[From &c, vol. 2, no. 3,
Spring/Summer 1997]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Incunable?     An incunable (from the Latin incunabula, "the apparatus of a cradle," ultimately from cunae, "cradle") is a book printed in or before the year 1500, the infancy of printing. Incunables have been the object of attention from book collectors for over 300 years, and many American libraries now have large collections of 15th-century imprints, thanks to interest on the part of bibliophiles.       Redwood Library is fortunate to have five other books from this period, as well as an individual leaf from the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed from movable type (1450-55). According to the Incunabula Short-Title Catalogue, one of Redwood's incunables, Lectura super Clementinis (Venice: Joannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, 1487), by Francesco Zabarella (1360-1417), is the only copy in an American library.

 

Original Proprietors
Update VI

     The Original Proprietors Weekend, originally planned for September 1997, has been rescheduled for July 1998. This will ensure that we are able to accommodate what alredy promises to be a larger turnout than originally anticipated; provide more time for research; allow us to contact even more descendants of the Library's founders; and bring us closer to having each of the Original Proprietors represented at the celebration. 

     At least two people who have responded to the announcement of our plans have mentioned the possibility of holding a family reunion in conjunction with the Original Proprietors Weekend. A family reunion could encourage attendance by those who might not otherwise come to the Original Proprietors events, and, conversely, the Redwood Library celebration might bring more people to the family reunion. 

    The Original Proprietors Weekend will, in effect, be a Redwood Library family reunion. In many ways this will be similar to the two Reunions of the Sons and Daughters of Newport. These reunions were intended to bring together the widely scattered natives of Aquidneck Island, were held in 1859 and 1884. More than 1,000 people attended the first, and over 1,200 the second. They came to Newport from throughout the United States, Canada, Cuba, and England. 
     Many of the attendees were descended from founders of Redwood Library, including George Champlin Mason. Mason, a member of Redwood's Board of Directors at the time, was the Library's representative on the Corresponding Committee for the 1859 reunion and published an account of the proceedings, which included a 32-page chapter on Redwood Library. 

     John Brett, whose bookplate is reproduced here, was one of five physicians among the founders. (The others were Ebenezer Gray, Clarke Rodman, his son Walter Rodman, and Thomas Moffatt.) A native of Norfolk, England, Brett studied medicine at the University of Leiden under the celebrated Boerhaave, founder of the modern system of teaching clinical medicine. Brett received his M.D. at the University of Rheims in 1734 and was in Newport by 1737, when he was admitted as a vestryman at Trinity Church. 
      Dr. Brett was one of "several gentlemen" whose early donations of books were recorded in Redwood Library's first catalog, published in 1764. (An annotated edition of the catalog, compiled by Marcus McCorison, with a preface by Wilmarth S. Lewis, was published by Yale University Press in 1965 and is still available at Redwood.) 

     All but one of the books given by Dr. Brett are in Latin. They were published on the Continent. (The one English book was an edition of the Colloquies of Erasmus). The most important of these books is an edition of the Bible printed in Venice in 1488 by Giorgio Arrivabene. It is one of the earliest instances of an incunable owned by an American library. Although the 1723 catalog of the library of Harvard College recorded six 15th-century titles, none apparently survived a fire in 1764. Our Bible now has the distinction of being the incunable held the longest by a library in this country. 

Original 46 Founders 
Descendants of the Redwood 
Update III 
Update IV 
Update V 
Update VI 
Update VII