The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 25, June 16, 2002, Article 11

RARE BIBLES BROUGHT TOGETHER

  Joel Orosz sends us this item from the New York Times
  (June 10, 2002).  He notes:  "This guy sounds like the
  Dan Hamelberg of bible collecting!"
  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/10/arts/10BIBL.html

  PRINCETON, N.J. - In a bibliographic convergence that
  has not occurred in more than 150 years, copies of the first
  four printed editions of the Bible have come under the
  ownership of a single person - a little-known, cantankerous
  and very wealthy 88-year-old collector named William Hurd
  Scheide, who keeps them in his private jewel-box of a
  library at Princeton University.

  Mr. Scheide completed the rare-book grand slam late last
  year with his quiet, seven-figure purchase of a Mentelin
  Bible, printed by Johann Mentelin in 1460 in Strasbourg.
  While word of the acquisition has been coursing through the
  antiquarian book world ever since, a public presentation of
  the Bibles at the library May 31 during Princeton's Reunion
  Weekend has spread the news to a larger audience.

  "It's phenomenal," said Peter E. Hanff, deputy director of
  the Bancroft Library at the University of California at
  Berkeley. "To bring together those four monumental records
  of Western culture in a single place, and in the New World,
  is of international significance."

  Indeed, the sight of all four books, some of their pages
  illuminated with burnished gold and delicate illustrations
  of animals and flowers, is for some a transcendent
  experience.

  Only two other individuals, King George III of England and
  the second Earl Spencer, great-great-great-grandfather of
  Diana, Princess of Wales, have ever owned copies of all
  four of the Bibles, which, because they were printed in
  roughly the same period in Germany, constitute a distinct
  group for scholars. All the books in the Scheide Library
  are available for study by scholars."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization 
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor 
at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com

To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum