Conrad Gesner (1516–1565)
Historia animalium Lib. I. De quadrupedibus viviparis
Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1551
Gesner’s five volume natural history of animals, fish and birds was immediately immensely popular and influential in the Renaissance, and remains highly regarded for the detail in the woodcut illustrations which show great observation and naturalistic style–albeit that many were mythical creatures such as unicorns. The rhinoceros shown here is based on Durer’s famous woodcut. This volume, with delicate hand-colouring, was part of the donation of 100 volumes (both print and manuscript) given to the Library in 1574 by Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker.
N*.1.19(A)
This copy of the Historia animalium was given to the Library in 1574 by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in a donation of 25 manuscripts and 75 printed books. Its shelfmark N*.1.19(A) indicates it belongs to the class of books A*-Qq*, known as the ‘Stars’, most of which were in the Library before 1715. A list of Parker’s donated books is given in some later issues of his Catalogus cancellariorum of 1574, a brief account of the University which appeared as an appendix to Parker’s more substantial work De antiquitate Britannicæ ecclesiæ said to be the first book printed privately in England.
Parker’s donation appears to have arrived at the University Library in stages. An entry in the University Registrary’s Grace Book ‘Delta’ in 1574 records that Parker gave 20 manuscripts and 20 printed books. A later emendation increases the number from 20 to 25 for each, and notes a further 50 printed books – 25 commentaries on the Old and New Testaments respectively. A list of printed books was also made in Vol. 1 of the Polyglot Bible given by Parker (Antwerp: Christoph Plantin, 1572). The 20 items listed are the same 20 printed books first recorded in the Grace Book (a list of 20 manuscripts was also made at the beginning of one of the manuscript books given by Parker). In the later printed list of 1574 in the Catalogus cancellariorum, the books are given in a slightly different order, although the descriptions on the whole are the same in both.
The Library’s copy of Gesner has ’17’ on the top of the foredge of the book, the number given in the printed list of Parker’s donations. The number ’11 on the bottom is that of the earlier hand-written lists in the Grace Book and Vol. 1 of the Polyglot Bible.
Dr Jill Whitelock
