LONDON: Two incredibly rare pages of one of the first books printed in England, dating back to the 15th century, have been discovered in the UK.
The pages printed by William Caxton, the first person to introduce a printing press to England, are valued at more than 100,000 pounds.
Erika Delbecque, librarian at the University of Reading in the UK found the two pages from a book ‘Sarum Ordinal’, which was a handbook for priests with details of feast days of English saints.
The pages with text in medieval Latin were produced by Caxton in Westminster either in 1476 or 1477, experts said.
“The leaf had previously been pasted into another book for the undignified purpose of reinforcing its spine,” Delbeque said.
The pages are of great significance to scholars and book experts and are expected to have a financial value in excess of 100,000 pounds.
It was a very rare event for a piece of printing by Caxton to be found, Lotte Hellinga, Caxton expert was quoted as saying by ‘BBC NEWS’.
“Its condition is good, considering that it spent some 300 years bound in the spine of a book and another 200 resting forgotten in an album of fragments rescued from other bindings,” Hellinga said. (AGENCIES)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
