Gutenberg Bible, the first complete bookextant in the West and one of the earliest printed from movable type, so called after its printer,Johannes Gutenberg, who completed it about 1455 working atMainz,Germany. The three-volume work, in Latin text, was printed in 42-line columns and, in its later stages of production, was worked on by six compositors simultaneously. It is sometimes referred to as the Mazarin Bible because the first copy described by bibliographers was located in theParis library of CardinalMazarin.The Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests’ Zen Teachings (1377), also known asJikji, was printed in Korea 78 years before the Gutenberg Bible and is recognized as the world’s oldest extant movable metal type book.

Like other contemporary works, the GutenbergBible had no title page, no page numbers, and noinnovations to distinguish it from the work of a manuscript copyist. This was presumably the desire of both Gutenberg and his customers. Experts are generally agreed that the Bible, though uneconomic in its use of space, displays a technicalefficiency not substantially improved upon before the 19th century. The Gothic type is majestic in appearance,medieval in feeling, and slightly less compressed and less pointed than other examples that appeared shortly thereafter.

The original number of copies of this work is unknown; some 40 are still in existence. There are perfect vellum copies in theU.S. Library of Congress, the FrenchBibliothèque Nationale, and theBritish Library. In theUnited States almost complete texts are in theHuntington,Morgan,New York Public,Harvard University, andYale University libraries.

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