15 May, 2007

Very old book

I've just been holding a very old book: printed in 1613, a reprint of the legal cases that came in front of Edward the third! The print is a beautiful Gothic script, and the paper is still perfect - apparently a lot of pre-Industrial Revolution books are in a lot better nick than Victorian ones as the hand-made paper doesn't decay and crumble. Just an amazing, beautiful thing to hold and look at. I can't read it because it's all written in legal Latin, apart from some of the details of printing which are in French.

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