Recent acquisitions

Special Collections has added a number of books to its holdings in the last month, but I wanted to highlight one very important book.

This is an edition of Renaissance scholar Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples’ paraphrase of Aristotle’s Ethics, dated May 1502. This book marks the first appearance of the name of Henri Estienne (or Henricus Stephanus), the patriarch of a distinguished family of printers, famous for the high quality of their scholarship as much as for the fine productions of their presses. BYU actively collects the work of Estienne, his sons, and grandsons, with approximately 540 titles among our holdings. This newest addition to the History of Printing collection captures the beginning of the Estienne dynasty.

The colophon of Lefèvre d’Etaples’ Artificialis introductio per modum epitomatis in decem libros Ethicorum Aristotelis states that the book was “completed in the mother University of Paris by Wolfgang Hopyl and Henri Estienne, partners in the art of printing, on 7 May 1502.” It also notes that the book is for sale “at the Rabbits’ Press near the school of canon law.”