History and Art of the Book Collection

Our oldest printed book

The oldest printed book in the State Library of Queensland's History and Art of the Book Collection was printed in 1475. The printer was French-born Nicholas Jenson (1420-1480). He probably studied in Mainz where the first printing press in the West had been invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the early 1450s. In 1470, Jenson set up a workshop in Venice. In the ten years before his death in 1480, the printer issued more than seventy works, mostly Latin and Greek classics, many of which were illuminated and decorated.

In our Jenson book Laertii Diogenis Vitae et sententiae eorum qui in philosophia probati fuerunt (Lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius), you can see the capital letters are hand drawn in the way they were done in manuscripts before the invention of printing. The type used is called Roman type and was developed by Jenson.

The book is described as one of the finest specimens of Jenson's typographical art and is considered to be one of the most beautiful volumes printed in the fifteenth century.

The binding is not original and the size of the book has been altered. You can see the pages have been trimmed by the way the notes in the margin have been cut off.

A second book has been bound in with this volume. It was printed in Venice in 1476 by Andrea Katharensis and is a Latin translation of a Greek text Cornelii Tacit iillustrissimi historici de situ moribus et populis Germaniae, Libellus aureus.

Miniature book

Het Onze Vader (The Lord's Prayer) is an example of a miniature book held in the State Library of Queensland's History and Art of the Book Collection. Books with a height of 10 centimetres or less are described as miniature. Our edition, pictured on the left next to an Australian five cent piece, is 5 millimetres in height.

It was published by the Gutenberg Museum probably in the 1970s and is one of the smallest books in the world. In 1996, Anton Chekhov's short story "Chameleon" was published in a limited edition of 100 copies. The book measures 0.9mm in height and is likely to be the smallest book in the world.

The production of miniature books began primarily for personal convenience. Bibles, prayer books, psalms (in English, Latin and Greek), the classics and poetry were made so that they could be carried in a pocket or bag or attached to a belt.

Later came the craze for the production of tiny volumes for the sake of their minuteness. Publishers responded to the challenge by developing skills in miniature book production. These included skills in cutting, casting and setting of tiny type, the provision of suitable paper for the special ink required to avoid clogging of the type,and techniques for binding with minute pieces of animal hide.

The printing and folding of the paper for Het Onze Vader would have been extremely difficult. The actual size of the printed page is 3.5mm x 3.5mm. The text was not photographically reduced. Every page of the book has been engraved on metal in a typefoundry. The metal piece used to print one of the pages is also held in the collection. The book is hand-bound in leather decorated with gold stamping. It is housed in a plexiglass case with an inbuilt magnifying glass.

Eber Bunker Maritime Collection

The collection was donated to the State Library of Queensland in 1989 by Dr Mervyn Cobcroft. It is named after Eber Bunker, the 'Father of Australian Whaling'. The collection comprises some 400 books and pamphlets dating from the 18th Century to the late 20th Century on the theme of whaling in the southern waters.

Nathan Collection

This was the private library of the Rt Hon Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Matthew Nathan GCMG, Governor of Queensland from December 1920-October 1925. The collection was initially housed in the Office of the Agent General for Queensland, London and then later transferred to the John Oxley Library. The collection comprises works of Australian literature and history. Sir Matthew Nathan was born in London in 1862. Nathan pursued a military career with the Royal Engineers serving in Sierra Leone, Egypt, India and Burma. Before arriving in Queensland he had governed colonies in Africa and Hong Kong.

Nathan was Governor of Queensland (1920-1925), Chancellor of the University of Queensland (1922-1926) and instrumental in establishing a partnership between Britain and Queensland to conduct the first major biological exploration of the Great Barrier Reef (1928-29). As Governor of Queensland, he supported the labor Government's move to abolish the Queensland Legislative Council (Upper House) in 1921. Today Queensland is the only state in Australia with only one house of parliament - the Legislative Assembly. In 1925, Nathan returned to England. He died there in 1939.