1. Ranulph Higden. Polycronicon, translated by John Trevisa. [Printed at Westminster after 2 July and before 20 November 1482.] London, William Caxton, 1482.

Caxton, a successful businessman with literary tastes, achieved fame as the first English printer, learning the craft at age fifty or so while living abroad in Bruges. His aim was to produce English language versions of popular texts, many of which he translated. Among the most widely read of these was the Polycronicon, or description and history of the whole world, written by Ranulph Higden, a Benedictine monk at St. Werberg's, Chester. The text was translated from Latin into English shortly after Higden's death in 1364 by John Trevisa (1326-1412), and was revised by Caxton, who continued it down to his own time. Believing Trevisa's English translation to be too difficult, Caxton "changed the rude and old English", including certain words "which in these days be neither used ne understanden." The copy displayed is a rubricated copy, and has been heavily annotated by successive owners.

R.A. Morton bequest, 1969.

2. Marcus Tullius Cicero. De Officiis; Paradoxa [stoicorum]. Mainz, Johann Fust and Peter [Schoeffer], 1465.

The Mainz Cicero is the first dated edition of any classical author. It was printed at the press founded by Johannes Gutenberg, after it had passed into the hands of his partner and financier, Johann Fust. This is the last book to bear the name of Fust, who died in the following year in Paris, and is an important example of the typographical art in its infancy, which features the earliest appearance of a Greek typeface. The University's vellum copy is perfect and complete, including the leaf bearing the poem of Horace addressed to Manlius Torquatus, which is the earliest example of printed Latin verse.

This copy was formerly in the library of Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843) and later in the Earl of Derby's library at Knowsley Hall, from which it was purchased in 1954 with the aid of the Sydney Jones Fund and a grant from the Friends of the National Libraries.

3. Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano. Omnia opera. Venice, Aldus Manutius, July 1498.

This is the first collected edition of the works of the Florentine humanist Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), published in 1498 by the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, Italy's foremost scholar-printer. Politian, himself, embodied the movement of humanistic scholarship with its new and vital interest in the classical past and, following his death in 1494, his scattered philological papers were gathered together to be printed by Platone Benedetti, a Bolognese printer who died before finishing the project. This left a "ready-made" scholarly edition, which Aldus Manutius then took over. At 452 leaves, this was by far Aldus's most ambitious undertaking to date, and features his first attempt at Hebrew type. The University's copy features twenty-six illuminated initials each with a "Byzantine" background.

Presented by Sir Charles Sydney Jones, 1945.

4. Caius Plinius Secondus (Pliny the Elder). Historia naturale, tradocta di lingua latina in fiorentina per Christophoro Landino. Venice, Nicholas Jenson, 1476.

The Jenson Pliny of 1476 is one of the landmarks of Renaissance printing, displaying in all its splendour Jenson's Roman type, acknowledged to be among the most influential of all type designs, serving as the model for a type face of William Morris for his Kelmscott Press. The text itself is a remarkable encyclopaedia of the ancient world which became a source for medieval learning, but the real importance of this book lies in its design and presswork, all of the highest quality. Evidence that the University's copy almost certainly belonged to an Italian nobleman comes from the coat of arms on the first page of the text. This is a unique copy with fine illuminated initials, evoking those of contemporary manuscripts.

Presented by Sir Charles Sydney Jones, 1945.