Etymologicum magnum graecum, Venice, 1499, later calf gilt, Bute-Broxbourne copy

Etymologicum magnum graecum

[edited by Marcus Musurus]. Venice: Zacharias Callierges for Nicolaus Blastos and Anna Notaras, 8 July 1499

Super-Royal folio (404 x 261mm.), 224 leaves, Α¹⁰ Β-Ω ΑΑ-ΓΓ⁸ ΔΔ⁶, 50 lines, double column, Greek type, printed in red and black, Byzantine-style 5- and 10-line woodcut initials and headpieces printed in red, woodcut printers' device at end printed in red, eighteenth-century English diced calf gilt, red silk endleaves, gilt edges, rebacked to style, extremities rubbed, small adhesive label to spine

THE BUTE-BROXBOURNE COPY of this twelfth-century Byzantine compilation, a crisp copy of the first printed Greek dictionary and the first book from the exclusively Greek press of Zacharias Callierges. He had the financial backing of Blastos, a fellow Cretan and a stationer, and Anna Notaras, the daughter of a Byzantine nobleman who had settled in Venice.

LITERATURE

ISTC ie00112000; Legrand I, 23; Sander 7110, Botley, Learning Greek in Western Europe 1396-1529, Appendix 2:7

PROVENANCE

[Earl of Bute, Luton Hoo library]; "Luton" written in blue pencil on flyleaf, and "Bute copy", note on flyleaf by; Alfred Ehrman, bookplate, sale of the Broxbourne Library, Sotheby's, 9 May 1978, lot 655, £2,800, to N. Israel