Early Books at the Beinecke Library

Great news! Sarah Ifft's new book has just been released in time for Fall adoption! With 20% off using this code: FLA22. Congratulations to Sarah, recent Yale Ph.D.!

This just arrived from Ursus Books. A first edition of a Spanish adaptation of Machiavelli’s Art of War. Anyone know how to read the diagrams?!? There are many and very attractive, but gathering in a circle doesn’t seem like a good strategy to me.

I’ve been fascinated by the small figures in the margins of books, inspired by Michael Camille. But I don’t think he saw the Rothschild Canticles! Jeffrey’s amazing book focuses on the major illuminations, but look at the marginal figures!

This so gorgeous! A seventeenth century book holding books! See https://bookaddictionuk.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/jacobean-travelling-library-from-the-brotherton-collection-book-of-the-week/

Galaeo’s middle finger. Is this a relic?

A monkey playing bagpipes kicks off a sunny weekend in New Haven. From Beinecke MS 229.

Conical hat? Bishop's crook? Unhappy expression? Beinecke MS 229.

Claire Bowern, Yale Linguistics Professor speaks on Voynich manuscript for Yale undergraduates.

Good morning night owl! Beinecke MS 229 has some recognisable animals in addition to many fantastic ones.

Another wonderful “marginal” figure from Beinecke MS 229.

This is from Beinecke MS 229, made famous by Michael Camille in his Image on the Edge. I thought it would be fun to post some of the hundreds of tiny images that express such emotion.

I have an unnatural attraction to T-O maps and the fascinating ways people complicate them. Here, from Walter of Châtillon (Beinecke Marston MS 252), Asia gets Jerusalem and the sun and the moon while Africa and Europe have nothing. Still a beautiful diagram—far more than a mnemonic aid—for conveying information about the world medieval people lived in.