One of the first things I did when I moved to Austin a decade ago was visit the Gutenberg Bible housed in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas.
As a bibliophile, the importance of that book was not lost on me. However, the impact of Johannes Gutenberg's surviving bibles as cultural treasures and book collectors' dreams was something I ignored. That is no longer the case. Margaret Leslie Davis' The Lost Gutenberg, which traces one Bible's 500-year journey, is an informative, superbly researched book that explores the lives of those who were in contact with the best example of Gutenberg's work.
In the world of rare-book collecting, a copy of the Gutenberg Bible is the ultimate prize. There are fewer than 50 in existence, and none in better condition than the one known as Number 45. In The Lost Gutenberg, Davis meticulously chronicles five centuries in the life of this special copy and those who owned it, starting with what is known of its creation by Gutenberg and passing through the hands of monks, an earl whose life ended in poverty, the heir of the Worcestershire sauce business, and eventually into the hands of Estelle Doheny, the first woman collector to acquire the tome and it's last private owner. Davis also shows how Number 45 has been at the center of innovation from the moment of its creation to the groundbreaking research performed on it, using the proton beam of a cyclotron to study its ink.
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