Book Description

Incunabula of the Low Countries (ILC) is a census of fifteenth-century books printed in the area of the present-day Netherlands and Belgium. It lists 2,229 editions in more than 14,300 copies preserved in hundreds of libraries, museums, and archives all over the world, but mainly in Europe and the USA. The entries for this census have been derived from the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC), the database of incunabula compiled at the British Library. They combine research on Low Countries incunabula carried out by Gerard van Thienen, curator at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, with data assembled by ISTC form other sources. ISTC entries were further edited, indexed and prepared for publication by John Goldfinch at the British Library. Campbell's Annales of 1874, the first bibliography of incunabula printed in the Low Countries with 1794 entries, was followed by a number of supplements of increasing complexity, the most extensive being published by M.E. Kronenberg in 1956. All the former additions and emendations, together with additions not otherwise listed before are now brought together and included in one sequence in ILC.