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This contribution discusses the hitherto overlooked ownership of the earliest printed books (incunabula) by Netherlandish female religious communities of tertiaries and canonesses regular connected to the religious reform movement of the Devotio moderna. Studies of book ownership and book collections in these communities have tended to focus on manuscripts. From the last decades of the fifteenth century onwards, however, these religious women increasingly came in contact with printed books, even though the involvement of the Devotio moderna with the printing press was limited. The discussion focuses on the channels via which tertiaries and canonesses acquired books produced by commercially operating printers, the ways in which incunabula affected what these (semi-)religious women read, as well as the ratio between printed books in Latin and the vernacular, and their function(s) within these communities. Thus the essay intends to sketch a preliminary image of the role of incunabula in female convents, and advocates a more inclusive approach of female religious book ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the multilingual transmission of the late medieval idyllic romance Paris et Vienne. The genealogy of incunabula editions of this pan-European bestseller is obscured by an unsettled bibliographical record. The little-known first French edition printed circa 1480 is likely the f irst printing in any language. The analysis highlights textual and paratextual transformations from the French editio princeps to Gheraert Leeu's illustrated edition of 1487. I argue that the second Lyons imprint is the source of Leeu's edition or that they share a common source. Identification and collation of French sources brings into focus the transmission process and illuminates the ways in which the illustrated editions published in Antwerp accelerated circulation across Europe. Leeu's multilingual adaptation offers a rare example of triangulated cross-cultural transfers, in which translations of French-language texts were produced with an eye on the Anglophone print marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution demonstrates the methodological impact of the studies in book history by Jos Hermans, reflecting the book market in the Hanseatic city of Greifswald in the late medieval period. Referring to the contemporary libraries in the communities of the black and grey friars and in the parish church of St Mary's, surviving codices, archival sources, book binding and provenance history are evaluated. The intention of this study is to exemplify the characteristics of the book trade and library organisation during the incunabula period in a town totally dependent on book import in the absence of printing shops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]