Crescentiis (Petrus de) Ruralia commoda, collation: a-n⁸ o⁶ aa-kk⁸ ll^6, 195 leaves (of 196, lacking initial blank), text in 2 columns, 41 lines, type 1B**:89/90G, blank spaces for capitals, copiously annotated by an English hand, giving accounts of monthly gardening operations, a few notes in a contemporary hand, some dust-soiling, mostly to first few leaves and elsewhere in margins, front free endpapers detached, 18th century calf, worn, spine with 5 raised bands, much of backstrip missing or peeling, corners repaired, folio (268 x 199mm), Louvain, Johannes de Westfalia, [c.1483].

⁂ Rare second edition of Crescenzi's agricultural handbook to be printed in the Low Countries, the first having been issued by the printer and bookseller Johannes de Westfalia in December 1474.

Both the 1474 and 1483 editions are set, as the colophon states, in a 'modern' type, the matrices or punches of which Johannes de Westfalia, then in parternship with Dirk Martens, had bought in Venice in 1473, the font very similar to that used by Nicolas Jenson in his Ruralia commoda of 1472. "When Johannes De Westfalia purchased this type [...] it gave him and his associate the opportunity to produce books that looked as if they were made in Venice [...] in fact entering into competition with the Venetian printers for the market in north-west Europe" (L. Hellinga, Incunabula in Transit, Leiden 2018, p. 44).

Provenance: Anglican clergyman and biblical scholar Anthony Scattergood, editor of the Royal Bible of 1679 (ownership inscription on fol. a2r); on same leaf a monogram combining the letters T S N R and K.

Rothamsted acquisition date 1922.

Literature: ISTC ic00966500; BMC IX 145; Bod-inc C-479; GW 7822; IGI 3262; Klebs 310.4.