1456.
CHAPTER ONE
Million-Dollar Bookshelf
AWOODEN BOX CONTAINING one of the most valuable books in the world arrives in Los Angeles on October 14, 1950, with little more fanfareâor securityâthan a Sears catalog. Code-named âthe commode,â it was flown from London via regular parcel post, and while it is being delivered locally by Tice and Lynch, a high-end customs broker and shipping company, its agents have no idea what they are carrying and take no special precautions.
The widow of one of the wealthiest men in America, Estelle Betzold Doheny, is among a handful of women who collect rare books, and she has amassed one of the most spectacular libraries in the West. Acquisition of the Gutenberg Bible, universally acknowledged as the most important of all printed books, will push her into the ranks of the greatest book collectors of the era. Its arrival is the culmination of a forty-year hunt, and she treasures the moment as much as the treasure.
Estelleâs pursuit of a Gutenberg began in 1911, when she was a wasp-waisted, dark-haired beauty, half of a firebrand couple reshaping the American West with a fortune built from oil. Now seventy-five, she is a soft, matronly figure with waves of gray hair. The auspicious occasion brings a flash of youth to her face, and she is all smiles. But she resists the impulse to rip into the box, leaving it untouched overnight so she can open it with appropriate ceremony the next day.
Estelle has invited one of her confidants, Robert Oliver Schad, the curator of rare books at the Henry E. Huntington Library, to see her purchase, and at noon he arrives with his wife, Frances, and their eighteen-year-old son, Jasper. Estelleâs secretary, Lucille Miller, escorts the family through the mansionâs Great Hall to the library, and with a sweep of her hand invites the group to sit at the oblong wood table in the center. The Book Room, as Estelle affectionately calls it, is finished in rich redwood and had been her husbandâs billiard parlor. Its walls had once featured paintings related to Edward Dohenyâs petroleum empire, murals commissioned by the onetime prospector who drilled some of the biggest gushers in the history of oil. Today the room is lined with custom-built shelves for Estelleâs beloved booksâher own personal empire, worth as much as Edwardâs oil.
Her collection began almost as a lark, sparked by popular lists of books that everyone should own, but now contains nearly ten thousand exceedingly rare volumes available only to the fabulously wealthy and culturally ambitiousâgilded illuminated manuscripts glowing with saints and mythical creatures; medieval encyclopedias; and the earliest examples of Western printing, 135 incunabulaâbooks printed before the year 1501. Such seminal works of Western culture as Ciceroâs De officiis and Saint Thomas Aquinasâs Summa Theologica rub shoulders with a sumptuous 1477 copy of The Canterbury Tales. This is the million-dollar company the Gutenberg Bible will keep on its shelf.
The two-by-three-foot crate waits at the center of the table, spotlighted by a bronze-and-glass billiard lamp. When Estelle enters the room, accompanied by her companion and nurse, Rose Kelly, the group stands silent. Lucille takes out a pair of scissors and passes it around. Estelle, dressed for the occasion in a pale blue printed silk dress, a gem-studded comb at her right temple, wants everyone to take part, so each person makes a cut in the knotted cord that winds the package.
Itâs an emotional occasion for Lucille, too, a slim, long-limbed woman with center-parted, brown hair that curls up around her cheeks. Never without a pencil tucked behind her ear, she has a subdued beauty thatâs easy to miss, a pale, symmetrical face hidden behind her glasses. Lucille has been Estelleâs steady partner in the quest for the Gutenberg, party to every promise, hope, and near miss for nearly twenty years. She almost allows herself to smile as she pulls away the boxâs coverings and lifts the lid, but then she sees the shabby mess inside. âI could hardly believe my eyes,â she said later. âIt just looked like a bundle of old tattered, torn papers. It was the most carelessly wrapped thing I ever saw.â1 The precious book has been enclosed without padding, wrapped in thin cardboard and then in dark corrugated paper tied with a heavy cord. Lucille mentally chastises the customs officials in New York who had opened the parcel for inspection and then shoved it back in the box âany old way, and tied a string or two here or there and along it came.â2
It will be a miracle if the book is not damaged.
But as she lifts it out of the last of the wrappings, the Bible appears to be fine. For an expert like Robert Schad, there is no mistaking the original fifteenth-century binding of age-darkened brown calfskin stretched over heavy wood boards. The copy now in Estelle Dohenyâs possession is the first issue of the first edition of the first book printed with movable metal type, in near-pristine condition, its pages fresh and clean. The lozenge and floweret patterns stamped into the leather cover are still sharp and firm to the touch. Five raised metal bosses protect the covers, one ornament in the center and one set in an inch from each of the four corners. Two broken leather-edge clasps are the only reminders that this book, which has presented the Living Word for nearly five centuries, has been opened and closed often enough to wear down the heavy straps.3
Lucille moves close to her employer, standing on her left and tucking her arm under the spine of the heavy book so that Mrs. Doheny can more easily examine it. Estelle reaches out to touch the fine old leather and slowly lifts the cover and opens the enormous volume. With her gold-framed glasses perched on the edge of her nose, she glides her right hand softly over the edges of the bookâs rippling leaves, taking special care not to touch the print. As she turns the crackling pages one by one, she is overcome with quiet joy. Her pursuit of this object of Western invention had begun long ago, during happier days, before her husband was embroiled in scandal. She feels the smoothness of the heavy rag paper under her fingers and strains to focus her gaze on the black Gothic letters, but the Latin text is lost in a cloudy blur and she canât make out the printed lines. A hemorrhage in one eye and glaucoma in the other have left Estelle almost completely blind at the age of seventy-five.
