Books and Periodicals
The more than eight hundred thousand volumes gathered at the Ransom Center make possible a study of the history of the book from its beginnings in the manuscript period through the twentieth century. Among the several hundred items in the pre-1700 manuscripts collection are Ptolemaic papyri of the third to first century B.C., an eleventh-century Bede codex from the monastery at Tegernsee, the richly illuminated Chronicles (ca. 1450) of Jean Froissart (1337-1404) and the fifteenth-century Belleville Book of Hours. Incunabular holdings (three hundred eighty volumes and four hundred leaves) begin with the Gutenberg Bible of 1455. The Center's copy, on paper, is one of only five complete exemplars in the United States. The Center's Pforzheimer Library holds William Caxton's edition of Lefevre's Historyes of Troye (1474), the first book printed in English, along with six other works by Caxton.
Publications
Gutenberg Bible CD-ROM - Contains high-resolution images of the first book printed with movable type