Rare Books Collection
Rare Books Collection
The Rare Books Collection consists of 200 incunabula, rare and precious Luxembourgish printed works dating from before 1800, works written by authors who were born, lived or taught in Old Regime Luxembourg, the Bindings Collection (antiquarian and new bindings) as well as several thousand works remarkable for their rarity, content or provenance. The documents in the collection may only be viewed in the Rare Books Reading Room, upon written request.
Documents in the spotlight
Our staff members have written thematic studies on various documents from our collections.
Documents in the spotlight
Documents in the spotlight
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Norms in print, or, The anatomy of early modern legal texts
The standardising impulses of early modernity form the roots of many a convention which continues to determine the physical characteristics and the visual arrangement of books and other printed media to this day.
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In the margins, or, Unexpected testimonies of everyday encounters
In early modern Europe, ordinances and decrees were proclaimed aloud, read after Sunday mass or announced in public squares. The majority of the population encountered legal norms not by reading them, but by hearing them.
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Power and print, or, Comments on the visual rhetoric of authority
“All thumbs and no fingers.” With this turn of phrase, the American economist Charles Lindblom famously attempted to describe some of the administrative inadequacies and institutional constraints so characteristic of early modern public administrations.
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