Still, she knows well what she possesses, and just to be in its presence would be stirring to anyone who understands its significance. The European advancement of printing with movable metal type transformed every aspect of human civilization, and Johann Gutenbergâs execution of the work set a standard that few would match.
As Estelle runs her hands over the book, Schad, a poised man of medium build whoâs dressed today in a black suit and tie with a crisp white shirt, points out a few of the qualities that make it unique. Every Gutenberg Bible is somewhat different from every other because while Gutenbergâs workshop printed the pages of each massive volume, the printers left it to the purchaser to have them bound and decorated. Guided by the ownerâs taste and budget, a whole team of artisans might step in to customize the bookâilluminators would be hired to paint the highly pictorial ornamental letters, and specialists known as rubricators added chapter titles and headings separate from the text.
The first owner of this Bible had not scrimped on ornamentation. The volume is filled with elaborate, richly colored illuminations and enlarged capital letters. In the upper left corner of the first page, a large capital letter F is painted in bright green and gold with ornaments of green leafy vines and tiny, bell-shaped flowers that trace the outer margin. The intricate foliage sweeps down the page and across the bottom, where in the far right corner the artist added a white-bellied blue bird with a bright yellow beak.
Such imagery stands in delicate contrast to the enduring richness of Gutenbergâs type. Jet-black and lustrous, the ink shimmers as if the pages were just recently printed, a quality that was long one of the great mysteries of Gutenbergâs art, a hallmark of the Bibles he printed in Mainz, Germany, before August 15, 1456.
A striking green F and delicately drawn foliage distinguish the first page of the Doheny Gutenberg Bible, printed in Mainz, Germany, sometime before August 15, 1456.
Most scholars believe that Gutenberg produced about 180 copies, and among these, most likely 150 were printed on paper and 30 on animal skin known as vellum. The price of the book when it left the printerâs workshop was believed to be about thirty florins, equivalent to a clerkâs wages for three years. The vellum versions were priced higher, since they were more labor-intensive and expensive to produceâa single copy required the skin of 170 calves.4
Estelleâs copy is one of the forty-five known to exist in 1950. Theyâre in various conditions, scattered around the world in private libraries and museums: twelve in America, eleven in Germany, nine in Great Britain, four in France, two in Italy, two in Spain, and one each in Austria, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, and Switzerland.5 Fewer than half have all their original pages, a precondition of being designated âperfect.â
Hers is perhaps the most beautiful of the surviving paper copies. Despite its age, this volume lacks no pages and has no serious damage. Designated as Number 45 in a definitive list compiled by Hungarian book authority Ilona Hubay, this Bible has clearly received special care through the centuries, or at least supremely benign neglect.
Gutenbergâs printed pages were usually bound in two volumes, and nearly half of the known copies are considered âincompleteâ because the second volume has been lost. That is the case with Number 45, which contains the Old Testament from Genesis through the Psalms. But it is one of the few to retain its original binding, created in Mainz contemporaneously with its printing. The calfskin cover is decorated in a distinctive pattern of impressions. A lattice motif of small diamonds, known by bookmen as a âlozenge diaper,â surrounds six different stamps: an eagle, a trefoil, a fleur-de-lis, and a seven-pointed star. Those details, and the cover as a whole, are in exceptional condition.
Lucille steps aside so that Schad can gently steady the fifteen-pound volume for Estelle. Of all the bookmen who have come and gone during her decades of zealous acquisitions, none have meant more to her than Robert O. Schad, a trusted adviser in her quest, who for the past twenty years has hand-selected the items purchased to strengthen the magnificent âcollection of collectionsâ at the Huntington Library.6 Like Estelle, he is completely self-taught, educated through decades of direct contact with the worldâs most important books and the famous dealers who trade them. He has always treated her with respect, and always welcomed her questions, no matter how unsophisticated.
Schad signals his son to pick up the Kodak Duaflex twin-lens camera theyâve brought. Jasper rapidly snaps a half-dozen photographs, covering the bulb with a white handkerchief to protect Mrs. Dohenyâs sensitive eyes. In one frame, Estelle holds the Bible, gazing down at its pages. As far as Schad knows, this is only the second ...