Victor Scholderer was the preeminent British incunabulist of the twentieth century. Few but specialists know his name, but many know and use his work. Before the last dozen years of his long life the only substantial publication under his name was an exhibition catalogue (1927); and even in those last twelve years there is no more than two slim volumes of verse (1959, 1965), a pamphlet on Johann Gutenberg (1963), his collected bibliographical essays (1966), and, from his extreme old age, an even slimmer volume of reminiscences (1970). His life's work was given over nearly seventy years to the self-effacing construction of one of the greatest bibliographical works of the age, the first eight volumes of the Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum (1908-1949), and it was in that constricting format that his great knowledge and powers of observation found fullest expression.

Julius Victor Scholderer was born...