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PREFACE TO THE 4TH EDITION (KRISTELLER 1993)
 



by Paul Oskar Kristeller

LMB, that is, Latin Manuscript Books before 1600, A List of the Printed Catalogues and Unpublished Inventories of Extant Collections, was first published in two articles in Traditio 6 (1948) 227-327 and 9 (1953) 393-418. A second revised edition was published as a book by Fordham University Press in 1960, and a third enlarged edition in 1965, in which the Addenda after 1960 appear in a separate appendix (pp. 233-284). A reprint of this third edition was issued in 1987.

The plan for a new revised, enlarged and updated edition was discussed since 1983, especially with Mr. H. George Fletcher, then director of the Fordham Press, and with Professors F. Edward Cranz, G. N. Knauer, Stephan Kuttner, and Charles H. Lohr, and the possibility of adding as a co-publisher the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, or both, was seriously considered. After 1965, many new printed catalogues had been published, and many unpublished inventories came to light through the preparation of my Iter Italicum, through the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, now edited by Virginia Brown, and through the correspondence and library visits prompted by both projects. In 1986, Dr. Sigrid Krämer, an assistant and former student of the late Bernhard Bischoff and connected with the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, offered to help me with the revision of the new edition, which involved also the inclusion of the appendix of the 1965 edition in the main body of the volume. Dr. Krämer did the ground work, beginning in 1986 and finishing recently, consulting me both on the general arrangement, and on the inclusion or omission of specific entries, and she also computerized all her entries, making changes, additions and omissions much easier.

Last year, we asked the Fordham University Press to send Dr. Krämer a contract for her revised edition. The Press, which at that time had a new director, Mr. Saverio Procario, replied that they did not have the necessary funds that would enable them to publish the revised edition in the foreseeable future, and released its copyright to me on May 5, 1992. We then accepted the kind offer of Professor Horst Fuhrmann, President of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, to publish the volume in their series, entitled Hilfsmittel, with the friendly cooperation of the Kommission für die Herausgabe mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, and of its head (Kommissionsvorsitzenden) Prof. Helmut Gneuss. After the volume had been taken over by the Monumenta, its secretary, Dr. Wolfram Setz, following the practice of the Monumenta, rearranged the computerized work, and presented it, no longer in two columns, as in all previous editions, but in a single column and with larger margins.

I wish to thank all librarians for their help and cooperation, and especially Dr. Karl Dachs and Dr. Hermann Hauke of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, Dr. Wolfgang Milde of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, and all other librarians that provided me with important bibliographical information.

Last but not least, I should thank Dr. Krämer for her excellent work, which has my full approval, and also for her generosity in keeping my name on the title page of a volume that is for the most part a fruit of her own efforts.

New York, January 15, 1993

Columbia University


Preface to the 4th edition (Krämer 1993) | Preface to the 3rd edition (1964/87)