Riant Collection

The first installment of the Count Riant collection, consisting of 742 volumes and more than 400 pamphlets, has just reached the Library. It deals with the history of the Ottoman Turks and their wars with Europe. There are about eighty Italian poems written just after the battle of Lepanto in 1570 in celebration of the Christian victory, many of which are probably unique and therefore of considerable value. In the set are one hundred incunabula or books printed before 1500. One of these was printed in 1170, only twenty years after the invention of the art of printing. These incunabula and the manuscripts are in a marvelous state of preservation and some of them are very handsomely bound. The next installment will arrive at Cambridge in about two months.