8vo (158 x 110 mm), [489] ff. Gothic letter, double column, 56 lines and head-line. Lacking first quire: (title page, tabula alphabethica) and f. a1 (blank). Bible text itself is complete. Capital spaces, rubricated in red and blue. Two large initials with red and blue penwork. The head-lines give the names of the books. Some old annotations, a few lvs. with pale brown ink stains, a few marginal tears skillfully repaired. Later calf binding, spine gilt, rubbed, first hinge weak, edges mottled
"Ref. Goff B592; HC 3107*; Pell 2329, GW 4269, BMC III 789. Commonly known as the 'Poor Man's Bible', as its size made it more accessible to lay readers and travelling clerics. The first Bible printed in octavo format, and the first book signed by Johann Froben, founder of a great printer's dynasty and friend of Erasmus. The size of Froben's Bible conforms to that of many thirteenth-century portable Bibles written in Paris and elsewhere. To keep the number of leaves within a single volume, Froben used an unusually small but very clear gothic fount, in today's nomenclature of a 7-point size. The octavo format was clearly welcomed by readers: Froben printed a second edition in 1495, and there followed three Italian octavo Vulgate editions of 1492, 1496 and 1497, as well as Gershom Soncino's Hebrew Bible in octavo, Brescia, 1494. Heraldic bookplate Xavier Eugène, manuscript ex libris Henrici van Teeffelen"
