![[Biblia latina, commonly known as the Gutenberg Bible (Mainz: Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust, between 1454 and 1456)], 40 verso.](https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/files/2019/05/Figure1-731x1000.jpg)
When Johann Gutenberg and his team published their Bible in the mid-1450s, what they were selling to buyers were sets of sheets, sheets of either paper or parchment that had text printed on them. What they were not selling were books—not, at least, if we take “book,” as we usually do, to imply a codex that is ready to read by turning a series of leaves held together at one edge. As I have written before, when a monastery, church, or private individual bought a Bible from Gutenberg, they had to find a scribe to add red text to spaces that the printers had left blank. Gutenberg’s customers had to find bookbinders, too.
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Fellowships awarded to 51 scholars
The Ransom Center has awarded 51 fellowships for the upcoming year to postdoctoral, dissertation and independent researchers studying such diverse topics as civil liberties, nineteenth-century Latinx arts and literature, cookbooks, and more.
The ‘Court of Last Resort’
Ian Burney, a former Ransom Center fellow, was recently awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. [Read more…] about The ‘Court of Last Resort’
Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman
President Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, having been assassinated at Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
Early special effects
Leslie DeLassus is a film historian and instructor with a Ph.D. in Film Studies from the University of Iowa. While working on her Ph.D, DeLassus came to the Ransom Center to research early film special effects innovator, Norman O. Dawn, and his groundbreaking work.
Rachel Cusk’s papers acquired
The papers of acclaimed author Rachel Cusk (b. 1967) have been acquired by the Ransom Center.
