This is the only known work by the author Jacobus Publicius, and is a text that is dedicated to the art of organising and improving memory. The text takes influence from the classical world rather than from the Renaissance. Little is known about Publicius, though it is thought that he might have been from Florence or Spain, and it is known that he lectured at Basel, Leipzig and Erfurt in the 1460’s.  Only a few copies of the text survive in manuscript form. It was first published in France in the mid-1470s and appeared in several different editions over the next 20 years. This copy of the 1485 edition includes woodcuts of the alphabet, each letter being illustrated with an object that mimics the shape of the letter. Thus C is a sideways horseshoe, and I is a column. The printer, Erhard Ratdolt was originally from Augsburg but printed in Venice, and he was known to collaborate with other German printers in Venice. Ratdolt was innovative in his printing and experimented with layout, typography and woodcuts: in 1482 (the same year as his previous edition of this work), he published the first edition of Euclid’s Elementa geometriae with geometrical figures (see RCIN 1071396 for the Royal Library’s copy of the 1482 edition). His typographical methods and designs later influenced William Morris.

This is an incunable, from the Latin incunabula (swaddling bands). This term is given to books ‘from the cradle of printing’, from 1455 when Johannes Gutenberg completed the Gutenberg Bible, the first handpress book printed with movable type, up to 1500. These books are from the first 45 years of printing.

Binding
Vellum sewn on vellum thongs, laced through the boards.