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An incunable, or sometimes incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside (such as the Almanach cracoviense ad annum 1474) that was printed—not handwritten—before the year 1501 in Europe. "Incunable" is the anglicised singular form of "incunabula", Latin for "swaddling clothes" or "cradle",〔C.T. Lewis and C. Short, ''A Latin dictionary'', Oxford 1879, p. 930. The word ''incunabula'' is a neuter plural; the singular ''incunabulum'' is never found in Latin and not used in English by most specialists.〕 which can refer to "the earliest stages or first traces in the development of anything."〔''Oxford English Dictionary'', 1933, I:188.〕 A former term for "incunable" is "fifteener", referring to the 15th century. The first recorded use of ''incunabula'' as a printing term is in the Latin pamphlet ''De ortu et progressu artis typographicae'' ("Of the rise and progress of the typographic art", Cologne, 1639) by Bernhard von Mallinckrodt, which includes the phrase ''prima typographicae incunabula'', "the first infancy of printing", a term to which he arbitrarily set an end of 1500 which still stands as a convention. The term came to denote the printed books themselves in the late 17th century. John Evelyn, in moving the Arundel Manuscripts to the Royal Society in August 1678, remarked of the printed books among the manuscripts: "The printed books, being of the oldest impressions, are not the less valuable; I esteem them almost equal to MSS."〔Evelyn, ''The Diary of John Evelyn From 1641 to 1705/6''.〕 The convenient but arbitrarily chosen end date for identifying a printed book as an incunable does not reflect any notable developments in the printing process, and many books printed for a number of years after 1500 continued to be visually indistinguishable from incunables. "Post-incunable" typically refers to books printed after 1500 up to another arbitrary end date such as 1520 or 1540. As of 2014, there are about 30,000 distinct incunable editions known to be extant, while the number of surviving copies in Germany alone is estimated at around 125,000.〔British Library: (Incunabula Short Title Catalogue ) gives 30,375 editions as of March 2014, which also includes some prints from the 16th century though (retrieved 23 July 2015).〕〔According to Bettina Wagner: "Das Second-Life der Wiegendrucke. Die Inkunabelsammlung der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek", in: Griebel, Rolf; Ceynowa, Klaus (eds.): "Information, Innovation, Inspiration. 450 Jahre Bayerische Staatsbibliothek", K G Saur, München 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-11772-5, pp. 207–224 (207f.) the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue lists 30,375 titles published before 1501.〕 ==Types== There are two types of ''incunabula'' in printing: the ''Block book'' printed from a single carved or sculpted wooden block for each page, by the same process as the woodcut in art (these may be called ''xylographic''), and the ''typographic book'', made with individual pieces of cast metal movable type on a printing press. Many authors reserve the term ''incunabula'' for the typographic ones only.〔''Oxford Companion to the Book'', ed. M.F. Suarez and H.R. Woudhuysen, OUP, 2010, s.v. 'Incunabulum', p. 815.〕 The spread of printing to cities both in the north and in Italy ensured that there was great variety in the texts chosen for printing and the styles in which they appeared. Many early typefaces were modelled on local forms of writing or derived from the various European forms of Gothic script, but there were also some derived from documentary scripts (such as most of Caxton's types), and, particularly in Italy, types modelled on handwritten scripts and calligraphy employed by humanists. Printers congregated in urban centres where there were scholars, ecclesiastics, lawyers, nobles and professionals who formed their major customer base. Standard works in Latin inherited from the medieval tradition formed the bulk of the earliest printing, but as books became cheaper, works in the various vernaculars (or translations of standard works) began to appear. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「incunable」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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