Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Index to the Early Printed Books in the British Museum, Vol. 2: MDI-MDXX; Section I. Germany
This instalment of the Index to the Early Printed Books in the British Museum is the first division of the second part. It corresponds in contents with the first two hundred and twenty pages of the first part, and deals with the books printed in Germany during the first twenty years of the sixteenth century. The reason for choosing the year 1520 as the limit is similar to that which has prompted the cataloguers of early english printed books to stay their hand at the year 1640, to wit, the vast stream of pamphlets and other ephemeral matter which in each case swamped the more literary output of the press, and was caused by the outbreak of the struggle, in the sixteenth century for religious and in the seventeenth for political freedom. A glance at Weller's Repertorium will show what this means in the period we are here concerned with, and though his book is a mere supplement, the proportion may be taken as tolerably correct. For the years I 501 to I 517 inclusive Weller registers some eleven hundred books in all, an average of sixty-five a year; for 1518, 1519 and 1520 six hundred, or two hundred a year; from 1521 to 1526, some two thousand four hundred, or four hundred a year.
Other reasons have led to the publication of this section of the Index as a self-contained work. Though incomparably more easy and straightforward than the italian or french divisions are likely to be, it has occupied during four years the greater part of a constantly diminishing leisure; and the prospect of completing the other countries in any reasonable time is so small that it seemed undesirable to keep the german section back for several years in order to issue the whole at one time, as was done with the first part. The most notable disadvantage of the method which has been adopted is the exclusion of the german books printed at Basel or in austria-hungary, whether with or without imprint; and it must be constantly borne in mind by those who consult the Index that the absence from the following pages of a german book sine nota does not necessarily imply that it is wanting in the Museum collections.
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