Rare Book Division

The printed collections of The New York Public Library could be said to begin in the Rare Book Division, with nearly 800 pieces of incunabula, ranging from the 1460 Catholicon to Schedel's Liber Chronicarum, and including De Bury's Philobiblon, Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in Terram sanctam, Holle's 1482 printing of Ptolemy's Cosmographia, and a number of editions of Sacro Bosco's Sphaera mundi. Works printed by Peter Schöffer, William Caxton, Günter Zainer, and Anton Koberger are represented, as are block books, indulgences, and even several examples of Asian printing, which predate the incunabular period.