Marginalia and Mystery: A Renaissance Treasure in the WCU Special Collections

Among the holdings of the West Chester University Special Collections is a copy of fifteenth-century French chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet’s Chroniques de France, an account of the Hundred Years’ War between France and England. Several print editions of this text were published in France in the sixteenth century, but there are fewer than thirty known copies of the WCU library’s edition, which was published in 1512. Through an examination of our copy’s fascinating unique features and signs of ownership, this presentation aims to contribute to the limited scholarship on Monstrelet’s surviving printed books. The further study of this volume has potential implications in the fields of sixteenth-century readership, printing, and publishing practices