A librarian at the University of Reading has rediscovered some of the first Thomas Nelson Page ever print in England , according to theBBC .
The two - sided pageboy , found cover in the library ’s archive , is from one of the first books printed by William Caxton , who set up the first printing press in England and became the body politic ’s first book retail merchant . Printed sometime in tardy 1476 or early 1477 , the varlet were part of a handbook for medieval priest calledSarum Ordinal .
The foliage is not just rarefied , but one of a kind . No full copy of the book have survived , though the British Library holds eight other threefold - sided leaves out of the original 160 . These latterly located pages are from a different part of a book than those at the British Library .
At one dot , the leaf of report had been paste into another Good Book to reenforce its spine , according to special collections librarian Erika Delbecque , who find it while cataloging materials in the subroutine library . In the 1820s , the leaf was name by a Cambridge librarian and taken out of that book , but that librarian did n’t be intimate that it was a Caxton - printed varlet . Delbecque found it in the collecting of John Lewis , a typesetter whose papers the University of Reading buy in 1997 .
“ I suspect it was especial as presently as I see it , ” she says in apress release . “ The trademark blackletter typeface , layout , and red paragraph chump point it is very early western European printing . It is implausibly uncommon to discover an unknown Caxton leaf , and astonishing that it has been under our noses for so long . ” The early printing process specialist who evaluated its authenticity estimates its worth at up to $ 129,000 .
The pages will be on display to the public at theMERL Museumin Reading until May 30 .
[ h / tBBC ]
