Displaying items by tag: gutenberg bible

Into first editions and have half a million to spare? You are in luck then: a section of a 15th century edition of the Gutenberg Bible will be auctioned off on June 19 at Sotheby's New York, with a presale estimate between $500,000 and $700,000.

The eight-leaf section, taken from a bible printed in 1455, comprises the entire Book of Esther, preceded by the end of the Book of Judith and the prologue of Jerome to Esther, and followed by the prologue of Jerome to Job.

Princeton University has announced the largest gift in its history: a trove of rare books valued at nearly $300 million, including a Gutenberg Bible, an original printing of the Declaration of Independence, all four of Shakespeare’s Folios and significant musical manuscripts written by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and Wagner.

The Scheide Library, named for the family of the philanthropist and scholar William H. Scheide, has been housed in a special room in Princeton’s Firestone Library since 1959, when Mr. Scheide, who died last November at age 100, moved it there from his family home in Titusville, Pa. The bequest makes Princeton the permanent home of what the university’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, called “one of the greatest collections of rare books and manuscripts in the world today.”