National Library of Wales
Incunabula
#### Incunabula

The National Library has a collection of about 250 [incunabula](/wiki/Incunabula "Incunabula"), which are predominantly German, Italian and French imprints. Sixty\-six of the incunabula, including seven different editions of the *Roman de la Rose,* with the accepted first edition among them, are part of Francis William Bourdillon's collection that was purchased by the Library in 1922\. At least three of the incunabula acquired from Bourdillon's library are not known in any other copy: a *Quatre fils Aymon*, a *Destruction de Jerusalem*, and a *Vie de Ste. Catherine*. [Sir Charles Thomas\-Stanford](/wiki/Sir_Charles_Thomas-Stanford "Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford") presented or bequeathed eighteen incunabula in total, half of which were printed in Germany.

Three examples of early English printing were donated to the Library by Gwendoline and Margaret Davies of Gregynog in 1921\. Two of these books were printed by [William Caxton](/wiki/William_Caxton "William Caxton"): *Speculum Vitae Christi* of 1488, and the copy of [Ranulf Higden's *Polychronicon*](/wiki/Ranulf_Higden "Ranulf Higden") (1482\) that had previously been the property of Higden's Monastery, St. Werburgh's Abbey at Chester. The third is another copy of the Polychronicon, printed by Caxton's successor [Wynkyn de Worde](/wiki/Wynkyn_de_Worde "Wynkyn de Worde") in 1495\. Nine specimens of early printed books (three German, five Italian and one printed in Ghent) were deposited by Lord Harlech between 1938 and 1941\. Other notable incunabula in the Library are the *Astronomica* by [Marcus Manilius](/wiki/Marcus_Manilius "Marcus Manilius") (1474\) with illuminated initials and borders, and [Hartmann Schedel](/wiki/Hartmann_Schedel "Hartmann Schedel")'s *Liber Chronicarum* (1493\).

During the time that the incunabula expert, Dr. Victor Scholderer, Deputy\-Keeper in the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum, spent in Aberystwyth during the Second World War, he took an interest in the National Library's small collection of fifteenth\-century printed books and produced a *Hand\-list of incunabula* that was published as a supplement to the *National Library of Wales Journal.* The hand\-list and its addenda and corrigenda describes 129 books, mostly printed in Germany, Italy and France, although examples from the Netherlands and England were also listed. Scholderer noted that some of the forty\-five books printed in France, particularly those in the vernacular, were very rare.


What is notable about the *Astronomica* by Marcus Manilius?