Everyone knows the Gutenberg Bible as the world’s most valuable book. Who knew that there were 51 of them? And that you can’t call them copies exactly, because no two are identical? With The Lost Gutenberg, Margaret Leslie Davis summarizes the work of Johannes Gutenberg, the German who printed the first books with moveable type, a laborious process that led by steps to the information age. His Bibles were individually illustrated according to his clients’ tastes. They were always valuable, albeit until the 20th century, among bibliophiles they ranked less high than many lesser-known works.
Davis follows the path of a particular Gutenberg Bible through various owners. All were fabulously wealthy and usually eccentric. The book’s last private owner, an American heiress, mingled devotion with an awareness that having the Gutenberg was a status symbol few could afford. The Lost Gutenberg is fascinating, well-grounded and marred only by the author’s jarring insertion of present tense (makes us feel like we’re there?) into long-ago events.
